Hindi Cinema with a social message for the wrong reason…

Very often when filmmakers have taken a step forward in doing something for the society their creditability has always been questioned. When few filmmakers started making meaningful cinema in past few years, the film fraternity in order to appreciate their effort introduced a new award category called the ‘Critics Award’ in the Filmfare Awards ceremony. This was bestowed upon a director, actor, and actress that made a difference to cinema as well as society through that particular movie. Henceforth whether you won the popular category award or not, the Critic Award became more prestigious. The last fifteen years has seen an immense growth in the number of films made on social issues; however media always speculated whether it was a genuine effort or just another medium to gain utmost credibility and fame. In the recent times there are a few films in bollywood such as
Black which is a story of a blind, deaf and dumb girl who is not disregarded by her parents and is trained to accomplish something in life, Swades meaning ones own country – is a story about a youth, who returns to India from America to work for development and growth of the country, Lakshya meaning a goal – is a story about a soldier in the Kargil War that took place between India and Pakistan in May and July 1999 in the Kargil district of Kashmir.
Another movie that moved me immensely was 1947: Earth , a true story directed by Deepa Mehta about the India Pakistan partition, it is an honest attempt to show the world what happened during the partition and how the Hindus and Muslims killed each other. I do believe that the some movies are genuinely made to spread awareness about certain social issues, and in India Bollywood would be the best medium to educate the uneducated. However I do reflect that the young filmmakers who attempt to make films that are socially relevant and generate a lot of buzz, is mainly to attract audiences, or sometimes for personal benefits to be noticed in the industry and to be taken seriously as a good director and off course to aspire to win the critic award. It is hard to tell when the publicity used for a social cause is genuine or not, even if a filmmaker creates a movies based on a relevant social issue for the wrong reasons at the end of the day the social message is passed on to the audience. As an audience would u watch a socially relevant film if it was over or under publicized?