The Kerala Film Chamber is set to move contempt of court proceedings against the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) over its insistence on censor-screening of films through private player Qube cinema, despite a court order staying it.
Independent film-makers and producers had come out against the rule issued earlier this year, saying they were at a disadvantage as Rs. 50,000 had to be paid to the private company for every screening.
“Till last year, we had to pay only the censoring fees to the Board that came to Rs. 22,000. We just had to submit the film in High Definition format in hard disks. Now, the CBFC is saying we can submit our films only through Qube cinemas, a private company. To load the film into their server, we have to shell out Rs. 50,000, in addition to the censoring fees, which is a tall order for independent film-makers. If there are changes made during censoring, we have to again pay money to load the updated copy,” says film-maker Sanal Kumar Sasidharan.
Court orders stay
In August, the Film Chamber moved the High Court against this new rule, which went against the interests of the film-makers. The court issued a stay order on August 19, asking the regional censor board not to insist on seeing films in Qube.
A. Prathibha, Regional Officer of the CBFC, says: “We did not force anyone to censor films through Qube. The fact is that no one came to us with films in hard disks. The CBFC came up with this rule to ensure quality of prints and to prevent leakage.”
Senthil Kumar, co-founder, Qube Cinema: “The CBFC asked for films to be submitted as Digital Cinema Packages (DCPs) that are encrypted so that any leakage could be eliminated. Nowhere does CBFC specify Qube.”
