‘CBFC should not have right to delete scenes from film’

KANPUR National Award-winning filmmaker Shyam Benegal said the censor board should not have the arbitrary rights to delete scenes from movies as it amounted to ‘killing the soul of a film’.

Benegal, who was in the city to inaugurate the Techkriti-18 at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT-K), said: “Directors take a lot of pain in making films keeping in mind the story and theme. Deletion of any scenes amounted to killing the soul of the story and message of the film.”

Benegal has been a critic of censorship and also headed a committee that suggested Censor Board of Film Certification (CBFC) should limit its functioning to issuing certificates to movies and not impose censoring.

Interacting with students he said research in film industry was must. Citing his own example, he said that he made most of his films after serious study and research on the subject. The veteran filmmaker said he was currently busy in producing

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Directors take a lot of pain in making films keeping in mind the story and theme. Deletion of any scenes amounted to killing the soul of the story

SHYAM BENEGAL, director

thought provoking feature films.

Noted actor Atul Tiwari, who was also part of the function, expressed his concern over the scarcity of good scripts in the film industry. “This is the reason why todays films have short life and people forget them very easily. If scarcity of good scripts continues the day was not far when people would stop watching films for their entertainment,” he said.