Right to freedom should be protected: ‘S Durga’ actor

Panaji, Nov 21 (IANS) "S Durga" actor Kannan Nair is happy the movie will be screened at the 48th International Film Festival of India (IFFI). He says a lesson learnt is that the right to freedom needs to be protected.

The Kerala High Court on Tuesday directed that the Malayalam film be screened at the ongoing movie gala.

Kannan, who is here, told IANS: "It is nothing about defeating or winning. We are right. We are on the right side and the court has been with the right side. We were expecting this to happen. The court is the only hope for people like us."

"S Durga" was of the two films to be pulled out of a jury-selected list by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Ravi Jadhav's Marathi film "Nude" was the other film.

According to Kannan, Jadhav should have also gone to court.

"They made a mistake. It had to be screened here too. The jury unanimously chose the movies and it ('Nude') was supposed to be the opening movie. The right to freedom should be protected. That is the lesson we have learned from this episode. They (festival organisers) are making mistakes every year. I do not know why they are treating filmmakers like this."

Following the decision to exclude "S Durga" and "Nude" from the Indian Panorama line-up, the feature film jury head Sujoy Ghosh resigned. Subsequently, Apurva Asrani and Gyan Correa also put in their papers.

On the jury members' support, Kannan said: "The jury positively supported us because three of them resigned and six of them wrote an open letter to the I&B ministry. So out of a 13-member jury, nine people supported us."