Diploma film show today marks end of 2008 batch’s stay at FTII

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Both students and administration, however, agreed that it was a “complex issue”.

It was also the issue of 2008 batch – Director Prashant Pathrabe had told these students to leave the campus after an ‘as is where is’ assessment of their incomplete projects – which led to a major face-off between the students and administration during last year’s strike which culminated in Pathrabe being “forcibly confined” to his cabin by students in August 2015.

Lately, the administration resorted to strong measures to make these students leave the campus, which included a series of notices, informing their parents and even threatening a Rs 500 fine for each day of “overstay”. The students, however, argued that they would only leave the campus only after they finished their work on diploma films.

Of the 12 films as part of students’ projects, six were stuck in the post-production process until August 2015. All have now been completed and five of them have also been screened at the institute in the last one month. The sixth diploma film will be screened on Tuesday.

“None of us wanted to stay here for the fun of it. We were stuck here not for our faults but for the mistakes and ill-planning on the part of the institute administration. In the last one month, the teams whose diploma films were screened have already left the campus. They have moved to Mumbai or have gone to their home town or have started working on some projects. It’s not fun to be stuck at one place,” said Swapnil Ninawe, a student of the 2008 batch who has moved to Mumbai.

Meanwhile, the admission process which involved interviews and orientation for the new film batch are on at the campus.