Amid the ongoing impasse over technicians’ refusal to work under a film director, the West Bengal Motion Pictures Artists Forum on Sunday offered to mediate for ending the impasse.
Voicing apprehension that the boycott of the director by technicians and protests by other directors may snowball into a major crisis affecting shoots of films, serials, web series in Bengali film industry, forum president and veteran actor Ranjit Mallick and secretary Santilal Mukherjee requested all sides to sit for talks immediately and thrash out the differences.
“Any disruption of shooting will affect actors, directors, technicians, producers – every stakeholder in the industry – which will do not good. We therefore call upon every side to sit for talks for the interest of industry and iron out differences. If required the artist’s forum can mediate to resolve the issue. Let’s not allow the situation to snowball into a major crisis that will only affect everyone in the industry as well as the audiences,” the forum said.
The forum, the apex body of actors in the entertainment industry in Bengal, also stressed nothing should be done which will tantamount to showing its respect to anyone including directors.
On Saturday, despite the clean chit given to film maker Rahool Mukherjee by the Directors’ Guild allowing him to work as creative producer in an upcoming film, no technician turned up at a Kolkata studio on the first day of shooting of the movie produced by a big production house.
The development comes despite the Federation of Cine Technicians and Workers of Eastern India (FCTWEI) on July 26 clarifying that Mukherjee is free to work as a creative producer of the film but not as a director for three months.
Federation president Swarup Biswas 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.
“Neither the federation nor the Directors’ Guild was informed by Mukherjee about his visit to Bangladesh for shooting a film, which is against the rule,” he had said on Friday.
In fresh development after an urgent federation meeting on Saturday evening, Biswas told reporters that while it had been amicably decided earlier that Mukherjee would be the creative producer of the film to be shot from July 27, the call sheet given to them for the shoot referred to Mukherjee as the director and he was seen taking every initiative during the shoot as the de facto director.
“This was seen as violating the spirit of our agreement and we technicians don’t want to work under the instruction of Mukherjee who had not taken any technician from Kolkata to complete 10 days of shooting of another film ‘Lohu’ in Bangladesh. Mukherjee himself had admitted his mistake at the first meeting with the federation and guild earlier in July but now retracting,” Biswas said.
“We also don’t wish to stop work in Tollygunge studios as the livelihood of 7,000-8,000 technicians revolve around shootings for films, serials and web series. We had never failed in our commitment. But the fact remains that someone must not undertake shootings in a clandestine manner keeping the local technicians of his project in dark and hiring crew from outside the country,” another senior federation member said about the controversy revolving another film Lohu shot in Bangladesh creating all problem.
The Dhaka shoot which landed Mukherjee in trouble was related to another project financed by a different production house.
Meanwhile, the untitled film produced by SVF which was slated to start from July 27 starred Prosenjit Chatterjee, Anirban Bhattacharya and Priyanka Sarkar.
SVF which was behind the project had stated that Soumik Haldar would now direct the film while Mukherjee would be the creative producer.
Mukherjee said, “I only want to do the film I have been planning for months. Let all disputes be solved so that we can start work.”
