Kolkata, Jul 29 (PTI) Lashing out at a section of producers-directors for ceasing work at the Tollygunge film industry in Kolkata “without notice” which brought all scheduled shoots to a halt on Monday, the federation of cine technicians called the move a “conspiracy”.
The federation declared that it would finalise its next move on the ongoing impasse based on feedback from its members through means of a signature campaign. The announcement followed the call for an urgent need for review and arbitration of existing “rules” in the Bengali film industry which senior fraternity members deemed as a “stranglehold” of imposed norms leading to a “significant decline in investment” in the regional showbiz sector over the past decade.
The opinion was voiced earlier in the day by a section of producers, directors and senior actors who huddled at the residence of superstar Prasenjit Chatterjee, as filmmaking at the Tollygunge studio enclave came to a standstill amid the impasse over technicians’ refusal to work under a young director for a project.
“We are ready for talks on the issue. But why should work in the industry be unilaterally stopped at the whim and fancy of a handful of directors? This is a pre-planned conspiracy,” said Swarup Biswas, president, Federation of Cine Technicians and Workers of Eastern India.
There was a joint meeting between the federation and the director’s guild on May 5 where it was mutually agreed that the director in question, Rahool Mukherjee, would work in the said project as a creative producer while Soumik Halder would direct the film, said Sujit Kumar Hazra, federation joint secretary.
“However, when we received the call sheet for the shoot on July 26, we found that Mukherjee had been designated as the film’s director. That was a violation of the agreement,” he said.
“The Director’s Guild was represented in the meeting by president Subrata Sen and secretary Sudeshna Roy. Both were signatories to the minutes of the meeting. For reasons beyond our comprehension, they have now taken a U-turn and chosen to call this decision unfair,” Hazra said.
Meanwhile, urging both sides to sink differences, the Eastern India Motion Pictures Association (EIMPA) said in a statement that the situation has turned very disturbing and depressing.
“We want work to resume at the earliest for the interest of everyone in the industry. And it is our sincere wish that long-standing relationships of the industry are maintained as before,” the apex body of film producers, distributors and cinema hall owners said.
In a signed statement, EIMPA president Piya Sengupta, stated that the film industry welfare organisation will stand by its stakeholders.
The deadlock was created after technicians walked out of the studio floor of an unnamed project of filmmaker Rahool Mukherjee on the first day of shoot on July 27, standing their ground to boycott the director, alleging that he “violated shooting norms”.
Earlier, federation president Swarup Biswas had said Mukherjee was being debarred from directing films for three months for violating norms by visiting Bangladesh for shooting another movie, without intimation to the federation and taking the help of technicians in Dhaka.
“Technicians didn’t want to work under the instructions of Mukherjee, who had not taken any crew from Kolkata to complete 10 days of shooting of OTT film ‘Lohu’ in Bangladesh earlier this year,” Biswas had said.
Hazra explained that the Mukherjee’s act meant a violation of a MoU that was signed between the federation and EIMPA.
“The OTT film was an EIMPA-registered project and Mukherjee should have abided by its norms,” he said.
The impasse, which began last Saturday, has now stretched for two more days, splitting the fraternity into two with a section of producers, directors and actors choosing to express solidarity with the “outcast” director, and deciding to go for an indefinite cease work on shooting floors from Monday “till the problem is addressed in an amicable manner”.
On Monday, following the appeal from the directors to soften their stand, Biswas said the federation was still sticking to its position of not working with Mukherjee since “there has been no further communication from the Director’s Guild over the filmmaker’s locus standi vis a vis the project in question.” “This is not a clash between directors and technicians because our interests are the same. However, we have been bound by the stranglehold of an arbitrary set of rules, formed by people over the years that are not only insulting to our creative personae, but have also led to a sharp decline in investments in the industry over the past decade or so,” said director Indranil Roychowdhury, following the meet at Chatterjee’s residence earlier in the day.
Filmmaker Goutam Ghose echoed Roychowdhury’s sentiments and said there was a need to review whether the move against Mukherjee by the technicians could at all be justified under law.
Stating that it is “high time” an amicable solution is reached across the table, Chatterjee highlighted the current imbroglio is a result of “hurt sentiments” suffered by directors that have compounded over a long time.
Director Shibaprasad Mukhopadhyay expressed hope that the impasse would end and work would resume from Tuesday.
“Let’s all sacrifice our egos from our respective ends,” director Raj Chakraborty said. PTI SUS/SMY RBT NN
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