Abhay Deol feels the parallel film movement can flourish only when government supports it. Abhay has been an icon of an actor of great metal. He has worked for off-beat films like DevD, he feels such films requires artists to make lot of sacrifices and hence a support is necessary.
“You have to live through it, make your own sacrifices. You can’t keep doing that when there is no support whatsoever.” He said.
Abhay told PTI in an interview, “Even if that much was there, it would support a parallel movement, but no (that did not happen)”.
The Deol family actor feels that the support of government would give independent filmmakers some surety of their film release.
“When the government supported NFDC (National Film Development Corporation of India), there was this little spark because there was some security, some guarantee of film release. Now that’s taken away from them. While it would be ideal for the mainstream industry to give that support, they don’t have to (give it necessarily).”
“They (mainstream industry) are perfectly fine where they are. There is an audience for them too. But if a government support came in, with the thought that let’s have a variety of representations across communities and ideas…that is something our governing body needed to do,” he said.
He caught hearts with his debut in Imtiaz Ali’s “Socha Na Tha”, and later worked in off-beat films like “Manorama Six Feet Under”, “Road, Movie” and “Ek Chalis Ki Last Local”. He expressed that with time it got extremely difficult for him to do the kind of films he believed in.
“People accepted me for taking risks, so, then I didn’t want to stop taking risks because I would disappoint the very base that I have.”
“It’s difficult to stick to the programme I started with. It’s difficult to stick to really going against formula when formula has always been around and here to stay. My desire was to put something parallel to the formula,” Abhay said.
We hope to see the Aisha Star more in future with the kind of films he believed in!