It's my responsibility to promote my region through my films: Director Nitin Chandra

At a recent interaction, National Award-winning filmmaker Nitin Chandra described his work as a medium to promote local language, culture and literature. The Bihar-based director, who is known for films like Deswa and Mithila Makhaan said, “I always wanted to promote local culture, language and literature of my region through the films similarly, the way other filmmakers are doing in other states of the country to promote their local elements. That’s the reason I started making films and for that, I received the National film award. I am the only filmmaker from Bihar who won National film award by making a film in the local language of Bihar, in Bihar and that too with local people.”

Championing films as the biggest medium of cultural representation, Nitin said, “I felt that I can take the responsibility to promote my region through films because I feel cinema is the biggest form of cultural representation. Today, when we talk about Tamil Nadu then people remember Rajinikanth or if we talk about West Bengal then, people talk about Satyajit Ray and vice versa. Therefore, we started a YouTube Channel called ‘Bejod’ and now, that channel is being appreciated by the audience.  We have hardly created 40-50 videos for that but we have around 50-55 thousand subscribers and around one crore views.”

Nitin Chandra believes that if good content and movies are created in a particular language, it helps to propagate a positive image of people from that region. He said, “Singers like Sonu Nigam, Shreya Ghoshal, Sunidhi Chauhan, Mika Singh, Hariharan, Suresh Wadkar and Swanand Kirkire have sung songs in Bhojpuri and Maithili language for our channel. I feel when such popular singers sing for your channel then people who speak those languages connect with your content and non-bihari or people from other regions also watch that content and say that people are doing really good work so that also helps to create a good image of people from Bihar or Uttar Pradesh.”

He urged Bollywood filmmakers to make movies in regional languages. “Celebrated filmmakers Prakash Jha and Anurag Kashyap hail from Bhojpuri-speaking areas and yet they are not making cinema in Bhojpuri language despite seeing its miserable condition," Nitin said. "I feel they can still save Bhojpuri cinema. Filmmakers from south, Marathi, Punjabi and Bangla region have concentrated on their own cinema, creating a respectful identity and livelihood for local people."