Goan-origin Hollywood director Jazon Fernandez feels rural Goa could house a huge treasure of forgotten artifacts

PANAJI: Goan-origin, Hollywood film director Jazon Fernandez on a recent visit to Goa during the International Film Festival of India (IFFI), while speaking to media persons in Panaji claimed that remote parts of Goa could house a treasure trove of buried secrets including gold, silver and copper work and artifacts, some of which could date to the 10th or 12th centuries.

Fernandez who is associated with the Hollywood studio Apollonius Films was referring to remnants and precious items of buried old temples more than 800 years old, in interior Goan villages, long forgotten during the last 4-5 centuries and not documented or recorded at all.

He lamented that across the world, there is not much focus on authentic, research-based mythological cinema and bottom-lines and profits dictate the script and scope of films. “The focus is on wide and international appeal. A film should work in Britain, US, Australia, India, Malaysia, Dubai and several other places, only then Studios and investors are ready to put in money. They don’t want to fund niche films that appeal to a smaller audience,” Jazon opines.

Fernandez who is a vocal advocate of authentic, mythology-based cinema says Tamil and South Indian cinema has also had various mythological projects. Though mythological films played a prominent role in the early years of Tamil cinema, they slowly faded away, giving way to commercial family and socially relevant dramas, he said.

In the late 1950s and 1960s mythological films got a new lease of life in Tamil cinema with the films of legendary writer/director A P Nagarajan, called the Master of Mythological Cinema, Jason says, adding that superstar Rajinikanth’s Kochadaiiyaan was also one of the well-known projects.