Searching for a script

Look at the cinematographers from the nineties 8212; Santosh Thundiyil Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Rajiv Ravi Chandni Bar, Ramachandra Girish Kasaravalli8217;s Tai Saheba and Fauzia Fatima Mitr. Among the few directors that FTII has produced is Sanjay Leela Bhansali, who has films like Khamoshi and Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam to his credit. He has hired mostly FTII graduates as assistants on his films, the latest being cinematographer Binod Pradhan for Devdas. He swears by the institute training and himself conducts workshops here.

But director Mahesh Bhatt, who was chairman of the FTII8217;s governing council in the 8217;90s, says Bhansali, Subhash Ghai and David Dhawan are merely exceptions. A vocal section of the industry says the institute produces film critics rather than filmmakers. 8216;8216;If the government has decided to set up an institute to create filmmakers, it should decide who a 8216;quality8217; filmmaker is. The I038;B ministry has to decide if it wants to create alternative filmmakers or students who make cinema for the common man who funds FTII.8221;

Agrees Bandit Queen producer Bobby Bedi, a former member of the academic council and governing council: 8216;8216;There8217;s such strong resistance to change. FTII is stagnating.8217;8217;

Mohan Agashe, who has just left the director8217;s post after a tempestuous five-year reign, calls for a fundamental rethink on FTII. 8216;8216;Rules and objectives of FTII were for an earlier epoch and eminently valid for the 8217;70s. I8217;ve been director for five years and have witnessed closely the unedifying events surrounding FTII8217;s working,8217;8217; he wrote to I038;B minister Sushma Swaraj after resigning on March 13.

The 8216;8216;fundamental rethink8217;8217; Agashe never tires of mentioning has often led to provocative questions about FTII8217;s identity as a film school. Does stagnation mean keeping Griffith and Eisenstein, Bergman and Tarkovsky, Bunuel and Bresson, Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak intact in the textbooks? One reason behind the last 45-day student revolt was Syllabus 2000 8212; short on film theory and with only three screenings of classics a week instead of 14.

Former faculty member and ex-student A S Kanal, an advocate of student-centric curriculum, says, 8220;The students want more than what is being offered. The problem appears to be academic administration rather than curriculum design.8217;8217; The linear academic programme that the institute follows is unable to offer the flexibility that the students are looking for.

Kanal calls for courses that give students the option between specialisation and a multi-skilled diploma; a credit-based system in which students can pace academic growth at individual levels.

In 1996, when Adoor Gopalakrishnan was chairman of the governing council, the courses were restructured and new courses like Scene Design and Production introduced. Direction became a post-diploma course. But following protests, the institute reverted to the old system within a year and the new courses were dropped.

That year, in a letter to the I038;B ministry, Gopalakrishnan called for revival of Direction as a course: 8220;The direction department has been the weakest in FTII since 1961. In the last three-and-a-half decades, it has produced hardly a dozen filmmakers of note more than 200 have been trained for sure. And those who are employed in the profession don8217;t make up for more than 25 per cent.8221;

Is the near-absence of filmmakers among the 29 faculty members just as responsible for the decline? Cinematography lecturer Sabu James says bringing in filmmakers is hardly a solution. 8216;8216;Good filmmakers may not be good teachers and vice versa,8217;8217; he points out.

The workshops round the year, often attended by luminaries of world cinema, fill this vacuum to a large extent. Among a staff of 348, there are only 29 faculty members today against 52 teaching posts. For 15 years at the FTII, Iftekar Ahmed, Dean TV, has watched his peers leave one by one. Today, with a lopsided faculty 8212; no staff in video editing and set design but seven in TV engineering and one in camera 8212; he is struggling 8216;8216;not to compromise on teaching8217;8217;.

8216;8216;Not only TV concepts, but equipment has changed. Today, the industry will give a four-fold salary hike to multi-skilled professionals. FTII can train that way but we need the faculty,8217;8217; says Ahmed. Agashe accepts that this is partly to blame for the inertia on the campus.

And this inertia is visible in other areas as well. Next to the sound engineering department at FTII is a three-storeyed block, always under lock and key. Inside is a state-of-the-art sound recording studio worth more than Rs 4 crore, with two huge halls with special ceilings, wooden floors and cabins for musicians. The keys are still with the AIR construction wing.

In the old studio, there stands a Rs 1.5-crore Harrison digital mixer, sharing space with equipment purchased four years ago. For a year this too was under wraps, awaiting installation at the new studio. Now it lies unmounted. The official version is that the Prasar Bharati is yet to give a completion certificate.

There are stories galore about the bureaucratic ways of the institution. A department wanted to buy an old gramophone from a hawker near the FTII gate. The deal never took off because someone mentioned tenders. When Anurag Kashyap, who has scripted Satya, Kaun and Shool, arrived with 20 DVDs for his direction workshop, he had to wait till a screening committee cleared the films!

Is a dose of privatisation the answer then? Or an infusion of private funds? If the K P Geethakrishnan Committee appointed by the government to probe the running of I038;B media units said outright that FTII should pay for itself, a glance at the annual I038;B grants since the 8217;90s shows a plunge from Rs 11 crore to less than Rs 8 crore. The course fee has gone up from Rs 2,500 in 1997 to over Rs 20,000 for the 2002 batch. The institute raised about Rs 35 lakh last year by renting out its studios to producers.

Gopalakrishnan will have none of it. 8216;8216;How can you ask an institute to generate revenue? An institute should be a place for training and the government should run it,8217;8217; he says. 8216;8216;If you believe that education has any meaning, this question should not be raised,8217;8217; says Kanal. Suresh Chhabria, professor, film appreciation, stresses, 8216;8216;It8217;s the government8217;s privilege to fund educational and cultural institutions.8217;8217;

Sabu James wonders why the government cannot shell out some of the entertainment tax it collects from the film industry on institutions like FTII. Counters Agashe: 8216;8216;The FTII is not capable of utilising given funds in the allotted period.8217;8217; From the IXth plan provision of Rs 27 crore, only Rs 15 crore was utilised. Last year Rs 1.25 crore from Rs 5 crore was surrendered to the I038;B ministry.

The FTII is today settling down to a relatively peaceful existence after a turbulent interlude. But the problems fester and can8217;t be wished away, if only for the sake of Indian cinema.