Abrupt withdrawal of film by Kolkata theatres draws flak

Shubhadeep Choudhury
Tribune News Service
Kolkata, February 17

Eyebrows are being raised in Kolkata over the abrupt disappearance of the Bengali film,"Bhabishyater Bhoot" from city multiplexes.

For Kunal Sen, the USA-based son of filmmaker late Mrinal Sen, the incident is reminiscent of the Emergency days. According to Sen, what is happening now is worse than Emergency.

In a Facebook post, Sen wrote that he came to know that a film that was released on Friday was suddenly pulled out of all theatres in Kolkata the following day. 

"The director of the film happens to be my personal friend, and I was keen on watching it. I knew that the ruling party was not happy with him because he was critical of the administration. But I could not imagine that a film can be shut down without any legal process or explicit reason. I heard that Kolkata Police wanted to see the film a couple of days before the release, but the filmmaker refused because it is well beyond their jurisdiction, since the Indian Censor Board already approved the film", Sen wrote.

Sen, wholives in Chicago, then recalled how "Chorus"( 1974)  - one of his father's most explicitly anti-establishment film - was shown by the Doordarshan in the height of the Emergency announced by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

"Bhabhishyoter Bhoot" (literal meaning: Ghosts of Future) is directed by Anik Dutta whose previous movie "Bhooter Bhobishyot" was a comedy in which the main characters were all ghosts. 

Ghosts are present in abundance in Dutt's latest movie too. But, though a political satire, it does not single out anyone in particular for heaping insult. "This movie has not targeted any particular political party", reviewer Debasmita Das has written.

According to CPI(M) mouthpiece "Ganashakti", Dutta is being punished by the state government for his daring remarks during the Kolkata International Film Festival held in last November.

Outraged by the excessive presence of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's posters and cutouts in the main venue of the film festival, Dutta had said nowhere else in the world a political leader could be so ubiquitous in a film festival.

According to sources, no directive has been officially issued for withdrawal of the film from theatres. Theatre owners were contacted from jurisdictional police stations and asked to stop the screening of the movie.  

When the director asked some of the theatre owners why they suddenly stopped screening the movie, the answer given was that "server was down".  Dutt says how server can be down in so many theatres simultaneously - and that too for his movie alone?

Last year, when there was a big controversy over the release of the film "Padmaavat", Mamata Banerjeehad accused the Narendra Modi-led government at the centre of imposing "super-emergency" in the country.