My actors give me that little extra: Amol Palekar
At his restrained best, famed actor Amol Palekar said that actors put in extra efforts in his movies. "I find myself in a privileged position. Please observe the phase Marathi cinema is passing through. Due to its location, Marathi cinema has borne the brunt of Bollywood most directly. It gives me satisfaction that Marathi Cinema has come out of that struggle and there are many young filmmakers doing a fine job. I would like to compare this spearhead of meaningful Indian Cinema with the scenario in Bengal and Malayalam Cinema some years ago.
Amol Palekar's And Once Again was premiered at the IFFI. The industry veteran heaped praise on Sandhya Gokhale for providing him with rich stories and scripts which are multi-layered and allow nonlinearity in narration. "Whatever questions I feel like raising about myself and society, I raise through my films."
Amol recounted how Antara Mali kept on working even when she was down with viral fever and Rituparna travelling overnight from Kolkata to be present on the morning shooting when her flight was cancelled.
Rituparna Sengupta said she was charged to work with a director of Amol's stature. She said, "What kept me motivated was the emotional turbulence of the role and the fact that the movie was in English which has a universal audience."
Actor Rajat Kapoor, a noted director in his own right, said that as an actor, he likes to submit to the director completely as film is a director's medium and an actor's job is but a very small part of the director's vision.
