123 Kolkata: The special screening of Suman Ghosh's Aparna Sen documentary titled ‘Parama' at the 30th Kolkata International Film Festival (KIFF) on Thursday garnered an extraordinary response in the city. The enthusiastic reception prompted deliberation regarding Kolkata's audience receptiveness towards regular theatrical screenings of documentaries – a practice that had started in the city in 1998 but followed by intermittent attempts. With ‘Parama' slated for a Jan release, the pertinent query among cinephiles at KIFF was: Will exhibitors embrace documentary releases with the same zeal they demonstrate towards mainstream feature films?
Ghosh's documentary begins with the Anglo-Indian teacher Jennifer Kendal from her debut feature ‘36 Chowringhee Lane' (1981) and poignantly concludes with the same character in front of Victoria Memorial. The 82-minute-long screen time in between is devoted to Ghosh and Sen revisiting some shooting locations of her films. Interspersed between this footage are interviews of Sen's close associates and family members, including Konkona Sen Sharma, Kamalini Chatterjee, Kalyan Ray, Shabana Azmi, Rahul Bose, Goutam Ghose, Rituparna Sengupta and Anjan Dutt. "I've acted and directed but never thought I could be the subject for a filmmaker… It's like my life is under the microscope. But Suman has done a splendid job," Sen told at the premiere.
About Kolkata's culture of viewing documentaries, Sankhajit Biswas, who has directed five documentaries and edited Ghosh's ‘Parama', said, "The craze is only for Aparna Sen. India still doesn't have the culture for watching documentaries."
Ghosh has doubts if people in Kolkata are genuinely receptive to viewing a documentary in theatres. "But I have made the documentary as interestingly as possible so that there is an engagement level with the audience. Exhibitors harbour scepticism when approached for documentary releases, as they remain unconvinced about potential box-office revenues. Nevertheless, we have witnessed unconventional risks yielding favourable outcomes, even with films like '12th Fail' that were conventionally not predicted to be box-office successes. So why not try that with documentaries?" Ghosh asked.
Most exhibitors say box-office numbers or bragging rights for screening good content are the only two factors that determine screening choices. "An auditorium with 800 seats can't afford to screen a content that draws only 50 people. If documentaries can generate sufficient interest to pull viewers, we will screen them as long as their duration doesn't clash with our screening schedule," said Navin Choukhani of Navina Cinema.
Director Sourav Sarangi, whose 'Tusu Katha' had released at Nandan in 1998 for two days, remarked, "My 'Char' had sustained a fortnight's run in Nandan. We have both discerning audiences and exemplary documentaries in India. It is economically feasible to screen them at 200-seater venues but not at 800-seater single screens. We just require an alternative theatrical distribution network and promotional infrastructure."
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