Kochi, KERALA :

Kerala Chalachithra Academy Chairman Kamal has said the government was considering setting up, over a period of five years, nearly 200 new cinema halls across villages in the State for screening alternative, parallel, and art house films of note in Malayalam.

“This is something the Minister himself has mentioned, as a means to take good cinema to the interiors. Besides, film societies continue to be relevant in their mission to bring closer to cinema the section of people who are staying aloof,” he said while inaugurating the SiGNS short film and documentary festival organised by the Kerala chapter of the Federation of Film Societies of India (FFSI-K) and Kochi Biennale Foundation here on Wednesday. As part of measures to promote Malabar region, the International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala (IDSFFK), routinely held in Thiruvananthapuram, will be shifted to Kozhikode next year.

Mr. Kamal outlined the course of the film societies movement in the State and said the movement had hit the doldrums in the early 1990s, and the social situation then had created a breed of apolitical, direction-less youth.

“But there was a revival of the movement in the mid-2000s. While the old generation still nurses the hardship they had undergone in the celluloid era, the digital film age averted the need for collectivity, as anyone with a mobile cam can make and watch films.”

source: http:/www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Kochi / by Special Correspondent / Kochi – September 29th, 2016