On posters and in promos for her new film, Guzaarish, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is seen smoking casually. Three days before the film releases, anti-tobacco activists have launched a protest, demanding that the film's makers remove those shots from publicity material.
Bollywood and Aishwarya, they say, influence young people. And in a country where 10 lakh people die every year from smoking-related diseases, stars and their directors need to be more responsible, they contend.
''We know that we are playing into the hands of the films producers by giving their film more publicity but our concern is public health,'' says Dr Pankaj Chaturvedi, an associate professor at the Tata Memorial Hospital.
But the contentious scenes from the film, directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali and co-starring Hrithik Roshan, have been on air for a month - and the last-minute protests are being questioned for being cunningly crafted for maximum publicity.
Anurag Kashyap, who directed the film No Smoking three years ago (it starred John Abraham) says public interest is not the motivating factor. ''During my film's release, No Smoking, the protestors shut up the moment I paid money.''
The government tried a few years ago to turn all films into no-smoking zones. But the industry argued that would amount to censorship and infringement of its creative license. So as a compromise, the Censor Board decided that scenes will be dropped if they glorify smoking.
Guzaarish has passed that test.
And the producers say they have no plans to alter their publicity material or the actual film.
Bollywood and Aishwarya, they say, influence young people. And in a country where 10 lakh people die every year from smoking-related diseases, stars and their directors need to be more responsible, they contend.
''We know that we are playing into the hands of the films producers by giving their film more publicity but our concern is public health,'' says Dr Pankaj Chaturvedi, an associate professor at the Tata Memorial Hospital.
But the contentious scenes from the film, directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali and co-starring Hrithik Roshan, have been on air for a month - and the last-minute protests are being questioned for being cunningly crafted for maximum publicity.
Anurag Kashyap, who directed the film No Smoking three years ago (it starred John Abraham) says public interest is not the motivating factor. ''During my film's release, No Smoking, the protestors shut up the moment I paid money.''
The government tried a few years ago to turn all films into no-smoking zones. But the industry argued that would amount to censorship and infringement of its creative license. So as a compromise, the Censor Board decided that scenes will be dropped if they glorify smoking.
Guzaarish has passed that test.
And the producers say they have no plans to alter their publicity material or the actual film.
Source - movies.ndtv
