.

Viswamithran

Oscar is an immense and exciting film event as we feel it like our own. But this event generally focuses on big budget Hollywood dreamlike - blockbusters, which mostly depend on popular Movie stars. Sometimes a few exceptions are in the competition and rarely get its honor.

Is there enough space for good cinema in Oscar apart from the foreign language film category?

In my observation, it’s high time to build in some more categories like ‘world independent cinema’ and ‘Global debut film’. It will help to explore the world of minimalistic and shoestring budget movies which have been the massive strength in portraying different and untested stories with irresistible images.

I watched Voice of the Voiceless at International film festival of Kerala (IFFK’2013). It’s an American independent drama directed by Maximon Monihan. This original and unusual film illustrates modern-day slavery in America and tells the story of Olga, a hearing impaired girl, who gets forced to sell Trinkets and affected by the slavery system heartlessly.

This largely black-and-white film has no dialogue and the background sound has been totally blurred as Maximon describes, “a vibratory, intentionally low frequency sound design that puts the audience into Olga’s headspace”.

In addition, it paves a new-fangled form of narrative style (but recapturing the manner from the movies of the legend Charlie Chaplin). In my opinion, this film should get its importance and recognition from Oscar and Golden Globe like major celebrated film events. This film has been viewed by the least audience throughout the world and if search in net there is no detailed write up for this notable film. This is the state now.

In the same festival I got a chance to watch ‘Fantry’, a Marathi film, directed by Nagraj Manjule. It’s one of the finest debut films in world cinema. The story of the film is about an innocent Dalit boy and his dream of love. The film is thoughtful and stunningly realistic.

After watching this film, I am sure; no one can come out of the theatre with normality. But there is no great recognition in major film festivals and even in India it didn’t get enough screen space. It is still walking into small film festivals and fated to gain small awards.

These are the examples. Every year, hundreds of films take birth like them all over the world and the journey ends halfway.

Oscar could make it possible to unearth these kinds of excellent art works from its own soil and from other countries.

Oscar should think over it.