The question of whether screenplay can become a form of literature was addressed in the morning session of the second day of the Dhaka Lit Fest 2018. Noted playwrights including Saymon Zakaria, Altaf Shahnewaz, Mahbub Aziz and filmmaker Amitabh Reza Chowdhury took part in the discussion.
Aziz shed light on the different forms of the drama where he raised concerns against the ongoing casual practices of the television drama.
Amitabh emphasised on the form rather than the content. He said: "Screenplay is the base of a film where the narrative is cultivated. Screenwriter of an audio-visual production should write the screenplay keeping the form in mind. The cinema scenario has been changing continuously and we have to cope up with the medium by customizing the screenplay within the form."
Altaf discussed the origin Bangla theatre scripts as literature through the examples of Tagore, DL Ray, Dinbandhu Mitra's work. He said that since they were novelists the scripts they wrote had an obvious literary influence. Later Sayeed Ahmed, Salim Al Deen, Mamunur Rashid moulded themselves to this accepted platform.
He said: "I don't think that screenplay needs to follow the literary norms. However, it needs to create the image."
Zakaria brought up the example of 'Ekattorer Jishu' where Salim Al Deen wrote all the dialogues though the main screenwriter was the filmmaker Nasir Yousuf Bacchu himself. According to him screenplay can be a mixture of different artistic inputs and be an ideal literary form.
The interactive session was moderated by renowned actor Bonna Mirza.
