Fear And Loathing In Goa: Dear Fellow Film Makers, How Can You Be So Insensitive? Boycott IFFI!
By Rakesh Sharma
25 November, 2015
Countercurrents.org
How can any of us attend a film festival, celebrate free speech and excellence in cinema and pretend it is business-as-usual? Two film students are arrested and whisked away by the police, kept in custody and produced in court the next day, charged with conspiracy, trespass, impersonation and assaulting a government official - the same template as the arrests carried out at the Film and TV Institute of India - FTII - at the behest of the Government of India!
Dozens of others are being pulled aside, questioned and harassed by cops for wearing badges in solidarity with the students. One delegate had his registration cancelled for daring to wear a T-shirt with the words 'Save FTII' on it.
Can you imagine any reputed international film festival doing this? Or the delegates merrily attending parties and press conferences, enjoying sarkari hospitality, turning a complete blind eye to the crackdown happening at the film festival?
The Ministry's Directorate of Film Festivals unilaterally and without reason cancelled the Student Cinema section, which is rather unprecedented! Why have Indian and international film-makers not withdrawn their films in solidarity? Why have the Juries not come up with statements condemning the intimidation and intolerance that's in full view at IFFI 2015?
Minister Rathore accuses FTII students of tarnishing India's image. The cops sent by him are now busy trying to find a conspiracy, so that the students can be prosecuted under more stringent charges! Absurdly, the Goa Police refuses to return their phones and wallets, even after the Court granted them bail - apparently they want to send these to Central Forensic Lab in Hyderabad to find the evidence of a pre-planned conspiracy (to 'defame' India? In that case, they must prosecute Minister Rathore who badly tarnished the image of India and made us a laughung stock worldwide by appointing Governing Council members with dubious or no credentials, some of whom openly threatened the students and promised to inculcate a 'spirit of nationalism, on the FTII campus!)
To all my fellow film-makers, the official invitees to this government-controlled film festival - speak up, speak strongly and unequivocally. Your silence is an endorsement of the persecution of the FTII students, and of the stranglehold the government has tightened at the festival venues, crushing free speech and dissent, indeed, the soul of any film festival.
To all others - Goans, cinema-lovers and delegates - time to raise your voice in solidarity with the students. Tell the government that you won't let it get away with such tactics, that a climate of intolerance and intimidation can not be allowed to exist at a space like IFFI - a filmfest funded by public money.
Rakesh Sharma is an Indian documentary film-maker. His most notable work is the feature-length documentary Final Solution on the communal Gujarat riots of 2002.