Film students’ ordeal will be reflected in their films, says Mirza

Panaji: Revolutionary balladeer and dalit activist Sambhaji Bhagat said it is not guns and bombs that the state is afraid of but creative thoughts. “The state fears creative people you,” he told the students and ex students of FTII on Friday while singing in support of them during their evening of song, video screenings and talks ‘Celebrating Dissent’ held at Nossa Senhora de Piedade Institute.
Bhagat was the music composer for Chaitanya Tamhane’s ‘Court’ that was selected as India’s official entry to this year’s Oscars.
Prateek Vats, ex-student of FTII who gave up his national award in protest said the event was organized to “reclaim our right to dissent which is under attack. It is dissent that makes a democracy whole. They’ve tried to exclude us from Iffi and shut us up believing we’re tarnishing the image of the country by dissenting. It is infact they who are tarnishing its image by not allowing us to dissent.”
Vats spoke of the over twenty protesting students in Pune who have cases slapped on them and are expected to report to the police station every other day and can’t leave the state.
“It’s not about one government or ideology. It’s a question of credibility. There is an indirect and deliberate ploy that has been there for a long time, to control our spaces of culture,” an FTII student said.
Eminent human rights lawyer, Nandita Haksar, applauded the students for the creative methods they were using to make their voice heard. Institutions across the country she said were in danger. She advised the students to carry on their fight using their creativity, their best weapon.
Award winning documentary filmmaker Rakesh Sharma said fascism is not something the country could see in the future but is something that is present today.
Sharma called the 46th International Film Festival of India a “police controlled film festival”.
The state government received flak from the Shiv Sena and Communist Party of India (CPI) for imposing Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code in the capital city for the duration of the 46th edition of Iffi.
Vetern filmmaker and former FTII chairperson Saeed Mirza sympathized with the students saying they are going through an ordeal of fire.
“I believe this ordeal of theirs will make them of steel and this experience will be reflected in the kind of films they make. It is the same forces that didn’t agree with the Constitution that allows freedom of expression and equality of all religions, that have now emerged from the shadows into the sunlight. Don’t despair,” he told the students.
The event was attended by lawyers, members of the CPI, architects, artists, social activists, students, teachers including delegates from the ongoing Iffi.