Blow for film fest: BBC’s no to charity

The film festival on Mother Teresa organised by the Archdiocese of Kolkata to celebrate her beatification has received a fresh jolt with the...

The film festival on Mother Teresa organised by the Archdiocese of Kolkata to celebrate her beatification has received a fresh jolt with the BBC refusing to screen the first-ever documentary on her by Malcolm Muggeridge, without a fee.

In reply to festival authorities’ request for permission to screen Something beautiful for God, BBC licensing officer Clair Geddes wrote on August 4 that permission could be given, but ‘‘licence fee to cover the screening will be £ 250 plus any technical costs’’.

Subsequently, authorities e-mailed an appeal to BBC director general Greg Dyke seeking his intervention for fee waiver. The BBC replied the same day that it was unable to supply programmes or films for free. ‘‘We are shocked at the BBC’s decision. This is a non-commercial, homage festival and no other producer or director has asked for fees. It is sad the first-ever film on Mother Teresa, made 34 years ago, should be so forbidding,’’ Archbishop of Kolkata Lucas Sircar, also chairman of the festival committee, said.

Earlier, festival authorities had to drop Hell’s Angel, a controversial documentary by Christopher Hitchens, following protests from Missionaries of Charity, Bishop Salvadore Lobo who conducted the diocesan inquiry into the cause of Mother’s sainthood and a number of her friends and admirers.