Actor Adil Hussain at the news conference in Jorhat on Wednesday. Picture by UB Photos

Jorhat, Oct. 22: Actor Adil Hussain today made a plea for public-private partnership in Assamese film production in a bid to increase audience numbers.

“The government should set up mini-cinema halls with a capacity of about 100-150 seats in each block and persuade the audience to watch Assamese films. With innumerable TV channels to watch, very few people from the suburbs take the pain to come out and watch films in theatres in the towns,” he told reporters here today.

Hussain, who has acted in the Hollywood blockbuster Life of Pi, watched Srinkhal, an Assamese film in which he has starred, at Eleye cinema hall this evening.

Hussain was here along with Srinkhal director Prabin Hazarika and producer Partha Pratim Bora to promote the film in which he has acted along with Jaya Seal Ghosh and others.

On learning that Assam had only 22 active halls, he said nothing could be more shameful. “Bengal has at least 100-150 halls. How can you expect returns when there are only 22 halls to run a film and expect a wider audience?” he asked.

Highlighting the poor investment in Assamese films as one of the main reasons why they were no longer being made in greater numbers, Hussain said for a producer to invest capital, he would need to know that he would get returns and make a small profit. But more often than not the film flops, producers shy away from investing leaving the industry in a shambles, he added.

“The investment was so low that we cannot make 22 prints. That is why the prints were made for seven halls and those prints will be sent to other halls and maybe shown again in the same hall,” he said. Hussain said there were lots of good stories written here and he was trying to push these stories abroad in places like Norway, where people had shown interest in Assam and the people wanted to make movies based on the stories.

Prabin Hazarika said another factor for the lack of an audience for Assamese films was that despite some very good films being made in the past couple of years, a large number of films were substandard — made by people who did not know much about filmmaking — and these betrayed the expectations of the people who now no longer evinced any interest in watching Assamese films.

Film critics Jayanta Madhav Dutta and Pranjal Bora, members of Assam Film Society and Samiron Bardoloi, member of Jyoti Cine Club, called for raising the standard of Assamese films. They also advocated wider publicity of films like Shrinkhal, which portrays the struggle of a widow, and was released across the state on October 17 and had been well received by audiences.

On the sidelines of the news conference, Hussain said his next Bollywood release would be Zed Plus, a political satire directed by Chanakya serial director Chandraprakash Dwivedi, in which he plays the lead. The film will release on November 21.