Calling for urgent need for review and arbitration of existing “rules” in the Bengali film industry, senior fraternity members on Monday said the “stranglehold” of imposed norms led to “significant decline in investment” in the regional showbiz sector over the past decade.

The opinions were voiced by a section of producers, directors and senior actors who huddled at the Ballygunge residence of superstar Prasenjit Chatterjee in south Calcutta, as filmmaking at the Tollygunge studio enclave came to a standstill amid the impasse over technicians' refusal to work under a young director for a project.

Urging the technicians to soften their stand, the directors said they were keenly looking forward to the meeting that the technicians’ body was scheduled to hold later in the afternoon.

The deadlock was created after technicians walked out of the studio floor of an unnamed project of filmmaker Rahool Mukherjee on the first day of shoot on July 27, standing their ground to boycott the director, alleging that he “violated shooting norms”.

The move vertically split the fraternity into two with a section of producers, directors and actors choosing to express solidarity with the “outcast” director, and deciding to go for an indefinite cease work on shooting floors from Monday “till the problem is addressed in an amicable manner”.

“This is not a clash between directors and technicians because our interests are the same. However, we have been bound by the stranglehold of an arbitrary set of rules, formed by people over the years that are not only insulting to our creative personae, but have also led to a sharp decline in investments in the industry over the past decade or so,” said director Indranil Roychowdhury, following the meet at Chatterjee’s residence.

Filmmaker Goutam Ghose echoed Roychowdhury’s sentiments and said there was a need to review whether the move against Mukherjee by the technicians could at all be justified under law.

“Work patterns in the film industry have undergone a sea change over the years, especially with the rapidly changing technological advancements that warrants fresh rules and norms to keep up with the times,” Ghose said.

On July 27, despite a clean chit given to Mukherjee by the Directors' Guild, allowing him to work as creative producer in an upcoming film, no technician turned up at a Kolkata studio on the first day of shooting.

Federation of Cine Technicians and Workers of Eastern India (FCTWEI) president Swarup Biswas said Mukherjee was being debarred from directing films for three months for violating norms by visiting Bangladesh for shooting another movie, without intimation to the federation and taking the help of technicians in Dhaka.

Biswas told reporters that while it had been amicably decided earlier that Mukherjee would be the creative producer of the film, the call sheet given to them for the shoot still referred to him as the director.

"This was seen as violating the spirit of our agreement and we technicians don't want to work under the instructions of Mukherjee, who had not taken any technician from Kolkata to complete 10 days of shooting of OTT film 'Lohu' in Bangladesh earlier this year,” Biswas had said.

Speaking after the Monday meeting, actor Prosenjit Chatterjee insisted on the need to upgrade shoot norms in coherence with the updated technologies.

“We are part of the same family and everyone deserves equal respect. We want our industry to grow and for that we need more investments. I fail to understand where is the dispute? Who would benefit if artists from outside came to work in Bengal?” Chatterjee said.

Stating that it is “high time” an amicable solution is reached across the table, Chatterjee highlighted the current imbroglio is a result of “hurt sentiments” suffered by directors that have compounded over a long time.

Director Shibaprasad Mukhopadhyay expressed hope that the impasse would end by Monday and work would resume from Tuesday. “Do not segregate us from you. We, too, are technicians,” he said, appealing to the protestors.

“Let’s all sacrifice our egos from our respective ends and work towards devising a comprehensive policy in keeping with the changing times for overall growth of the industry, and attracting more investments in filmmaking,” director Raj Chakraborty said.

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