Thursday, 14 November 2024
Thursday, 14 November 2024
The go-to website for all things films, IMDb (Internet Movie Database), has an entry for Swarup Biswas, president of the Federation of Cine Technicians and Workers of Eastern India – and also vice-president of the Indian Football Association.
Under the “known for” section, the citation for Swarup Biswas reads: “Kishore Kumar Birthday event.”
Another event associated with Biswas, the younger brother of Aroop Biswas – Bengal’s power and housing minister and one of the closest aides of chief minister Mamata Banerjee – that has made it to the IMDb page is a blood donation camp held in 2022.
It is said that Swarup Biswas holds a card for “assistant director” but the IMDb listing has no information on any film he has assisted in.
Yet without the nod from Swarup Biswas, not even a film set can be erected anywhere in Bengal or the camera positioned, or a technician hired.
This is how the industry is functioning.
The Bengali film industry — dubbed as Tollywood by an American sound expert some nine decades ago — has been under the thumbs of the Biswas brothers for over a decade.
Earlier last month, 233 filmmakers filed a defamation suit against Swarup for his comment that 60 per cent of complaints of sexual harassment are against directors and producer-directors and 40 per cent against producers.
The next hearing in the case will be held on January 10 next year.
The comment came soon after a prominent filmmaker close to Bengal’s ruling Trinamul was accused of harassing an actress while explaining the scene of a film on April 3 this year, following which she lodged a complaint with the West Bengal Commission for Women in July.
In September, the Directors’ Association of Eastern India (DAEI) suspended the filmmaker and a complaint was lodged with the Bishnupur police station.
The fallout has swivelled the spotlight on Swarup Biswas, who for years has been working in the shadows, with his more high-profile elder sibling, who holds two key portfolios, staying in the limelight.
The Brothers Biswas have a say in every aspect of filmmaking, that includes the size of units, the technicians to be hired, the wages they have to be paid, the hours they can work and what kind of work they can do. This apart, they also summon technicians and support staff – many of them residents in the Tollygunge Assembly area represented by the elder Biswas brother since 2006.
Aroop, Swarup and the younger brother’s wife, Jui, a councillor in the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, have played a pivotal role for the ruling Trinamul in several south Calcutta civic wards in areas such as Tollygunge, New Alipore, Azadgarh, Regent Park, Netaji Nagar, Kudghat, Ashok Nagar, Bansdroni, Ganguly Bagan, Naktala and Garia, that cover the Lok Sabha constituencies of Calcutta South and Jadavpur.
Swarup campaigned heavily for both the Trinamul nominees from the Calcutta South and Jadavpur parliamentary seats for this summer’s Lok Sabha polls, which the Trinamul retained handsomely, and was seen in rallies with party chief Mamata.
When Trinamul’s Madan Mitra was arrested for his alleged involvement in the Saradha Ponzi-scheme scam in 2015, Mamata Banerjee had temporarily assigned Aroop the sports and transport departments.
Biswas senior still holds the sports and youth affairs portfolio, along with power and housing. He has been the nodal figure for the ruling establishment’s liaison with and gradual control of the entertainment industry and the clubs in almost every nook and corner of the state.
While the elder brother has been occupied with ministerial and party responsibilities, the reins of the film industry have been firmly held by the younger sibling.
To borrow from feudal terminology, in the empire that is Bengal under the Trinamul, the local film industry is a jagir and the undisputed jagirdar is Swarup Biswas.
This year, Swarup has been forced to step out of the shadows as controversies have erupted around the film federation and many a diktat issued by it.
“We have allowed this for too long. The Bengali film industry is on its deathbed,” said Indranil Roy Chowdhury, a filmmaker who is among the litigants against Swarup Biswas. “We will continue to fight this battle till it reaches a logical end.”
There are 26 guilds in the local film industry and they have been around for a long while now, but never before have they been in a position to dictate terms to filmmakers.
“The film industry is operating exactly like the real estate syndicates,” said a filmmaker, among the 233 litigants, who requested anonymity. “Like with cement and other building materials, to make a film, technicians, make-up artistes, spot boys, every hand has to be based on their selection.”
One of the rules enforced by the federation is to hire a crew of 120 irrespective of the budget, which forces the producers to invest more or face the wrath of the federation.
“For an independent filmmaker who does not require a large unit and cannot even afford a large unit, making a film anywhere in Bengal has become impossible,” said an industry insider, who also requested anonymity. “For a feature film with a budget of Rs 60 lakh, Rs 9 lakh was the catering bill for a caterer of the federation’s choice.”
A Calcutta-based filmmaker, who has experience of working in Mumbai, shared his experience while shooting digital video content.
“The nature of digital video content is such that the budget is abysmally low. We do not need to have a unit of 120 members as the federation here insists. Once we were shooting and members of the federation turned up. We were forced to pay a fine of Rs 10,000 in cash. They would not accept online payment,” the filmmaker said.
“Federation and guilds are active in Mumbai, too, but they do not interfere in the filmmaking process. Their objective is to ensure that the crew members are paid their fees in due time,” the filmmaker added.
The number of people who requested anonymity when interviewed speaks volumes about the clout of Swarup Biswas.
There was a time when the film industry was flush with funds from producers who came from the real estate sector, the now defunct chit fund companies and even jewellers. Now most of them have pulled themselves away as recovery becomes difficult with each passing day and the demands from the federation keep increasing.
Last month at the 76th annual general meeting of the Eastern India Motion Picture Association, Swarup “proposed” that every producer has to deposit Rs 5 lakh to the association as security to prevent any producer from defaulting on paying the technicians on time.
Like with his estimate on the number of sexual predators in the Bengali film industry, Swarup on his Facebook wall announced the pending dues were around Rs 50 lakh.
“There is no such decision. EIMPA has rejected it. How can anyone make such a suggestion?” asked Krishna Daga, ex-chairman of the EIMPA, whose family has been in the Bengali film industry for four generations now.
“EIMPA should have outright rejected the proposal. All the technicians are paid daily wages. The production people are members of the federation, then how can there be Rs 50 lakh due? This can’t have happened in one day.”
Biswas also called for fixed working hours of technicians, though most filmmakers The Telegraph Online spoke to said shooting beyond 14 hours was no longer allowed.
“Sometimes it so happens that for an episode of a web series, another five minutes of shooting could complete the episode. But the cameramen and other technicians will pack up on completion of 14 hours, and even if extra pay is offered, they won’t agree,” said an industry insider. “This adds to the budget since we have to book everything for another day for that five minutes. This is a creative process, there has to be some flexibility.”
Whether a day’s shooting will be held or not does not so much depend on the availability of the most box-office worthy stars, but the whims of the technicians, backed by an overarching authority. Cinematographers are known to have been suspended for picking up work independently bypassing the federation.
Another incident, known in the local film industry, illustrates the point.
Toolsidas Junior, a film produced by Bhushan Kumar and Kishan Kumar of T-Series and Ashutosh Gowariker (who also co-wrote the screenplay), was shot in Calcutta partly, as the film was based in the city.
One particular scene was to be shot at the Nonapukur tram depot with Bollywood star Sanjay Dutt, who played a key character in the film. The day he was supposed to come for the shoot coincided with the inauguration of the Kolkata International Film Festival.
The production house had paid Rs 3.5 lakh to the tram company for the purpose of shooting. Three days before the shoot, the federation sent a missive that the day’s shooting would have to be cancelled because of the festival inauguration.
Requests were made but no one agreed to participate in the day’s shooting and instead headed to Netaji Indoor Stadium. Dutt’s portions were shot in Mumbai, while the tram depot parts were added later.
Ahead of 2011, when Mamata Banerjee stormed to power, a large number of personalities from the film and television industry had started shifting towards her.
She was portrayed as someone easily accessible, someone who exchanged texts messages and called the actors and directors unlike her predecessor, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, known for his preference for poets, writers and playwrights, who never used a cell phone.
Before the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, a prominent filmmaker, who had campaigned for the former CPM minister Gautam Deb in 2011, switched camps to the ruling Trinamul. It was said that he was compelled to take the decision as he found it difficult to run his production company as he needed a healthy relationship with the administration.
That “need for healthy relationship” has remained unchanged over this one decade.
Actor and BJP leader Roopa Ganguly said she had to quit a serial in 2023 as her political identity came in the way of her artistic pursuits.
“Every day I would go to the sets and the script would be given to me, and I could see how my character was being re-written, which I disagreed with. They knew I wouldn’t tolerate it for long, they knew I would lose my temper and one day I walked out,” said the actor-politician who has been in the industry for more than three decades.
She welcomed the decision taken by the directors to sue the federation chief, saying the federation was killing the industry by heavily politicising it.
“After I returned to Calcutta [from Mumbai] in 2011-12, I could see a change. In the earlier days, we were never forced to share the dais with politicians, we didn’t have to be seen in party meetings and rallies. The federation was not politicised to this extent earlier. The rules that the federation has brought in is a form of criminalisation of the industry,” she said. “Industry rules should be framed by those who know the industry. How could he [Swarup Biswas] make a generalised statement that 60 per cent of the directors are molesters? Why hasn’t the minister [Aroop Biswas] made any statement yet? He is also responsible. He cannot deny that he gave this space to his brother.”
The actor-politician also questioned why a section of the Bengali film industry has made it a habit to run to the chief minister during any crisis: “Every time some guild or the other has tried to raise their demands, a section of the film industry has reached out to the chief minister for a settlement. Why? She is not an artiste. She is not from the fraternity.”
“Swarup Biswas has the blessings of Didi. With her blessings anyone can become powerful,” said a film producer who did not want to be named.
Industry insiders said the suspension of filmmaker Rahul Mukherjee – for shooting a part of his film in Bangladesh after running into trouble with the federation here – was the flash point of the sudden “rebellion” against the Brothers Biswas.
“Rates are far higher for producers coming from outside,” said a filmmaker. “They have lost interest in shooting in Bengal because of all the red tape that the federation has introduced over the years. Number of Bengali films being made has substantially come down. Not that it is entirely the fault of the federation, but it has to bear the lion’s share of the blame.”
While the controversy over Mukherjee between the directors – some of whom were either elected representatives of the Trinamul or close to the ruling party – was on, filmmaker and actor Aparna Sen had a few questions for Biswas junior, the answers of which should have been available in the IMDb page.
“Is Swarup Biswas a technician in the film and television industry? If not, then how can he remain as the president of the federation just because of his party affiliation? I have heard he is an ‘assistant director’ card holder. As far as I know to get the card any person has to work as an observer in at least two films. What are the names of these two films where he worked as an observer? Since he got his card how many films has he assisted in and what are the names of these films? Is it true, an assistant director’s card is rejected if the cardholder does not work in any film for 13 months? If he has not worked in any film for the last 13 months, why is his card still valid?” Sen asked.
According to industry insiders, cards for assistant directors have not been issued since 2018.
It is not yet known whether Biswas junior has replied to Sen.
When The Telegraph Online called him for his comments, Swarup Biswas said he was busy in a meeting and did not respond to repeated calls and texts since then.
