Anuparna Roy
This initiative has been inspired by the 1995 Danish Dogme 95 avant-garde movement—founded by Lars von Trier, Thomas Vinterberg, Søren Kragh-Jacobsen, and Kristian Levring to strip Hollywood artifice and special effects in favour of pure storytelling, natural lighting, handheld cameras and strict production rules known as the ‘Vow of Chastity’. Roy’s message came on a day students announced a series of independent film-making workshops and screenings under the banner, ‘Cinema as a Weapon of Resistance’, amid police presence on campus and restrictions on outsiders.
Roy said that a film school must be a place, where students were “free to question authority”. “Some students questioned why the right-wing group ABVP was allowed on their campus to hold a meeting,” she said in her video, mentioning the violence against students on Sept 27 and Oct 4. Roy told TOI : “After the second attack, more than ten were reportedly hospitalised, including one with a serious head injury. This incident, she said, raised “a fundamental question” for her. When the freedom to question is taken away, education becomes propaganda,” she said, quoting Kazi Nazrul Islam’s ‘Bidrohi’ that “the spirit of rebellion must never be rusticated”.
The students questioned why no FIR was registered against their attackers. Instead of addressing their concerns, the administration turned against them. Six students received rustication notices, and an FIR was filed against one. “When students are attacked for questioning the authority, why are they the ones being punished? A film school must teach us to see critically, to question, and to speak freely. We cannot allow those very freedoms to be crushed within the institute. You cannot beat students into silence. You cannot punish them into submission. Rusticating students for raising their voices is not democracy, it is dictatorship wearing the mask of institutional authority. An institute meant to nurture critical thought cannot survive by punishing dissent. The ‘Cinema as a Weapon of Resistance’ is led by ‘Saat Khoon Maaf’ cinematographer and National Award-winning documentary filmmaker Ranjan Palit, followed by a special screening of his film, ‘A Knock on the Door’.