December 6, 2017
Makers of "S Durga" can screen the controversial film at
other film festivals and the 48th IFFI, which did not screen it, should be
remembered for good cinema rather than the controversies which erupted during
it, a festival organiser said on Tuesday.
Addressing a press conference
here, Rajendra Talak, Vice Chairperson of the Entertainment Society of Goa
(ESG), a co-host of the festival along with National Film Development
Corporation, also said that occupancy at the festival here last month was nearly
100 per cent for all film screenings.
Asked about the controversy
generated by the Sanal Kumar Sasidharan film, which was not screened at the
festival despite a prolonged tussle between the festival director and the Union
Information and Broadcasting Ministry, he said: "Let us focus on good cinema
happening, rather than a small part of a minor controversy. There are other
festivals, so let them screen there".
"S Durga" was dropped from the
screening schedule of the Indian Panorama section of the IFFI along with another
film "Nude", triggering controversy. Sasidharan intensified his fight for
"justice" with a petition at the Kerala High Court last week.
The court
directed IFFI to screen the film at the festival after a censored version of the
movie was screened for the jury, which voted 7-4 in favour of screening it, a
day before the festival was to close on November 28.
However, on the
closing day, the Central Board for Film Certification stepped in claiming that
the change in title of the film from "Sexy Durga" to "S Durga" and then to "Sxxx
Durga" was questionable, and banned the film from being screened at the festival
until a fresh certificate was obtained by the filmmaker.
The film had
already travelled to dozens of film festivals globally, before it was scheduled
to be screened at IFFI, which started in the coastal state on November 20.
Talak also justified the drop in the number of delegates to the festival
from 15,000 in 2013 to 7,113 this year, claiming that the reason for the high
number of delegate registered in the past was due to free delegate passes and
day passes which were allotted by the organisers, a practice which has since
been discontinued.
"Around 7,000 to 8,000 is the perfect number of
delegates. You can see the occupancy for film screenings this year. It was
almost 100 per cent," he said.
The official also said that there were
several Oscar-nominated films which were screened at the festival this year.
"This time we had many Oscar-nominated films... We won't be surprised if
tomorrow, the film which got the award (French film 120 BPM) here, may get an
Oscar. That is likely to happen, because that is the response that we got from
film critics," he said.