Subhash K Jha (DNA; May 3, 2015)

Bengaluru is never likely to see Court, Chaitanya Tamhane’s National Award-winning film about the paralysing paradoxes of our legal system. On May 1, when Court was supposed to open in Bangalore the screening was stopped, apparently because of legal issues.

Dismayed director Chaitanya protested, “The non-release in Bengaluru has nothing to do with my film’s content. What I’m told is that Marathi films are not released there.” Chaitanya, however, is not sure if his film could be said to be in Marathi alone. “My film is multi-lingual. Marathi is one of the languages spoken by the characters along with Hindi, English and Gujarati. But the censor certificate says the language of my film is Marathi. And there is a problem releasing Marathi films in Bengaluru.”

Apparently, some local associations in Bengaluru attack exhibitors who screen films in certain regional languages. Says Chaitanya, “No exhibitor wanted to take a risk. I think these days exhibitors are exercising self-censorship. Even with the Censor Board’s approval they don’t want to release films that may cause a problem on release.”

Kamal Haasan’s Tamil movie Uttama Villain was also stopped from screening in Chennai on Friday. Chaitanya says, “There is something known as artistic freedom, and everybody should respect that. I don’t think any kind of politics should come into play into any work of art, specially when it’s all set to open before the public. Personally, I am very unhappy about people in Bengaluru not being able to see my film.”