Information and Broadcasting Minister Manish Tewari, yesterday addressed the star studded inaugural function of 44th International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Panaji, Goa.
Tewari said that Film Festivals reinforce the values of pluralism, diversity, democracy, freedom of thought and expression and the ability to challenge the conventional. He emphasized that organizing such festivals underscores and reiterates the core values that define the very idea of India.
He further said that, it wass intriguing him as to why was the Government of India is in the business of organizing film festivals and that too not once but 44 times repeatedly if not consecutively. After all, the Indian film industry had grown in spite and despite of successive Governments. It rightly resents the probing obtrusiveness of officialdom.
‘After thinking hard and deep, I concluded that in organizing the film festivals, and we are doing three different festivals in this year alone what we really underscore and reiterate, are the core values that define the very idea of India,’ he opined.
What we really seek to reinforce are the values of pluralism, diversity, democracy, freedom of thought and expression and the ability to challenge the conventional that the founding fathers of the modern Indian state strived, struggled and stood for, he added.
The 20th Century was witness to horrendous trials and tribulations. A Century that saw the human mind elevating death and destruction to an industrial scale by using chemical, biological and nuclear science for weapons of mass destruction. The first decade of the twenty first century has been no better with these and other instruments of death and destruction being honed to an efficiency that makes even ruthlessness blush with envy, he added.
However all throughout this train of tragedy cinema performed a yeoman role in celebrating the indestructibility and immortality of the human spirit. It provided soup to the soul and kinship to the kindred, Tewari added. (UNI)
