Feature

Shekorer Shondhaney @ BRACU

Iffat Jabin Tuni & Md. Raied Hasan

WATCHING movies is a common thread that connects us all. Some hit it with Hollywood and some with Bollywood. But how often do we think of catching up with a Bengali movie? Not much I must say! We tend to think that Bengali movies are very cheap, or when it comes to the good movies of yesteryears, we push that towards our parents. Well to be honest, we cannot be blamed totally for such negligence. How many students do you expect from universities to come watch Bengali movies dating back to the time of our parents. The answer is, you can get more than you are expecting. And that is what BRAC University Film Club proved. The Bangladeshi youth of today are believed to have a disliking for Bengali movies while they actually have no such apathy. It is that they do not get the opportunity to discover the true beauty of these movies.

To give them the opportunity BUFC organized a three day long movie festival named “Shekorer Shondhane” from 28th to 30th July. The sole motive of this event was to introduce the greatness and culture of our Bengali movies and to give them the opportunity to see and appreciate them. The movies that were shown included, Pather Panchali, Emiler Goenda Bahini on the first day, Meghe Dhaka Tara, Padma Nodir Majhi on the second day and the event was concluded with Tareque Masud's famous Matir Moyena on the third day. All of these movies were selected by selected faculty members, directors of the departments and also by our Vice Chancellor and Pro Vice Chancellor.

On the first day of the event, Vice Chancellor of BRAC University Professor Jamilur Reza Choudhury and Pro Vice Chancellor Dr. Salehuddin Ahmed along with other members of the governing body of the university were present at the inauguration of the event. Along with them, we also had guests from Dhaka University along with students from various private universities. Throughout the shows, we had audiences more than it was expected although some of the shows received more response than the others.

On the third day, we had Tareque Masud as our special guest for the concluding movie show. He gave talked about ours and foreign movie cultures. He said that a movie is something which is meant to be felt more than just understood and different people have different feelings and understanding for a same movie. And that is why different people will always give different opinions about the very same movie. These were some of the many words that he said during his hour long talk which of course received a huge response from the students. Later, after his session, the event was concluded by screening of his movie “Matir Moyena.”

When BUFC first brought up the idea of having this event, we had confusion whether we will be receiving enough response and cooperation from the students as this event was specially organized for them. But at the end of the day, our confusion was proved to be wrong and here we are writing about this very successful event. From the response of the audience and even from the faculty members, we became very sure that the wrong concept of Bengali movies among many youths has been finally removed and we can expect that many of them will enjoy the great movies of our culture again and again.

(Students of Computer Science and Engineering Department, BRAC University)