Cuckoo Parameswaran remarked the actress assault case doesn't concern IFFK.
She asked to demarcate films beyond political currency.
Her comments aren't at all reflective of the ethos the film festival has long championed.
Kerala State Chalachithra Academy Vice Chairperson Cuckoo Parameswaran referred to the actress assault case and the furor over the verdict as something that happened between two individuals whose profession is cinema. She said the crime that rocked the Malayalam film industry has no import to the International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK).
Parameswaran spoke to Onmanorama on the sidelines of the 30th IFFK. She drummed up peculiar analogies. “If it happens between two doctors, do hospitals shut down?” she asked. Cuckoo added that the crime had been committed by six convicted individuals and that their arrest and conviction should bring “relief” to the industry. “IFFK is not affected by this. IFFK understands the situation. If such an injustice happens here, we will act very strongly,” she reiterated. Parameswaran’s statements are a damning rebuttal of the spirit IFFK has honed for years. It’s arguably the only government-run film festival in the country that has always actively engaged with politics and major global crises.
When Onmanorama asked about the opening film Palestine 36, Parameswaran came on the defensive, leaping to neatly distinguish between cinema and politics. "Why do you want to see politics in everything. Why can't films be seen as just films?” she insisted with near-annoyance. In this edition, IFFK has an entire devoted section to Palestine titled “From Under The Olive Tree”.
In 2022, the survivor of a sexual assault was invited as the chief guest at the festival’s opening ceremony. Iranian filmmaker Mahnaz Mohammadi once sent locks of her hair to Kerala, which were displayed at the IFFK's inaugural venue as mark of her protest to the stringent hijab laws in Iran. When IFFK introduced the Spirit of Cinema award, Lisa Calan, a Kurdish filmmaker who lost both her legs in an ISIS bombing, was honoured at the inaugural function. Once the programming team of the festival had to communicate with an intermediary while sourcing a Myanmar film for the festival after the producer and the director of the film were forced into hiding following a military coup in Myanmar.
