Gulzar to bring Munshi Premchand alive - The Times of India:

"MUMBAI: For poet, lyricist and film veteran Gulzar, life and literature are inextricably linked.

He has now decided to adapt Munshi Premchand's stories for TV, and the decision coincides with the passing away of literary doyen Bhisham Sahni whose Tamas was serialised with haunting effect for the small screen.

Gulzar speaks on what Sahni's death would mean and also about how cinema could carry the literary legacy forward.
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Q: It's believed that audiences don't want to watch literary works?

A: It's up to the filmmaker to make the work interesting enough for the audience. If a child insists on eating noodles for every meal, do you stop serving him daal and chawal?

Every medium of art has its own criteria for success. When I was offered the chance to do a literary adaptation on television, I was all for it. I was first asked to adapt Rabindranath Tagore's stories on Doordarshan. Then I was told to do Premchand instead and let a Bengali director do Tagore. I wonder why we need to restrict literature in this way? Didn't Satyajit Ray do Premchand's stories in Shatranj Ke Khiladi and Sadgati?

I agreed to do Premchand on the condition that I would get to film Tagore's narrative poems subsequently. I want to prove Bengalis are not the sole custodians of Bengali literature.

It took over two years for the project to concretise. I feel serious-minded filmmakers like Mrinal Sen, Adoor Gopalkrishnan, Gautam Ghose, Amol Palekar and Shyam Benegal should take literature to television as a collective movement."
posted by v9y at 10:53 AM