Throwing light on Sandalwood issues on Rajkumar's 84th birthday

It's been six years since iconic Dr Rajkumar passed away. The Kannada film industry, which was largely depended upon his guidance and advice, has not recovered yet and could only do its bits to protect the best interest of the industry. On the late matinee idol's birthday, we would like to throw light on the two major issues faced by the Sandalwood.

Do we need dubbing?
The first and foremost threat that is fearing Sandalwood is dubbing, which was banned in 70s. The Sandalwood is divided over this issue. Despite facing opposition from the majority, a section of people have shown their desperate interest to dub other language movies in Kannada. While the debate continues, a few non-Kannada movies were released through the legal support last year. During the Raj days, the issue of dubbing never arose, as he was the leading man to oppose the culture to save the livelihood of our artistes.

Facing theatre crunch. Never ending issue?
For an industry, which produces over 125 films per year, the shortage of theatres have been a tough nut to crack. The state has 600 plus theatres and it faces stiff competition with other language films that get more number of screens than the native film. For an example, this week the Telugu film Dammu is expected to release in close to 150 cine halls, whereas the big star films in the recent times like Sarathi or Super managed to get just above 170 plus screens. What if big banner films from Bollywood, Tamil and English release simultaneously? Obviously, the local language will be ignored and we have witnessed many instances of it. This was not the case when Rajkumar was alive, as there were many rules and regulations for non-Kannada movies to follow like a non-Kannada film could release only after seven weeks in the state.

Though, these issues are not new, the intensity of these problems have doubled in the recent years. The first family of Sandalwood, which is doing charity programmes like eye donation and blood donation camps on the special day, hopefully takes up the Raj's position to save the industry from being invaded by other industries. Click here to see Rajkumar's rare photos.....