The impasse that crippled studios in Tollygunge for four days ended on Tuesday with a resolution that shooting will resume from Wednesday and an assertion that the federation of technicians did not have the authority to impose a ban on anyone.
The resolution followed an intervention by chief minister Mamata Banerjee.
Actors Prosenjit Chatterjee and Dev, also the Trinamool Congress MP from Ghatal, and filmmaker Goutam Ghose, met her at the state secretariat on Tuesday accompanied by minister Aroop Biswas.
After that meeting, directors and actors held another meeting at Technicians’ Studio in Tollygunge. After it ended late in the evening, some of the leading names in the Bengali entertainment industry came out and addressed a news conference.
Filmmaker Ghose read out what he said were the minutes of the meeting:
- Going forward, the federation (Federation of Cine Technicians and Workers of Eastern India) cannot ban or non-cooperate with anyone
- There will be a review committee chaired by Goutam Ghose and having Prosenjit Chatterjee, Dev, Indranil Sen and Aroop Biswas as initial members and representation from all guilds.
- All standard operating practices and areas of jurisdiction in film, TV, OTT, diploma film, independent films, ad films like double payment, minimum (number of) technicians etc shall be scrutinised, revised and amended. They will give their report and the changes have to be implemented by November
- Rahool Mukherjee will be the director of SVF’s pujo release
- Shooting will commence from Wednesday. Rahool will resume shooting after seven days
Mukherjee was banned for three months for allegedly violating norms by shooting an OTT film in Bangladesh without intimating the federation and using technicians in Dhaka.
The directors’ guild, which is also part of the federation along with 25 other guilds, revoked the ban. But the federation dug its heels and boycotted Mukherjee, prompting a cease-work call by the directors.
At the root of the impasse was the debate over whether a union of cinema technicians and workers had the authority to impose an embargo on a filmmaker.
“Suspension, ban and non-cooperation will no longer be effective. The rules that had been causing problems for so long will now be scrutinised by professional people who understand films,” filmmaker Kaushik Ganguly said after the Tollygunge meeting.
He was flanked by Prosenjit, Dev and filmmaker Srijit Mukherjee, among others.