The entertainment industry in Tollygunge is awaiting greater clarity after the dissolution of the local federation and the announcement of a more centralised structure.
Many hope the changes will bring relief from the federation’s high-handedness, reduce pressure to hire more technicians than required, and generate more work.
Metro spoke to directors, actors and studio owners a day after BJP MLA from Tollygunge Papia Adhikary announced a series of measures to overhaul the industry.
Adhikary on Wednesday announced a “centrally registered” confederation with four broad categories, replacing the earlier system of 26 guilds.
“This shows a positive approach. The government is trying to plug the loopholes. However, how things are going to happen still needs to be formulated,” said filmmaker, actor and producer Arindam Sil.
Dissolving the 26 guilds and regrouping 7,500 to 8,000 technicians into four or five categories would be a major task, said another filmmaker.
Long-standing problems in the Tolly Studio Para need urgent attention, industry stakeholders said.
Many capable professionals lost work because they did not have a guild card, which served as an accreditation allowing them to work in the industry.
Filmmakers bringing assistant directors from Mumbai often faced hurdles because they were not cardholders here. One producer said they were made to appoint cardholders even when there was little need for them.
This extended to outstation shoots as well, where a fixed number of technicians often had to be taken regardless of actual requirements.
“On one occasion, a group came from Mumbai with a full unit, but they also had to hire people locally who sat idle in the hotel,” the producer said.
“Tactics such as these may provide temporary work to a few people. But if we can open the doors and create a single-window clearance system, it could generate more work for more people,” he said.
Regional films are often made on limited budgets, making the burden of such diktats more acute.
Filmmaker Atanu Ghosh, whose Mayurakshi won the national award for best Bengali feature film, said: “Controlling the budget had become a problem.”
Ghosh recalled facing pressure to appoint a local cinematographer despite already having an award-winning professional on board.
“I had a national award- winning cinematographer from Kerala. But I had to engage someone from here. We have a long history of cinematographers from other states working in Bengal, and their membership in another union would normally suffice,” he said.
At the same time, Ghosh said more clarity was needed on the proposed changes and that their impact would become clear only with time.
On Wednesday, Adhikary announced the formation of the Eastern India Motion Picture Cultural Confederation, a centrally registered umbrella body.
With the move, the Federation of Cine Technicians and Workers of Eastern India, headed by Swarup Biswas, brother of former Trinamool minister Aroop Biswas, effectively ceases to exist.
Music director Prabuddha Banerjee said the volume of work in the Bengali film industry had declined sharply. He has worked with directors like Kaushik Ganguly, Suman Mukhopadhyay, Srijit Mukherjee, Nandita Roy and Shiboprosad Mukherjee.
“In the past couple of years, the number of films made here has reduced by almost 80%. This means there is less work. While I have not been personally affected because I work with multiple people, many musicians have been starved of opportunities,” said Banerjee, who arranged the music for Tapa Tini from Bela Shuru.
While the problems affected directors and producers most directly, some actors said they too had felt the impact of a “ban culture”.
Actor Rituparna Sengupta said work opportunities should be distributed more fairly. “There should be mechanisms to ensure people are getting their rightful share of work. Everyone in this industry needs work. If only a few people are working while the rest are not, that is not right. There should be parity, and these issues need attention,” she said.
Actor Gaurav Chakrabarty said the industry had become too closely intertwined with politics.
“Politics and the functioning of the industry came too close to each other. They should have remained separate. This overlap creates situations where people who are not part of the core filmmaking ecosystem end up deciding how the industry should function,” he said.
Studio owners are hopeful the restructuring will attract more productions.
“We are looking for more production, more serials, more channels and more people from outside Bengal working here. Business is down. Even ad shoots moved out of Bengal because the environment was not conducive and certain conditions were unfavourable. It was not cost-effective, and there were concerns about shoots being stalled,” said Tejas Doshi, managing director of Indrapuri Studios.