Let there be light

Nonika Singh

In the absence of his director Sanalkumar Sasidharan, he is at the centre of it all. Kannan Nayar, the lead actor of S Durga, the film that was unceremoniously dropped from the IFFI selection list by the Information and Broadcasting ministry. He, however, stands hopeful and not despondent. A day after the  Kerala High Court order, which directed the ministry to include the film, he is not only asking the authorities concerned the right questions but answering quite a few too. 

First things first; he is clueless as to why the film that shows no violence, no nudity, in fact nothing objectionable should have offended anyone in the first place. He is dead sure the naysayers never saw the film, only looked at the name and pressed the delete button. In deference to CBFC guidelines, in fact, the makers had already muted a few words and also changed the name from sexy to S. “It works in our favour for S can mean different things it can be read as Save Durga too. Besides, we meant no offence with the initial title either. ” 

Creative freedom

To those who still have reservations about the reference to Durga, he questions, “How many girls in India have that name?” As for the religious rituals that the film shows, he elaborates, “The ritual that goes by the name of Garudanthwokam has men ready to make sacrifices for the goddess Durga and in another part men can inflict violence on women. We just wanted to draw the analogy and have used actual footage of the ritual.” Some viewers could read a different parallel here… but then art he avers, “can be interpreted any which way.” 

The film anyway has already been screened at 51 international film festivals and won several prestigious awards such as Hivos Tiger award. So what does one more or one less festival matter? But strangely he thinks IFFI is big platform, one of the best in the country to showcase their film, which also happens to be his first major debut. Hailing from theatre background, he had to actually improvise for the film that has no screenplay, no story and merely plays on the fear factor. 

Upholding it as an excellent film after all (it was to be the opening film of Indian Panorama), he also reminds how the director is no greenhorn but has won National and state awards for his previous two films. Waiting for the other members of the cast to join him for support while lamenting, “We are living in dark times,” he is also seeing light. The decision of the court has certainly ignited the ray of hope within him. For now, he is waiting and we are too.