Stop judging films in camera

jury finally detected some cinematographic excellence in Subrata Mitra’s camera work for New Delhi Times in 1989. It was almost as though his entire body of work for James Ivory and Satyajit Ray (from Pather Panjali to Nayak) did not exist. And, guess who won the national best actor award in 1972 — M. G. Ramachandran.

Evidently the juries’ assessment has remained erratic and consistently so. What is new, however, is the emergence of a new clan of mainstream film-makers with tremendous lobbying clout, particularly in the case of feature films. Till about 10 years ago, the commercial film-maker viewed the awards with unconcealed derision and left these paltry cash prizes, scrolls, shawls and all to the shoe-string art film-maker.

Lately, they have woken up to the opportunities the awards offer in terms of access to global film circuits and TV channels. They have hit upon a magical formula that combines commercial considerations with dazzling hi-tech.

Unlike the mainstream film-makers of the past like Guru Dutt, who produced sensitive cinema, these whiz-kids hype up each frame with audio-visual special effects and come up with a string of slick 30-second commercials, packed into a full length film. Given the backing of the big banners and the pliability of the jury, these calculated efforts can easily edge out a prudently budgeted film made on state-of-the-art, cinematic lines. Our juries are not equipped to acknowledge, say, an Indian version of Wim Wenders or Kieslowski.

Not that the art film-makers never lobbied. There are umpteen insider accounts of how some of them won awards solely on the strength of pretension to high art and ideology. In the chaos of the Seventies and the Eighties, the genuine film-maker had the ghost of a chance. Today, he has none.

Look at the public money involved. More than Rs 12 lakh goes into the cash prizes for the feature and non-feature sections. Another lakh goes to the Dadasaheb Phalke award winner. The expenses on the jury, the awardees and the awards function would add up to a tidy sum. Perhaps, a small amount for the scamsters but big money for the citizen.

And he has the right to know what is going on. Year after year juries are constituted to assess feature and non-feature films and writing on cinema. The concerned government agencies complete this task in a hush-hush manner. As is true of all secretive bureaucratic operations, the set-up leaks like a sieve. Stories keep floating about on how strange names have crept in while the deserving ones are kept out. We end up with a trumped-up list of men and women who are called upon to course-correct the development of cinema in one of the major film-making centres of the world. There is little scope for public intervention in this backroom exercise. But when the juries eventually get down to the business of viewing films, some transparency is in order. It should be made mandatory to minute the proceedings of the jury in full. These minutes should be released as a public document when the awards are announced.

Let us know why a particular film is preferred; how an actor scores over the rest and why some films are screened only in parts. If the jury members have a film to promote or a bias to confess to, let them do so with a reason. They will also have to do some homework before stepping into the screening hall or the committee room. Over the years, this could have a salutary effect on the credibility of the jury itself. The backroom entrants will find it hard to cope with this effort.

We have today a shaky government that, according to its PM, would rather have a sparkling honeymoon with power than a dreary marriage. And Gujral has an I & B background. Jaipal Reddy, who swears by transparency, could for starters free the film jury deliberations from the Official Secrets Act.