ftii searching for direction

HISTORY lives here. In these 21acres of Pune land, Prab h atStudio classics like Padosi andDuniya Na Maane were cre-ated, and Dev Anand got his first break.Under the arching mango tree, an ine-b r i ated Ritwik Ghatak spoke on direc-tion, and in the libra ry Mani Ka u ldevoured books on art. David Lean haslectured here and so has Sat yajit Ray.Even the local dhobi Tukaram, a fixturesince the 60s, insists he was named aftera Prab h at production. This is the Filmand Television Institute of India (FTII)a celebration of film art.

U n f o rt u n at e ly, since its inception,strikes have kept the institute in the newsalmost as much as its famous alumni.This winter, the rumblings of d i s s e n twere heard once again. The cause: re-cently implemented structural changesand a proposed fee hike. Starting this

ye a r, courses have been reduced fromthree ye a rs to two, and direction, themost coveted specialisation, has beenmade a post-diploma cours e. The an-nual tuition fee, currently Rs 2,500, willbe raised to Rs 3,750 next ye a r. T h e s estructural changes, it is alleged, will turnthe institute into a polytechnic churningout fodder for television. No less contro-versial has been the appointment of Ma-hesh Bhatt as chairman of t h egoverning council.

This Ja nu a ry, at the Intern at i o n a lFilm Festival of India (IFFI) held in Delhi,students from the institute organised aprotest, forcing the administration to setup a committee which will examine ther e i n s t atement of an effe c t ive directioncourse next year. But students fear thatthe FTII, perhaps the last bastion of alter-native cinema, is bowing down to mar-ket pressures; that Bhatt along withother council members, Yash Chopra, N.C h a n d ra and Anand Mahendroo, will

usher in Bolly wood-style commercial-ism; and that the F T I I is moving awayfrom its original mandate of nurturingan aesthetically more satisfying and re-alistically more acceptable cinema.

As the Indian entertainment indus-try explodes, the FTII is at a creative cross-roads. With liberalisation and dwindlinggovernment subsidies, the old rules nolonger apply. Already other governmentagencies dedicated to alternative cinemah ave changed tracks: in 1992 the Na-tional Film Development Corp o rat i o nbecame a profit-making ve n t u r e, c o n-centrating on television. The Films Divi-sion, beset by budget constra i n t s ,produced only 94 films last year as op-posed to 181 films in 1990. And IFFI maygo in for private sponsorship.

O ver the ye a rs, the F T I I has con-tributed to all streams of Indian cinema.In the fi rst 10 ye a rs of its existence itself,the institute produced such stalwa rts asMani Kaul, Kumar Shahani, K.K. Maha-

jan, Adoor Gopalakrishnan and JayaBhaduri Bachchan. The quality of I n-dian cinema has improved because of t h ei n s t i t u t e, says Gopalakrishnan. TheN ational Awards are almost an F T I I r e-union. But over the past decade, fe we ralumni have managed to make a mark.C u rr e n t ly, the institute has an annu a lb u d get of Rs 10 crore and is spending ap-p r ox i m at e ly Rs 3.5 lakh per student an-nu a l ly. Yet F T I I diploma films are winningfe wer awards than before. This ye a r, nonemade it to the competitive section of t h eMumbai Intern ational Film Fe s t iva l .S ays P.K. Nair, one of the earliest profe s-s o rs at the institute: There is somethingra d i c a l ly wrong somewhere and we needa dra m atic change.

One such change has been Bhat t sappointment. Bhatt, successor to a lineo f a l t e rn at ive fi l m m a ke rs S hya mBenegal, Mrinal Sen, Gopalakrishnanbrings with him a market-oriented ap-proach to filmmaking and, naturally, thep a rallel purists are aghast. Say sGopalakrishnan: A Bombay wa l l a hwith the wrong ideas can kill the insti-tute. Bhatt for his part, wants to changethe mind-set of the institute. A rt i s t scannot be produced on an assemblyline, he says. Institutes can polish peb-bles and dim diamonds. Therefore thepriority must be to select the right peo-ple. You can choose to be either a Sub-hash Ghai or a Shyam Benegal, but youmust produce results.

Bhatt is yet to introduce any concretechanges but there is talk of internships,

an annual convocation and a line-up ofsome unlike ly guest lecturers: ShahRukh Khan, Naseeru ddin Shah andA nupam Kher. Though both staff a n dstudents seem wary of the intrusion byBollywood, Bhatt may actually succeedin implementing a recurrent recom-mendation of several government com-mittees: more interaction between theinstitute and the industry, somethingcommon in the US, where major studiosmaintain a strong presence at leadingfilm schools in New York and Los Ange-les. Says celebrated Polish fi l m m a ke rK r z y s z t o f Z a nussi, who held a 10-dayworkshop at the institute two years ago:There must be a bridge between the stu-dents and the industry.

THE s t ru c t u ral changes have at-t racted the most flak. Staff a n dstudents are divided over theshortening of courses and the removalof the diploma course in direction. Thei n s t i t u t e s current director, Jo h nShankaramangalam, and ex-governingcouncil head Gopalakrishnan, who to-gether engineered the shortening ofcourses, argue that students waste toomuch time. The students must be putthrough a drill, says Gopalakrishnan.A lot of people seem to find the shadeunder the wisdom tree more conduciveto creativity, but contemplation should

be a post-diploma course. The studentsare not convinced. Says Amit Ku m a r,president of the FTII Students Associa-tion: The attitude is Come, learn, go.We will have no time to develop, experi-ment, introspect.

Direction has long been a problem-atic area. As far back as 1980, an I&BMinistry report on the National Film Pol-icy had observed that direction studentshave had to face a more difficult time.Today the satellite invasion has created aplethora of jobs in television, but paral-lel cinema is increasingly hard to marketand fund. Students armed with a direc-tion diploma and a strong sensibility fornon-mainstream cinema dont get thes u p p o rt they need.Curr e n t ly, only onestudent is doing the post-diploma direc-tion course. This is not practical, ad-mits Shankara m a n galam, So there isnow a committee which will structure adiploma course in direction.

These changes are significant, ye tsuperficial. The FTII seems to suffer froma deeper malaise. Despite access toworld-class cinema at the nearby Na-tional Film Archives and various techni-cal facilities, the atmosphere lacksvitality. Students complain of an intel-lectual vacuum and the faculty of 80 percent absenteeism in some classes. SaysZanussi: I didnt see many of the stu-dents having a clear vision of what they

S P E C I A L F E AT U R E

FILM AND TELEVISION INSTITUTE OF INDIA

Searching for DirectionIts not just market pressures and structural changes. FTII is beset with a whole lot of problems.

By ANUPAMA CHANDRA

FTII students on campus: disenchanted

A Bombay wa l l a hh aving the wro n gideas can kill the

i n s t i t u t e . ADOOR GOPALAKRISHNAN,

Ex-head, Governing Council

Photographs by ASHESH SHAH

Absenteeism is ra m p a n t :sometimes up to 80 per cent ofthe class is missing. Students saythat the lectures are boring; butthe faculty say students are look-ing for scapegoats.

C u rr e n t ly 10 of t h e30 teaching posts in thefilm wing are va c a n t .Three camera fa c u l t yh ave left in the last fe wmonths itself. Skyrocket-ing television salariesmake it even harder to at-t ract trained pers o n n e las teachers.

Most of the teachers are insti-tute gra d u ates. There are com-plaints that seve ral staffm e m b e rs have become insularand that their methods are out-d ated. For ex a m p l e, the head ofthe direction department is yet tomake a feature film.

There is little interaction withthe industry. Neither is there as y s t e m atic follow-up of ex - s t u-dents, nor does the institute havea placement office.

Despite the annual ex p e n d i-ture of Rs 3.5 lakh per student,unfortunately, FTII films are win-ning fe wer awards than before.And this year, no FTII film was ableto make it to the competitive sec-tion at the Mumbai InternationalFilm Festival.

WHAT AILS THE INSTITUTE

SHANKAR

K h a m o s h i: The jerk between leav i n gthe institute and entering the world out-side is ve ry difficult. Its easy to be heardat the institute, but finding your ow nvoice outside takes ye a rs .

THESE days this voice is increas-ingly being heard on television.Recent gra d u ates can be foundin software sweatshops like Crest andPlus Channel or television channelslike Channel V and Dalal Street Jour-nal. Only a few have managed to breakinto films: Rajat Kapoor is making Pri -vate Detective with Naseeruddin Shah,Pankaj Advani made S u n d ay, Pa r e s hKamdars Tunnu ki Tina was recently re-leased and sound recordist NamitaN ayak won both the Filmfare andScreen audiography awards for 1942:

A Love Story. Most of the gra d u at e s ,h owe ve r, are freelance technicians.Sankalp Meshram, an editing studentof the 1993 batch, says that he is theo n ly one in his batch with a fe at u r efilmArun Khopkars Katha Don Gan -p a t ra m chi. Film work is limited, hesays, and difficult to break into. Thebread and butter for most people is tele-vision. We wait for good work but untilthat happens we do bad work on televi-sion and eventually get consumed.

Of course, the money is hard to re-sist. With just a few months of experi-ence, editors with one serial can makeup to Rs 23,000 a month and soundstudents ap p r ox i m at e ly Rs 1,800 perd ay. For film assistants, in compari-son,the rewards are far lessRs 4,000to Rs 6,000 a month. Says Meshram:We enter the institute with a certainidealism. Our aesthetics are toward al-ternative images, but most of us comeout and become professionals with nopolitics. This will lead to mediocritycontinuing in films. Television is gob-bling up all the new talent.

The F T I I must structure an ade-q u ate response. Says Ashish Ra j a d-hyaksha, co-author of the E n cy -clopaedia of Indian Cinema: Any coun-try depends upon its intellectuals. It isvitally important to maintain an exper-imental cinema for both the main-stream and the larger cultural context.It must be a research and developmentcentre for cinema in the country. In-dian cinema, suffering from a paucityof spirit, requires a jump-start, and theFTII can once again play a crucial role.Pe r h aps, then, cartoonist R.K. Lax-mans advice to the graduating class of1976to make good films that makegood moneywill become a reality. n

S P E C I A L F E AT U R E

You can choose to beeither a Ghai or a

Benegal but you mustgive results.MAHESH BHATT

Chairman, Governing Council

Students learn direction: fo dder for TV?

ASHESH SHAH

PRASHANT PANJIAR