Here lie the critics, RIP!

FOR THOSE of you who feel droopy this Sunday morning because of no new film releases this week-end, here is a bit of cheer if you happen to be an exhibitor or distributor. The Vajpayee Government has declared film critics (FCs) an extinct species.

Even at the best of times the FCs held on precariously to their slippery perch in spaces between dangerous species and endangered species, inviting an astonishing range of colourful epithets. One producer whose film looked like a deluxe edition of a `girlie' magazine called them ``blind as a bat''. Another of the same ilk called the FCs ``scavengers of the cultural dustbin''. Then there were the makers of ``Cleopatra'' (starring Liz Taylor) who ruefully regretted having submitted their masterpiece to the mercies of ``the professional butchers''

At the Golden Gate Awards presentation ceremony in San Francisco in 1995 the master of ceremonies announced my name as member of the jury ``who has been writing on cinema since 1950''. There was thunderous applause. ``Stand up, Man,'' the French critic sitting next to me said, ``this is for you.'' As I struggled to my feet, a dozen people rushed to shake hands with me. Referring to the commotion, and to my bewilderment, the bemused critic said, ``All this is because you are older than God.'' In a young society, age may have its fascination.

Ours being an ancient society, anyone who can remember as far back as Sardar Patel, India's first Information Minister, is positively an embarrassment, particularly when the scene at New Delhi's Shastri Bhavan, the seat of the Union I&B Ministry, resembles a railway platform. No one knows who is coming or going. Here if you try to talk to anyone about how L.K. Advani handled this Ministry they will probably would ask you: Advani who? There have been no fewer than three I& B Ministers in the Vajpayee Government, including the present incumbent, Ms. Sushma Swaraj, in a brief two-year spell.

There was a time when the National Awards were handled with far greater care. Many of us still fondly recall how Dr. Radhakrishnan used the occasion to provide moral guidance to film-makers and explained to us the final objectives of art. Year after year Presidents emphasised the social relevance of cinema, advising us to desist from glamorising the cult of sex and violence, drawing our attention to the roots and the richness of Indian traditions and culture.

There is now complete disorientation of the National Film Awards. Normally the Awards function is followed by a public screening of the award-winning films. This practice has now been abandoned. No one seems to care if there is any impact of the awards-giving exercise which it was supposed to have. After all, the parallel cinema was entirely the gift of the National Film Awards and the combined efforts of other government agencies such as FTII, FFC, and the directorate of International Film Festivals. The film critics were then treated by the Government as collaborators. When at a function in Vigyan Bhavan the critics were being relegated to the back seats, as they have been during the last function, the Principal Information Officer, Mr. Bhardwaj, was quick to point out to his Minister, ``Critics are not onlookers. They are part of the show.'' They were put back on the front seats of the auditorium.

The handsome Mr. Arun Jaitley performed like a minister-in- attendance when the President, Mr. K.R. Narayanan, gave away the awards this year which was more than many other Ministers had done before him. It was only incidental that the strategic space he had to occupy in the line of his duty gave him on TV just as much exposure as it did to Mr. Narayanan or the recipient of the award. But no one, of course, noticed it. The same evening he hosted a dinner at a place other than the State-run Ashok Hotel, showing his preference for the private sector, to which critics were not invited. You can't blame anyone for this lapse. The young Vajpayee acolyte had not been there long enough to learn that I&B Ministers do not hold dinners after the awards function for the benefit of their cocktail circuit ``cronies'' but to provide an opportunity to himself and his staff to interact with the professionals to get acquainted with their views, as someone who did attend the dinner observed.

In the olden days these dinners had served the medium well. The setting up of the Directorate of Festivals was suggested by critics to Mr. Inder Gujral on a similar occasion. Ministers also received suggestions about the working of the Films Division, the Censor Board, the FFC and freely discussed them. On a similar occasion one minister was persuaded to approve the idea of holding a documentary film festival.

It was just as well that Mr. Jaitley did not invite the critics who might have asked him some awkward questions. The fact is no one in the Vajpayee Government seems clear about the future of the facilities created and conceptualised during the Nehru era by the I & B Ministry to improve the level of aesthetics in cinema. Was that the reason why the President maintained a meaningful silence this year while giving away the National Awards?

That brings us to another question: Has the medium lost its momentum? There was a time when it attracted the attention of the likes of Nehru, Shastri, Indira Gandhi, even Morarji Desai. In 1964 -- or was it `65? -- as a Filmfare staffer I was surprised to find a leading light of Bharatiya Jana Sangh, none other than Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, walking in to attend the Filmfare Awards function at the Shanmukhananda Hall in Bombay. I had the privilege of escorting him to his seat. His Government now thinks critics are extinct. No harm in that, except that it is indicative of the absence of a clear film policy. Then why run organisations like FFC, DIFF, FTII or even Films Division? Isn't it a waste of public funds?

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