The Karnataka Film Chamber of Commerce( KFCC) have come strongly to protect the rights of their local Kannada films. When they observed that the distributors of Bollywood film ‘Kites’ had violated the existing rule of releasing the film in Karnataka, they have imposed a ban on the film’s release. As a result, ‘Kites’ will not be released in Karanataka this week .

It is understood that ‘Kites’ was being released in 46 screens in the city of Bangalore and south Karnataka alone against the limit of 21 screens. This had resulted in the blockage of other south Indian films including Kannada films due for release , for want of theatres. In the entire state the distributors of ‘Kites’ had planned to release their film in 90 theatres against the limit of 24 imposed by KFCC.

It has been observed that in the recent past, some big banner Bollywood film distributors have been releasing their films with maximum number of prints blocking almost all the theatres, so as to make profits during the first week. But, ‘Kites’ had surpassed all the records and hence this intervention by KFCC. No one has come forward to oppose the move of KFCC, as it was in the interest of promoting south Indian films including Kannada films in their state. KFCC stated that those theatre owners defying the ban, will not be allowed to release any regional film henceforth.

Can our Marathi Chitrapat Mahamandal and our Maharashtra Government take a lesson from Karnataka ? How can we promote our own Marathi films, if the Big banners play this game of blocking theatres ? Recently, even actor Kamal Hasan blamed our state for not encouraging Marathi films, the way all south Indian states encourage their regional language films. Availability of theatres is the main concern of all Marathi film distributors, though they already have the audience now responding well to Marathi films.