And/Or

And/Or

FTII – A Janus-Faced Legacy


K Hariharan, Direction 1976

Just imagine. On a rough count, the FTII should have produced, by now, over 2000 students in the various disciplines of acting, direction, cinematography, editing and sound recording. Each of them was supposedly trained as part of the Indian government’s vision to change the graph of Indian cinema, make it more professional, more decent, and more meaningful and international. And the money spent by the Indian government so far, considering all inflationary values, in this enterprise is simply unimaginable! Where are most of the students now and how well has this public money been spent?

Let’s analyze some of the insidious ideas which motivated the Government to set this up. The FTII was opened on a peculiar disciplinary tone. The early 50s witnessed fellow artists and artisans being endowed by the state with compassionate art institutes in the form of the various cultural ‘Akademis’. From every rational point of view they should have also set up a ‘Film Akademi’. Instead, the film fraternity was reprimanded by an Enquiry committee, and correctional action was instigated by setting up a state-run film school, to instill proper standards into a new generation which the sinister ‘film industry’ was not upholding, and even willfully playing truant. In one sweep, the state and intelligentsia – including the Mahatma – which put forth such a plan, had declared the Cinema of India completely corrupt and malafide. The image of Indian Cinema and her filmmakers was held as disgraceful and their entertainment more reprehensible. And yet for all practical purposes, Indian Cinema was enormously popular and continues to be the only yardstick for assessing how democratic a fledgling nation could actually be.

Was the FTII set up to promote another ‘Indian Cinema’?

The bizarre dichotomy between the reality of Indian democracy and what it should be, virtually became the raison d’etre for the FTII to be instituted. The massive gates of a new, powerful establishment in the front guarding the ancient wisdom of the banyan trees inside the campus have always been a contradiction for me. Who should be safeguarding whom? Who should be learning and who should be teaching? In old Greek mythology, Janus is the god of gates and doorways, depicted with two faces looking in opposite directions. The FTII incongruously got located at the crossroads of Nehruvian socialism and Anglicized elitism, always opposed to anything that would be popular and mainstream.

So, most of us joining the FTII in the 70s, bred on good indigenous ‘vulgar’ entertainment through most of our hormonal periods, were suddenly made aware of our debauched vernacular moorings. In the first few weeks the peer pressures and the massive dose of international archival screenings virtually blew us all into a completely Euro-centric orbit, predestined to believe that ‘good’ cinema was that which was baptized by the high priests at Cannes, Venice and Berlin or at least decorated by the lower priests in the juries of our National awards.

Considering the fact that this was also the time when the various IITs and RECs were being set up by the very same government to provide fresh blood to a growing modern manufacturing industry, one needs to ask why the government was determined to be anti-film industry and anti-popular. Why was our existing mainstream cinema looked down upon by the so-called educated people? Why was the divide being created between films on the lines of being ‘commercial’ and ‘art’? Why was censorship applicable only to the medium of cinema? Why was entertainment tax levied on cinema alone?

Many such questions can be answered only if we understand the nationalistic politics behind the setting up of our FTII. At the cost of sounding a bit serious and a bit anti-nostalgic, I feel that our Alma Mater was a serious abnormality in the larger cultural context of India. Indian cinema was and is, like all other Indian arts, quite region-specific and ethnically vernacular, sustaining itself on a variety of landscapes, costumes, music, poetry and last but not the least, the richness of a diverse linguistic tradition. Due to our inescapable Delhi-based politics, Hindi usurped the status of becoming the ‘national’ language. While this was sheer political fallout, it never affected the larger cultural sphere of the Indian peoples. Indian culture and art proliferated in various eclectic manners. What we need to recognize is that there are the ‘Cinemas of India’ like the ‘architectural styles of India’. Like there is no ‘Indian’ architecture there is no ‘Indian’ Cinema!

However the government was hell-bent on introducing the early Soviet model of a national control on cinema. It was even proposed in 1955 that the Indian film industry should be nationalized! Just imagine people like Raj Kapoor, Guru Dutt and S.S. Vasan waiting to have their scripts approved by bureaucrats in Delhi! Fortunately this idea was given up instantly, only to bring about a more perverse idea into fruition.

“Let’s fix the minds of the future generation.” But how?

All they needed was a mascot, a lucky talisman. And into their lap landed a partially government funded film which won several awards at various international film festivals. Things got even luckier when the high priests in London baptized it as ‘the most quintessential Indian film ever made’. This was manna from the heavens for the brown sahibs who wanted to put their signatures on the red-taped folder. The idea for a ‘National’ Indian cinema finally had a form, all endorsed and sanctioned. The film was none other than Pather Panchali (1955) by Satyajit Ray, who must have never thought in his wildest dreams that the film that drove him bankrupt would be used as the new messiah.

The commissioning of our ‘National’ Film Institute was therefore born with two serious defects. It endorsed naturalistic realism and individual
psychology as the sine qua non of film structure; and it developed a total apathy towards mainstream Indian cinemas. In the name of addressing an abstract 'international' audience, it nurtured a new-found elitism which was going to be the USP for the government's Film Finance Corporation. This attitude became the grist mill for several confrontations within and outside the campus. We were brought up on ‘valorous’ stories of how people like Manoj Kumar and B.R. Chopra were made to eat humble pie, or when even Shyam Benegal was left speechless under the students’ interrogation.

Actually, the FTII has never really prepared itself for handling academic negotiations. In fact, film studies was always regarded as a queer intellectual activity. Any mention of the regional cinemas had to be confined to the award-winning varieties, for the rest of them were considered adulterated garbage. During class hours, which were very modest, the emphasis was largely on practicing technology combined with a bit of film appreciation. The rest of our waking hours was an obsession with general screenings! Films from all over the world bombarded us without a single staff member who was even remotely competent to provide the minimum contextual level for these films. With scattered anecdotes provided by film-fest gossip and foreign festival-returned seniors, we evolved new-fangled hagiographies for our sacred filmmakers. The more obscure the film, the greater would be the accolades showered. On the other hand, the campus continues to remain largely disconnected with the path-breaking works of contemporary political scientists, sociologists or literary giants. The more apolitical and amoral one could be the better would be the prospects for making a living!

The State successfully accomplishes an agenda

In a way, the State’s reaction to the cinemas of India was completely expected, however intuitive it could be. Bred largely on a survival mode in the colonial era, Indian cinema adopted a counter-cultural stance right from its inception. To the extent that it was constantly grappling with technology, a tenuous freedom movement and an extremely volatile audience, our cinema was probably our only modernist enterprise while the other arts were neatly divided into a classical or folk format. The vulgar appeal of our cinema was truly a nagging factor for the State, and it had to be suppressed at any cost. Unable to take on the major icons across the nation, the elite section of the State chooses to subvert them rather than embrace them. The first act of subversion was to divide our cinema into the ‘art’ and ‘commercial’ variety where ‘art’ strangely stood for everything meaningful, socially purposeful and respectful of tradition. ‘Art’ had nothing to do with film grammar or visual aesthetics. A morally correct cinema was the ultimate objective, with IAS officers constantly at the helm watching over the FTII. The second act of subversion was to deny the students any kind of knowledge system other than the limited amount of technology that was needed to survive in the film industry. There has been no sincere policy or effort to recruit/ train good teachers, or even nurture a professional production system/ methodology. Thus, through the 40 years, over 1500 students were intellectually castrated while a few mavericks escaped and jumped onto the popular bandwagon.

Amidst all this, I am not referring to the abominable training ground that was the TV wing, set up in the
late 70s to generate hordes of totally incompetent producers and technical personnel who have virtually
driven a massive monolith called 'Doordarshan' into the depths of revulsion. If anybody thinks that this was due to sheer ignorance or lack of skills on part of the powerful state, one is mistaken. This ship was meant to sink and set the pathway open for the multinationals to navigate at ease. Friends, it is the same ministry, the same machinery, the same attitude which has been setting the guidelines for us at the FTII.

Yes, many of us have survived, sought new paths, creating small niches for true cinematic activity. But my heart breaks when I see the grand opportunities lost, thwarted and wasted over these 40 years.

What lessons do we learn from this?

First of all, we must become conscious that art and culture should never be allowed to become state departments. The state may ‘patronize’ but it has to be on the terms of the artist, as a representative of the people.

Secondly, it is the hallmark of a fascist state to condemn any art or culture that is popular. Though not at such a serious level, our national film awards which have obsessed so many of our FTIIans are in fact symptomatic of such a fascist aberration.

Finally, we must abandon the idea of cinema as a ‘national’ art form, especially in India. The FTII must spread out of Pune and establish smaller facilitation centers all over India quite like the way that the various ‘Akademis’ have broadened. The FTII’s only purpose should be to accommodate and serve vernacular filmmakers, including the Hindi and English language, to reflect the sensitive diversity of India. In fact the bane of FTII is its proximity to Mumbai, aka, Bollywood. Just imagine if the FTII had been set up in Shillong or in Patna!