To:
Door Darshan India (Director General)
President of India (Shri Pranab Mukherjee)
Vice President of India (Shri Hamid Ansari)
Information and Broadcasting Minister (Manish Tiwari)
This petition is jointly filed by: Oscar Award and National Award winning sound engineer Resul Pookutty; National Award Winner and Oscar nominees Ashvin Kumar, Ashutosh Gowariker; National Award winning filmmakers Anant Mahadevan, Aparna Sen, Ashim Ahluwalia, Buddhadev Das Gupta, Girish Kasaravalli, Goutam Ghosh, Jahnu Barua, Janaki Viswanathan, Nila Madav Panda, Onir, Rituparno Ghosh, Sachin Kundalkar, Shivajee Chandrabhushan, Shyam Benegal, Sanjay Suri, Shonali Bose, Sooni Taraporevala, Sudhir Mishra, Suman Mukhopadhyay, Umesh Kulkarni, Vinay Shukla, Vishal Bharadwaj; Film makers Aamir Bashir, Amole Gupte, Anusha Rizvi, Bedabrata Pain, Homi Adajania, Kaushik Mukherjee (Q), Kiran Rao, Krishna D.K., Nandita Das, Rahul Bose, Samar Khan, Srijit Mukherji , Subhash Kapoor, Sudish Kamath, Vinta Nanda, Vipin Vijay, Zoya Akhtar; 5 time National Award winning actror, social activist and MP Shabana Azmi and actor/producer Juhi Chawla
As the country celebrates 100 years of cinema we want to bring to your notice how New Wave Indie Cinema of India is under threat. Among the various challenges that we face as Indie film makers, the biggest is that of exhibition. The multiplexes which were given tax benefits to promote small budget content film have in fact been instrumental in destroying small cinema by only playing the box office game. Continue reading Save indie cinema in India
Away from the revolution of direct to home (DTH) and cable TV networks, the nineties were the time of one channel, when Doordarshan was synonymous with Television for most Indians, especially in rural areas. There was not much on television for a kid growing up except the occasional cartoon clips and Shaktimaan. I was fond of Meena and her parrot Mithu. They were loveable unthreatening characters. The duo imparted important lessons on a variety of social issues. Movies were a strict no-no and the news was other things adults were interested in. Every evening my grandfather would tune in to the Hindi news which was followed by another news broadcast in English. Even as a kid I could sense the repetition but never the reason of watching the same news twice.
KAFILA - COLLECTIVE EXPLORATIONS SINCE 2006 