Why the merger of film bodies with NFDC has the film fraternity worried

In 2011, film researcher Ramesh Kumar got a chance to interview Suresh Chabria, former director of National Film Archive of India (NFAI). When Kumar asked if Chabria would have considered archiving works featuring Hindi film actor Govinda at the NFAI during his tenure, the answer was a straight “no”.

“Honestly, no. We didn’t have space for that kind of stuff. I was trying my level best for New Theatres Films, (Satyajit) Ray, Mani Kaul and (Kumar) Shahani, (G) Aravindan, Adoor (Gopalakrishnan) etc. (Filmmakers from the Indian New Wave/Parallel Cinema). Govinda negatives, why? To this day, I will tell you, you can’t be so democratic. Ultimately, why are we appointed? We have some sense of standards… A patwari’s (village accountant) record books are more historic than Govinda’s films,” Chabria replied.

In 2016, Kumar made a mention of this interview in his doctoral thesis submitted to the New York University, saying Chabria’s response brings into focus the functioning of film archives, the curators in these institutions, the power wielded by them in the production of knowledge, the illusion of objectivity ascribed to archival holdings, and the disputable neutrality of the histories they narrativise.

“It illustrates how the film archive, the point of origin of many film histories, is not a passive repository of records, even more so if it is national in nature, nor are its keepers mere facilitators of the public’s access to the institution’s collections,” Kumar wrote.

It is interesting to note that the then NFAI director spoke thus about an immensely popular actor in India. Kumar underlines that in a poll conducted by the BBC in 1999 titled, ‘The Greatest Star of Stage or Screen’, Govinda ranked 10th. On the list, he shared space with the likes of Amitabh Bachchan, Buster Keaton and Marilyn Monroe. In India, however, he continued to be seen as a star of a semi-literate and lower-middle class audience.

Kumar says this kind of ‘elitist bias’ that crept into the academia also reinforced the biases in film archiving institutions.

The fear of this elite prejudice, cancel culture and tinkering with the narration of history could be the reason why many filmmakers, film scholars, film historians, offbeat filmmakers, film festival curators and connoisseurs of films oppose the recent merger of the four films units — the Films Division of India (FD), Children’s Film Society India (CFSI), National Film Archive of India (NFAI) and Directorate of Film Festivals (DFF) into National Film Development Corporation (NFDC).

The talks about the merger began when in January 2019, the Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (I&B) announced that it was going to reassess the four units. The ministry constituted a committee headed by Bimal Julka, former secretary at I&B. The committee’s main objective was to evaluate the performance and review the functioning of the NFDC and the CFSI, and to recommend to the ministry whether the two units should down their shutters and what should replace them.

The committee submitted its report in June 2020 and in December that year the ministry announced it will merge all the units into a single institution. In March this year, the government declared that the merger had been done.

The film fraternity, however, has been opposed to the incorporation, saying it would pave the way for privatisation of film archives and government properties.

In December 2021, filmmakers and actors wrote to the I&B ministry opposing the merger. The letter – also signed by academics, students, and members of civil society, among others – opposed the government’s move saying that it was taken without consultation with the stakeholders and was a matter of concern due to the “lack of clarity and transparency in the process of this merger”.

The primary objective of all such institutions has been to reach people of different cultures and languages in India and abroad. While some of the units are not-for-profit in nature, some are expected to bring revenues. In order to understand the core problem with the merger, it is important to know how these units are unique and how bringing them under one umbrella would impact the work they are individually mandated to perform.

Films: A tool for nation-building

Of all these five institutions – the Films Division, the Children’s Film Society India, the National Film Archive and Directorate of Film Festivals — the Films Division is the oldest. It was instituted by the first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, in 1948 with an aim to make documentaries on various developmental schemes of the government and screen them across the country.

Much before that Indian cinema started to make its mark with Raja Harishchandra (1913), a full-length silent feature film. In contrast to its colonisers, the British, who were also focused on documentaries alongside feature films, pioneers of the Indian cinema straightaway started to make feature films and in some ways overlooked the art of making documentaries.

The Film Division was formed post-Independence. Before that in the early 1940s, Britishers had set up organisations such as the Film Advisory Board, Indian News Parade and Army Film and Photographic Unit, which made and promoted documentary films for the coloniser’s propaganda. According to Camille Deprez, research assistant professor at Academy of Film, Hong Kong Baptist University, Britishers formed these institutions when they realised that India’s independence was inevitable.

“These propaganda films had to show that the empire did not fail and that the handover was not won by Indian nationalists but planned by the British themselves,” Deprez says in an article titled ‘The Films Division of India, 1948-1964: The Early Days and the Influence of the British Documentary Film Tradition’.

In 1943, the Film Advisory Board was replaced with Information Films of India (IFI) which continued the production of documentaries. In 1946, after the success of Indians in provincial elections, the transition of power from the British to the Indians began. One of the major developments in this period was that the then Indian Legislative Assembly cut down the grants given to the IFI for making propaganda films. As a result, over the next two years, no documentary films were made by the government.

After Independence, Nehru took the production of documentary films under his wings. Although the Films Division started making its own documentaries, it had to rely on the British projectors to show its work in rural areas. Also, at that time documentary films were a very urban phenomenon, largely dependent on movie halls.

According to Deprez, the Films Division’s productions were not only meant to educate the Indian populace but also bring hope to millions of people who had recently achieved independence, motivating them to work for a better future, uplifting the morale of a whole country that had been under occupation for over 200 years.

But India was making films even under British rule.

“Since the 1910s, when pioneering filmmaker Dadasaheb Phalke developed the mythological film genre, Indian cinema was conceived as a nationalist enterprise in line with the call for Swaraj, or self-rule. Cinema became a tool to nurture the idea of an Indian nation. In the post-independence context, the Films Division tried to make films that would help build the nation based on a sense of citizenship and community,” she added.

Since 1948, the Film Division has produced more than 6,000 documentaries and short films and more than 2,000 newsreels.

After the Films Division, came the Children’s Film Society in 1955. Nehru, whose affection for children is well known, mooted the idea of films for children. He established the CFSI with the hope that indigenous and exclusive cinema for children would stimulate their creativity, compassion and critical thinking, says researcher Shravan Kumar, in his thesis titled, ‘Children’s Film Society India: A Critical Study, in 2020’.

The first film the CFSI produced was Jaldeep (1956) by Kidar Sharma. The film won the award for Best Children’s Film at the Venice Film Festival in 1957. From then on, the CFSI has produced nearly 250 films in 10 Indian languages. Apart from producing films, it also conducts district, state, national and international-level film festivals.

Preserving the past, stimulating cultural exchange

With the Films Division having produced historic heritage value documentary films and the CFSI producing children-centric films, the National Film Archive came into existence in 1964 with an aim to “safeguard the heritage of Indian cinema for posterity and act as a centre for dissemination of a healthy film culture in the nation”.

The National Film Archive, which was established under the aegis of renowned curator and archivist PK Nair, is the current custodian of thousands of film negatives, books on cinema, numerous film scripts, movie posters and photographs from the silent era of Indian film industry. Besides preserving these collections, it also encourages people to carry out film research not only on Indian cinema but also extend their reach to South Asian films.

Coinciding with the 151st birth anniversary of the Father of Indian Cinema, Dadasaheb Phalke, in 2021, the NFAI came up with 53 audio interviews of legends of Indian film industry and bought them in the public domain. These audio recordings were part of NFAI’s Oral History Project started in 1983.

These interviews not only throw light on the personal trajectories of actors, technicians, producers, directors and studio owners, but also give an in-depth account of how the Indian film industry has evolved over time.

With a mechanism to produce content and preserve it in place, the Directorate of Film Festivals was established in 1973 with an objective to organise international film festivals. While the Films Division undertook the task of organising the Mumbai International Film Festival for documentary and short films, the Directorate of Film Festivals focused more on showcasing full-length feature films from all over the world.

“As a vehicle of cultural exchange, the DFF promotes international friendship, provides access to new trends in world cinema, generates healthy competition and, in the process, helps improve the standards of Indian films,” writes Rajeev Kumar Jain in his thesis on international film festivals organised in India.

Finally in 1975, the NFDC came into existence. The corporation’s main objective is to fund the films, promote and distribute them. Doyens of Indian cinema, including Satyajit Ray, Shyam Benegal, Govind Nihalani and KS Sethumadhavan once received funding from this institution and made cult classics.

“The NFDC is a house of experimental cinema. The roots of such cinema can be traced back to Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali. The film was financed by the then West Bengal government in a first-of-its-kind endeavour to promote independent cinema by a state agency. What Pather Panchali did for Indian cinema is history. In spite of the government funding the film, Ray had complete freedom while making it,” wrote Mumbai-based filmmaker Dinesh Lakhanpal in an opinion for The Telegraph.

Many are worried if filmmakers would be able to retain the same freedom while making their films post the merger as the control could be totally centralised.

What’s the need?

With each film unit displaying such uniqueness, what made the I&B Ministry feel the need to bring them under one roof? What are the problems the Bimal Julka Committee pointed out?

On the CFSI, the committee felt “despite getting Rs 10 crore every year from the ministry, it was not clear what the 40 people working at the institution were doing and on what basis”.

The panel felt that the CFSI had taken no steps to make the institution self-sustaining and there was no vision for, say, the next 10 years.

The problems, however, are not new. Back in 1987, according to an India Today report, the then chairman of the organisation, Amol Palekar, resigned from his post saying, “The I&B Ministry showed little interest in helping restructure the CFSI, which has simply outdated regulations, and make it financially self-sufficient.”

Speaking on the state of affairs, filmmaker Hrishikesh Mukherjee, who at that time also served as the NFDC chairman, said, “Without good children’s films, the future of adult films is very bleak. But the government has failed to prioritise that.”

About the NFDC, the committee felt that over the years, the institution has failed to fulfil its primary role of film production and has instead turned to work in the area of media content for government advertisement, which is basically the work assigned to the Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity, now integrated into the Bureau of Outreach and Communication, which was set up on December 8, 2017.

“With uncertainties of commercial success due to invention and change of technologies, changing pattern of viewership across the nation and closure of single screen theatres, the production of films by the NFDC is severely affected. Thus, the activity of NFDC relating to production of films has significantly been eroded,” the report said.

Except for the CFSI and the NFDC, most of the comments by the committee in its report on other film units were positive. However, the panel still recommended that all film units be brought under one umbrella to avoid shutting down the CFSI and the NFDC. The Julka committee suggested that the umbrella organisation may be called the National Film Commission/Council/Corporation.

Another suggestion, the committee made, was that the umbrella organisation be an expanded NFDC.

“The NFDC’s impressive legacy as well as it bandwidth to service various sectors of the audio-visual industry, gives it the potential to expand into a multi-platform developmental and content company, producing feature films, documentary films, episodic television series, digital short form programming for children, millennials as well as adults. The benefits of an expanded corporation over an attached office or division of the ministry is, the relative independence in functioning and decision making which will benefit the sector in the long run, especially as it is a growing sector,” the report said.

It is interesting to note that the Bimal Julka committee has made comments on the Films Division, the National Films Archive and the Directorate of Film Festivals, when these institutions actually don’t come under the ambit of the committee, according to its Terms of Reference.

Undoing Nehru’s legacy?

The merger of these film units has brought both mainstream film personalities and off-beat non-feature film creators together.

Writing in Countercurrents, renowned documentary filmmaker Anand Patwardhan said the assault on the National Film Archives and Films Division should be seen as nothing short of an assault on our Constitution.

Once our archived history falls into the hands of those who never fought for Independence from British rule, it will just disappear or be re-cut and rewritten. As for the Children’s Film Society and the Directorate of Film Festivals, these were both bodies created to expand our cultural heritage. One can only shudder at what the future holds if these institutions come under the control of a single poisonous agency. – Anand Patwardhan

He added that at least the Films Division had existing staff, infrastructure, equipment and a large body of competent work, but the NFDC is a clean slate.

“Their only raison d’etre is to make money and even this they have failed to do. However, once the four bodies are merged into one and that body has the mandate to make a profit, it is not hard to predict what will happen next. Privatisation and the selling off of public assets. The Films Division sits on highly lucrative land in Mumbai. It is a bonanza awaiting looters,” Patwardhan added.

It’s not just the film fraternity which is opposing the move. Politicians such as John Brittas, CPI(M)’s Kerala MP, also raised concerns on the issue. In a letter to the I&B Ministry, Brittas asked how the NFDC, a company registered under the Companies Act that has to generate profit for its operation and sustainability, can undertake projects and work of non-profit nature like preservation of archives of invaluable films, etc.

He went on to say that non-profit activities being performed by the Films Division and Directorate of Film Festivals cast a shadow on the whole process. Brittas also underlined that the Union government has not implemented the recommendations made by the Shyam Benegal Committee, which was constituted in 1997, to streamline the activities of the Films Division.

Many point out how the merger could adversely impact the work being done by these organisations.

Chennai-based film enthusiast and an active member of various film society movements, Rajendran said the film festivals conducted by the DFF have now turned into a kind of carnival because they are held in Goa.

“In the initial years, the festivals were held in Delhi. But once the venue shifted to Goa, the film festival became a place for celebrations. We fear that after the merger, the festival may get disrupted due to a change of venue or lack of support to other efforts which are undertaken along with the festival,” he said.

Citing an example Rajendran said, “The Film Bazaar, an initiative of the NFDC helps debutant filmmakers to find producers or joint ventures, who can fund the projects that have reached half way. But today, public screenings have come down drastically. That could have also pushed the ministry for such a merger,” he said.

Others like SS Prakash Reddy, secretary of Hyderabad Film Club, feel the film units are being destroyed in the name of merger, because they carry Nehru’s legacy.

“Until 2014, the film society movements across the country were receiving grants from these film units to organise film festivals. But after 2014, the grants stopped. Earlier, we used to borrow films from the NFAI. But now, when it gets merged with the NFDC, it is doubtful whether the latter would allow lending of film reels,” he said.