Lessons learnt while making ‘Viduthalai’ made me a student of Marxism: Vetri Maaran

Film director Vetri Maaran discusses the impact of Marxism on his filmmaking process at a cultural event.

“The learnings and the experience gained through the process of filmmaking of my recent film ‘Viduthalai’ had me made a student of Marxism,” said film director Vetri Maaran at the cultural event conducted on the side lines of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)’s 24th congress here on Friday. 

The learning, he said, gave him a serious perspective that any social structure not built on the foundation of Marxism would go against the people.  

The homework which went for the film ‘Viduthalai’ for about two years introduced him to several leaders, books, people and locations that he had not come across in his 40 years of experience of filmmaking, he added.  

“An important lesson I learnt was that leaders are not those who are attractive but those who stand with the people through their struggles and fights to win their freedom. But the current scenario overshadows those people’s leaders,” he noted.  

Their austerity and courage were solely built on their ideology they follow, he said.  

On converting a novel or a short story into a film, he said: “I learnt necessities of the skill from my master Balu Mahendra with whom I worked for the series of short films he made for Kadhai Neram serial inspired from various short stories.” 

He recalled that Balu Mahendra taught him how to see a novel as just a story and structure without getting into the artistic part of it.