Session on what plagues Odia film industry a hit

An interactive session on Odia films was held at the Kalinga Literary Festival held at KIIT Campus recently, where actor and former MP Siddhant Mohapatra, veteran actress Jharana Das, filmmaker Subash Das and film research scholar Surya Deo spoke about the changing trends in Odia cinema. Actress Anu Choudhury was the moderator for the session.

The panellists discussed ‘Odia Film Then and Now: Changing Trend of Odia Cinema’ that saw a full auditorium. The audience was listening intently to the panellists and their discussions about old Odia films and the current ones. The discussion also stressed on why cine lovers don’t make a beeline for new Odia releases.
While Jharana Das spoke about the films of her time, Siddhant Mohapatra who was more active in the 1990s and 2000s spoke about his time. Subash Das, an award-winning independent filmmaker who gave his perspective on the failure or success of the Odia films, pointed out that the current crop of Odia filmmakers are not cinema literate. “The way they are making films and approaching cinema, it seems it is not for the love of the art form. The filmmakers want easy money and they adopt absurd means to make it work. By doing this they are losing people’s faith,” observed the filmmaker.
Surya Deo, who has been trying at an individual level to digitise all old Odia films by collecting them from various sources and making an archive, also pointed out that filmmakers in the past were passionate and understood the Odia culture better. “Unlike these days, they were getting stories from our local folklore. Nowadays, the makers copy paste south films or hit movies from other languages. It loses its charm and fails to attract the audience, who has already seen it in many other languages that had better production,” said the film researcher.
The panellists also answered questions from the audience related to the film industry