Tuesday, December 04, 2007

"Was this film funded by ISI?"

That was what one TV journalist asked to P T Kunhi Mohammed, the director of Malayalam film `Paradesi' at a meet the press program organized in connection with a screening of the film.

Could be he was trying to act smart, or just being stupid. But it kind of explains the film's absence from Indian Panorama at Goa festival.

(Paradesi illustrates the fate of the partition's in-betweens who face continuous torture from both Paki and Indian states. Escorting the guys all the way to the border and leaving them in No Man's land and all.. We have seen many partition films -- recently 1947 Earth and Khamosh Pani -- but this post-partition film set in 2007 is not a repeat of those. I remember newspaper reports about one Pak citizen dying in our district a few years back after running between the countries for decades. As Mohanlal said at the screening, this could happen in any place in the world where there's conflict. . The film has a haunting effect, despite dragging at some places. And some good music.)

1 comment:

prasanth kalathil said...

This is not the first time PT is being hunted for his muslim identity... !

Erlier too, with his first two films which are on muslim milieu, he was asked questions like why he is taking only muslim movies !

His answer was simple, and emotional too. He said, I was born in a muslim family, I know the envornment well, and so my thought and films are on those issues. Why dont you ask other directors like Adoor the same question like, why you dont have a muslim story or why you are not taking a movie on other communities of north malabar ?


A post on this subject in malayalam: http://prasaanth.blogspot.com/2007/12/isi.html