Bengali film fraternity has a reason to be happy and why not after so long their movies are now being officially remade in other regional languages too. Tollywood has made movies which are rich in content and even traveled to many film festivals. As reported, there are now many producers and directors who are trying to buy official rights of making some critically acclaimed movies.
To name few, directors have approached Srijit Mukherji for Autograph, Hemlock Society and Rajkahini, Nandita Roy and Shiboprosad Mukherjee’s Haami, Posto, Konttho and Belaseshe is also in the list, Rudranil
Ghosh’s concepts in Vinci Da and Chocolate.
What Top Directors Have To Say About It?
The interest in adapting Bengali cinema started when films made by directors like Srijit Mukherji, Shiboprosad Mukherjee and Nandita Roy started creating a buzz nationally.
National award director Srijit Mukherji feels that dearth of original scripts and script writers in Bengali cinema made doors open for other regional language directors and the result was series of remakes in Bengali cinema. But then Hemlock Society came and it changed the perspective of other world.
Bhooter Bhabishyat, Ramdhanu and Rajkahini are remade in Hindi. Shiboprosad’s Belaseshe and Posto are also being remade in Hindi. Haami and Kontho are being remade in Malayalam.
Jeet said, “This is a strange behavior I notice in Tollywood. When we do official remakes of a Tamil/ Telugu or even a Turkish film, there is a section that is dismissive about our efforts. The same crowd doesn’t snigger when Bollywood remakes south films. I’m told Kabir Singh is a complete copy of the Telugu film called Arjun Reddy. It did such great business. Nobody questioned why an official remake was made in Hindi.”
According to Raj Chakraborty, “Had I been a National Award-winning director, nobody would have dared to question my success with remakes. A south remake in Hindi with Salman Khan is always lauded. The same audience goes ga-ga over bhai. But when our heroes do the same thing, people react as if all is lost.”
Srijit feels adaptations is okay but not remakes. “I do not endorse their frame-to-frame copies which some directors do. They have to keep the local culture in mind and remake them accordingly,” he added.
Atanu Ghosh said the criticism of remakes is not good. “I am happy that many critically or commercially-acclaimed Bengali films are being remade. This exchange is important. It also proves that people in other industries are aware of what is happening in Bengal.” He further added.
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