The announcement by the Tamil Nadu government allowing post-production work on films and television projects to resume from May 11 was welcomed by the Tamil film industry.
Stating that unions have been instructed to strictly comply with the norms in place for resuming work, R.K. Selvamani, president, Film Employees’ Federation of South India (FEFSI) said that this would greatly benefit projects on which work has been at a standstill since March.
“Nearly 10-15% of technicians can now resume work. As a next step, we are hoping that shoots for television shows will resume since this will impact nearly 40% of the workers and enable them to get back to work,” he said.
The Federation had announced a break from shoots and post-production work from March 19, owing to the lockdown announced across the country to prevent the spread of COVID 19. Theaters too have remained shut.
G. Dhananjayan, film producer said that there were nearly 50 projects, stuck in various stages of post-production, on which work would now resume. “We had appealed to the government that even if it is unclear as to when movies can release, we should be allowed to finish post-production work on pending projects. We were asked to ensure that safety norms would be followed and that technicians would adhere to the rules with regard to how many people are allowed to work together at a time,” he said.
Mr. Dhananjayan has been part of a delegation from the film and television industry that had appealed to the Tamil Nadu government to let them begin post-production work and thanked it for allowing them to resume work. Recently, the Kerala government too had announced that they would allow post-production work on films to resume from May 4 for the Malayalam film industry.
