Panel formed to decide on FTII admission policy
NEW DELHI: A team of eminent personalities in the field of cinema, including a recipient of eight National Film Awards and a three-time Filmfare Award winner, is going to have an unusual collaboration with a group comprising a doctor, a lawyer and an academician.
They are getting together for a scholastic reason, thanks to the Supreme Court, which has asked them to ascertain if colour blind candidates should be kept away from some courses at the prestigious Film and Television Institute of India (FTII).
A bench of justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and MM Sundresh has also entrusted the task of determining whether a person’s inability to distinguish between certain colours will have a serious impact on their eye for cinematic beauty to the committee of seven experts, which includes a film editor, a director, a colourist, a script supervisor, a course creator, an ophthalmologist, and a lawyer.
The committee comprises National Film Award winner film editor Akkineni Sreekar
Prasad, Filmfare Award winner director and cinematographer Ravi K Chandran, well-known colourist Swapnil Patole, script supervisor Shubha Ramachandra, FTII’s head of department (editing) Rajasekharan, ophfilm thalmologist Jignesh Taswala, and advocate Shoeb Alam.
“To facilitate a more comprehensive exercise, the role of the committee would be to opine on the aspect of the colour blindness qua all the courses for which it is perceived as a disqualification. We would expect the committee to give its report within three months,” said the bench in a recent order.
As reported first by HT on December 1, the court had decided to review FTII’s admission criteria with respect to colour blind candidates on a plea by Patna-based Ashutosh Kumar, who convinced the Supreme Court to consider whether he should be barred from admission to FTII just because he is colour blind. Kumar, 35, applied for the three-year postgraduate diploma course in film editing at FTII in 2015, and was also shortlisted for the course. But his candidature was declined after he was found to be colour blind during the medical examination. The authorities cited FTII Rules, which state that colour blind candidates are not fit for admission in a few courses, including film editing.