When B. R. Chopra made made clear demarcations between television and cinema

Mumbai, April 27 (IANS) An old video of the late filmmaker B. R. Chopra has resurfaced on the Internet, and it shows him chalking out the differences between the media of television and cinema.

The video has been shared by the Indian broadcaster, Prasar Bharati. In the video, the filmmaker said, “Television is a compact print. When we take a picture of someone, it is a small compact print. And a big screen is an enlarged print. That's why a big screen is called larger than life”.

He further mentioned that there is one more difference, and it is that television is a very intimate medium. It is a medium in which you can give a speech, you can give advice, you can go into the details of the story.

He shared, “In a film, you don't go into all the details. In a film, you actually cut out the details. You keep only what is essential. In a film like ‘Mahabharata’, which was made in 1993, which was made in 1923, you couldn't condense all the material and put it in a film. That's why this medium is an intimate medium, a conversational medium, where people can talk about themselves, they can say what they want to say, they can give advice. All the serials that are made, they have something to say”.

B. R. Chopra is one of the renowned filmmakers. He was the elder brother to Yash Chopra, who founded the Yash Raj Films. Yash Chopra worked with his brother in the latter’s production house when he migrated to Mumbai.

After making films, B. R. Chopra then switched to the medium of television, which was testing the waters at the time in India. He mounted the widely popular ‘Mahabharat’ series, which ran on India’s official broadcaster Doordarshan. The series was highly successful, and was re-run during the first lockdown in India to keep the people entertained as they stayed indoors in order to curb the spread of the contagion.

--IANS

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