When was the last time you saw a Tamil film for kids?

Meher Khanna - Televisionpoint.com Correspondent | Chennai
It has been a long time since the Regional Censor Board in Chennai certified officially a film as a Children's Film. The last film to be certified in this category was Vannathupoochi, which is yet to be released. It's a pity no film has qualified for this certificate for a long time now.

Today, Kollywood producers and directors say that family audiences include children and they are regularly making such films which have a 'U' certificate. Tamil cinema's top comedian Vadivel claims that nearly 70 per cent of his audiences are children in the age group of 5 to 15 years.

The other comedy king, Vivek, who interviewed former President Abdul Kalam on a satellite channel last month too proudly claims, "children form the bulk of my viewers".

The bitter truth is that the crude, crass comedy of our super comedians, is not fit for children because they are full of double entendres and vulgar jokes. There have been frequent children film festivals in Tamil Nadu towns, but most of them were government sponsored or conducted by children film society.

These workshops were aimed at familiarising children with the basic aspects of film-making and help them to develop a taste for good cinema. But children in rural areas are hooked to mass commercial masala movies and their heroes are the Tamil action heroes, not exactly the best role models because of the kind of movies they act in.

However one of the best short children's film made recently in Tamil was by Agaram Foundation, an NGO formed by actor Surya, who is trying to promote the role of education in society. In its attempt to create awareness about school dropouts, they made a short film, Herovaa Zerovaa (Hero or Zero?) directed by Kanda Naal Muthal fame Priya.

The message of the film is 'only the educated are the heroes'. The short promotional film was packaged as an entertainer and featured Vijay, Surya, Madhavan and Jyothika, who join together to spread the message.

Many years back, Mani Ratnam used to make meaningful children's film with nice messages like Anjali and Kannathil Muthamittal. But, since then, television had weaned away the young audiences.

Reality show is the latest craze among children in Tamil television. Every channel you surf contains reality shows based on music, dance and game shows. The alarming thing about these shows is even small children in the 5 to 10 years age group are now participating in them and behave like grown up people.

And today parents are also encouraging their children to take part for monetary gain. Meanwhile, let us hope a film like Vannathupoochi is released and shown in commercial cinema theatres. The film reportedly has an absorbing storyline that talks about the huge generation gap between today's gen next and old people because of fastpaced technological advancements.