He took a dig at films made on the plight of farmers which apparently failed to depict their struggles. He said filmmaking must be ‘democratised’ by opening it to more people.
“Someone who has made a film on farmers by watching another film on farmers will never be able to do justice to it. He can only come up with fancy-dress farmers. When a farmer's son will make a movie on farmers, the pain would actually be felt,” Joshi said.
Speaking at an event at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts on Hindi Diwas, Joshi said when he had joined advertising, he was often a spectacle during office meetings for speaking Hindi and as there were just a few bilingual people. “They used to think of me as a grassroots person. Times have changed now. At that time, it was just thinking in English and back translation,” he said. He also said there was a need to revive and support languages that have lost audiences.
Hindi has an innate attractiveness about it and should accommodate words from other languages without insecurity. “Words represent culture. I cannot translate gobar and I cannot accept mitti is terracotta,” the CBFC chief said. It was also important for Hindi speakers not to ridicule those who struggle to speak it. “Mistakes will happen, but they eventually disappear. Hindi should not be presented as a space of threat,” he added. The writing in films and advertising is often governed by what works well in the market. However, this is not the case with literature. “There are warriors in literature who are committed to the cause of writing. However these fields often influence each other,” Joshi said.
ET Bureau
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