Kochi : The Kochi Book Fest and the three-day literary festival jointly organised by Ernakulam district library council development committee and the Maharajas College Literary Forum concluded on Sunday.
Hareesh clarified that from the question “Whose is the screenplay?” he came to the realisation that cinema is ultimately the director’s. The seminar organised on the topic ‘Malayalam Cinema and Literature’ in the fiftieth year of Lalithambika Antharjanam’s famous novel ‘Agnisakshi’ was the main attraction of the concluding day. Screenwriters and litterateurs P F Mathews, S Hareesh, literary-film critic Aju K Narayanan , and Dilip Raj participated in the discussion. Raj opined that he is interested in independent cinema that lacks the ingredients of literature. Mathews pointed out that Aravindan’s ‘Kanchana Seetha’ was an astonishing film and that the first Malayalam film to fully do justice to the art of cinema was ‘Swayamvaram’. He added that it is the way of Malayalees to search for literature in cinema instead of seeing an independent art form.
Narayanan opined that in the new era the importance of the writer in cinema is diminishing and that today’s film criticisms often remain confined only to political values.