The legendary director, Padmashri Dr. Girish Kasaravalli, who has received multiple Swarna Kamal awards for Kannada films, is not often heard making complaints.
However, on Monday evening, at the Sathi Sulochana Kannada first talkie film announcement event, Dr. Kasaravalli expressed his unhappiness with the way the Bengaluru International Film Festival is being conducted.
“With just a few foreign delegates, it does not become an international film festival. As a regular visitor to various film festivals, I have not received an invite for the 16th BIFFE. My film Ghatashraddha is being screened on Tuesday, but as of Monday evening, I have not received an invitation,” the legendary director expressed.
Expressing his disappointment over the lack of attention given to film archives, he said, “Up to Dweepa, my nine films have not been archived. It was only because of Nayar that we could get some work done, but even at the national level, efforts to retrieve Kannada films remain bleak. We don’t even have prints of the earliest Kannada films—this shows where we are headed,” stated Dr. Kasaravalli.
Appreciating the efforts of P. Seshadri and Srujan Lokesh in recreating Sathi Sulochana, the internationally acclaimed director praised the initiative, calling it the first of its kind. “This also paves the way for further, more extensive thoughts,” he remarked.
