| NEW
DELHI: Faced with a possible boycott of the International Film Festival of India
commencing in Goa on 23 November, Information and Broadcasting ministry secretary
Asha Swarup has assured the Indian film industry that she will personally examine
the complaints regarding the Festival and the Directorate of Film Festivals.
She said that the
sanctity and respect of the Film Federation of India would be considered as sacrosanct
and it would continue to monitor the film industry registration process at IFFI
as has been happening in the past years. The
FFI, which had clamoured for shifting the festival out of Delhi in grounds of
bureaucratic interference some years earlier, is now wanting that the Festival
should be moved from Goa where it is being converted into a carnival with greater
emphasis on roadside entertainment than cinema. In
a meeting organized at the behest of Swarup in Delhi earlier this week, stalwarts
of the FFI, she said that in order to avoid the rush at auditoriums during screenings
resulting in genuine cinegoers missing films, the system will be streamlined by
starting a pre-registration scheme for the screenings on the lines of the Cannes
Film Festival. She added that new auditoriums were being built in Panaji and would
help in controlling the rush to a large extent. She
urged the FFI to choose 12 commercially successful films from all over the country
for the Indian mainstream section and assured them that these would be prominently
screened during the festival. These
issues will come up for discussion again at the film industry co-ordination committee
meeting to be chaired by FFI President G S Mayawala. But an FFI spokesperson told
Indiantelevision.com that these assurances came as a soothing balm for FFI who
had expressed certain reservations about participating in IFFI 2007.
The FFI also
raised the issues of the sudden hike in censorship fees and service tax on theatre
rentals. As
far as the censorship fee hike is concerned, the FFI members said a major section
of producers will face a lot of difficulties as these cost hikes will make a further
dent into their shoestring budgets. It was decided that the related issues will
be encapsulated in a memorandum to be submitted in the near future.
On the service
tax front, the secretary asked the FFI to submit a proper representation as this
would facilitate her in taking up the matter with the Finance ministry. | 
