Tollywood missing in Award Culture

Is our Tollywood missing the standards of Bollywood and Hollywood? This has been a question often asked by many. Often we see certain awards go for askance because at times we find that there are no nominations in those certain categories. Should we select best of the nominations that have come or can we reject them saying films are not up to the mark. Question is, how else we can justify our films getting awards in all categories locally while drawing a blank at National level, sorry…forget Oscars.

The cream of National Awards went to regional language films though Vidya Balan could win the Best Actress Award. Where do our Tollywood stand on a National scale? Being a multi crore industry…we dole out films in good quantity (forget quality) and the measure of success is scaled by collections and not on those elements like story, screenplay, editing, performance, music etc. Not a bad idea…even In Hollywood and Bollywood as well, we have 90% of films catering to commercial interests but remaining 10% are made just for winning awards and they really win.

Yes, we do not have this class and culture in Tollywood. Our industry is under the control of few biggies who produce films, buy distribution rights and also are exhibitors, they own theatres or hold lease. Since industry is run purely on commercial basis, it becomes difficult for small budget experimental films to make it big as they are virtually at the mercy of biggies.

Recently, we have seen how pictures stayed in Pongal fray with one film after the other slipping out of race and two big films galloped collection of the week or two and left the market for the other films. Post production work delay is the most common excuse for postponing a film as that element of the film can take any number of days to suit the requirement quick or leisurely.

This is where you see many tiny keep waiting for theatres, while some pictures with nil collection (viewers wise, as the money will be paid by the interested party) but still run for 50 days or 100 days. (One popular theatre in the city witnessed such a feat)

Under such circumstances, anti-piracy MOU was signed making government a party. Good for the industry but there should also be equal measure of concern for small budget films from the government end and the Film Chamber should take every one seriously, and should not be a puppet in the hands of a few influential people.

Better initiative would be that Lease of theatres and Dates Available should be made public or displayed at Film Chambers and concerned Departments/Institute of State Government to begin with.