Cashing In On Controversy

These days controversy about any film sets the cash registers jingling. Ask the distributors of Kamal Haasan‘s film Hey Ram in Calcutta and they will vouch for it.

Last week, as activists of the Chhatra Parishad, the students’ wing of the Congress, staged violent protests at three movie theatres in Calcutta, the queues grew longer at all the eight halls where the film is showing in the State. “The protestors did what months of publicity could not achieve,” says Biplab Sinha, manager of Vijay Lakshmi Movie Private Limited, distributors for the film in West Bengal, naturally not unhappily. “Since violent demonstrations started against the film, more people have come in to see what the film has,” he adds. Naturally, except for one hall in south Calcutta, no one showed any intention of withdrawing the film even though there was every likelihood of more attacks.