gaya bollywood is status quoist and as such it can not be expected to make any positive contribution to engineer change and raise the intellectual level of the cinegoers said pankaj bisht the well known litterateur and editor of the hindi literary journal samkaleen published from delhiintervening in a discussion on performing arts with special reference to theatre and cinema organised as part of the threeday celebrations to mark the establishment of renaissance the cultural centre established by the writer couple sanjay and durba pankaj alleged that besides being status quoists the bollywood was also timid and that is why it easily succumbed to pressure tactics employed by the state agencies and the selfappointed culture guardians of the country and for these reasons the protagonists of cultural nationalism found it convenient to establish rapport with the mumbai film industrymaking comparisons between bollywood and hollywood bisht said that hollywood too in a way stood for american imperialism but at the same time it did have people who can call a spade a spade and who have not mortgaged their conscience he made specific reference to loud voices of dissent against the ongoing war heard at the oscar award presentation ceremony a few days backpankaj bisht also ridiculed those who were engaged in producing what he called trash on the alibi of responding to popular taste the job of the film maker was not only to produce what found market acceptance it was also their duty to qualitatively change the tastes and preferences of common people he saidasghar wajahat story writer and dramatist of the umrao jaan fame regretted the failure of the parallel cinema experiment and cautioned against the indiscriminate commercialisation of the performing arts including the once sacred theatre asghar who presided over the discussion on performing arts said that the greatest threat to good cinema and meaningful theatre came from the commercialisation phenomenonfilm maker and international film festival jury member anwar jamal participating in the discussion asked the writers to read the wall writings and leave space for others including the actor director and cameramen visual presentation was a collective effort and each one of the players has its own importance a fact which should be acknowledged in the right spirit for the betterment of art and cultureanwar jamal also created some imaginary scenes to drive home his point on the imagemaking process and the importance of the surroundings in creating an image moreover technological changes have widened the scope of theatre as an effective mode of communication writer activist vidyanand sahay and researcher sadan jha also participated in the discussionandre gracius the australiabased jazz player performed a scintillating display of indojazz fusion a combination of jazz and indian classical music on wednesday night at the renaissance auditorium andre also played a special tune composed as a compliment to the renaissance couple sanjay sahay and durba sahay