November 11, 2009 4:58:42 PM IST Enkayaar, Bollywood Trade News Network

It indeed is one of the apparent paradoxes that though natural calamities are hitting the Indian shores in one form or the other in increasing proportion the same is not being highlighted in the form of a story by our film fraternity. Rather it can be said that the response has not been in sync with the reality. It is more so, when one compares it with the response that films made in Hollywood make to the natural calamities. Every year they have one film or the other that tries to put in perspective the vagaries of the nature, and even mainstream actors do not have any reservations in enacting these roles. Be it TWISTER, or VOLCANO, Hollywood every year comes out with the cinematic response to the natural calamity.

In the recent memory we have been presented with natural calamity of a disastrous proportion in the form of floods in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka and a cyclone like situation has been predicted for Maharastra in general and Mumbai in particular. Can we expect somebody from the fraternity to make a film on it?

The Indian film industry right now is an envious situation where the technicians from Hollywood are working with them and they have the experience of being associated with the film making of these kinds. Besides, all the major studios of Hollywood have a sizeable presence in India and they have been associated with the making of films on natural calamity for quite a long time and they can indeed help in spreading the message of its outcome through the cinematic oeuvre. Incidentally, films made in the past had a reference in one form or the other about the natural calamities and it was indeed used as a binding element in the film, and one of the most popular films that can be included in this category is WAQT.

To begin with may be somebody could indeed think about making a film on the after effects of Tsunami as also a film that could delineate the havoc that a cyclone can entail on Mumbai for instance. The platform for these kinds of films is already there in the form of international film festivals as also the cyber space. The need of the hour is for the film fraternity to rise and address the issue and get counted and not relegate itself to being a repository of projecting a feel good factor only. It is through initiatives of these kinds that Indian cinema also would start being taken with due seriousness.