By Our Reporter
SHILLONG: Moral policing seems to be the new mantra of Meghalaya Police. A case in point is the move of the State Police to scrutinize a documentary before screening it.
The screening of the documentary Red Ant Dream scheduled to have a Shillong premiere at the INDIE8 film festival organised by St Anthony’s College, has been cancelled following the demand of the Meghalaya police to ‘vet’ the film before it can be screened.
According to filmmaker Tarun Bhartiya, the film has already been screened across the country and is scheduled for screening in premiere institutions around the world. He termed this move by the State Police as an arbitrary misuse of power.
“This demand contradicts even the guidelines of the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, which states that documentary film screenings that are undertaken during film festivals are exempted even from Censor Certification,” Bhartiya said.
He also stated that the filmmakers would have no objections if it was just the festival preview committee which wanted to preview the film again because films for the festivals can and should only be selected by those who understand and appreciate films.
“But the police department should have no role to play in that preview because their action goes against all traditions of film culture in our country and their need to ‘vet’ the film here is an arbitrary action that is inconsistent with the history of film screenings in the country,” he said, adding that the film preview committee by selecting and advertising the film for the festival had in fact already found it suitable for screening.
It was learnt that in the past two months, the film has already been screened in educational institutions as varied as DAV College, Amritsar; Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai; Mount Carmel College, Bangalore and National Law School, Bangalore. And public screenings have even taken place in kashmir. Red Ant Dream has also been screened by Government institutions like FDzone of Films Division in Mumbai, National Film Archives of India, Pune and others without any police ‘oversight’.
When contacted, East Khasi Hills Superintendent of Police (City) Vivek Syiem said that the police only wanted to preview the film to make sure that the film does not have any radical views, contents and connotation but they never asked the College authority to drop the film.
Stating that some portion of the film talks about Maoists, Syiem said, “We are not averse to the film being screened but the police will intervene into any law and order issue. Our concern is that the film screening should not have any influence on the viewers who are mostly college students considering the vulnerability of the region in terms of militancy.”
He also stated that the college authority did not give a copy of the film to the police and added that the film does not fit with the theme of the Festival.