After calling off 139-day strike, FTII students plan protests at IFFI

Pune: After calling off their 139-day strike and getting eminent filmmakers to join their protest, the FTII students are mulling their next move. They have dropped hints about “big plans” around the upcoming International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa. The annual festival is set to begin on 20 November. [caption id=“attachment_2488106” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image. AFP[/caption] The students, who went on strike on 12 June to protest the appointment of Gajendra Chauhan as the Film and Television Institute of India chairman, called off their strike on Wednesday. The classes will resume next week. But the students have said protests will continue in a “peaceful and democratic manner”, thus escalating the matter further. Ranjit Nair, spokesperson for the FTII Students Association, told IANS: “Classes begin next week. In the meantime, we are encouraging big filmmakers to come out and support us. Planning for IFFI.” Many eminent filmmakers like Dibakar Banerjee and Anand Patwardhan returned various government awards and honours to extend their support to the agitating FTII students on Wednesday, only hours after students ended their strike and three prominent FTII alumni returned their awards. With this, they also wanted to express their disappointment against impediments to freedom of speech and expression. Besides Banerjee and Patwardhan, the filmmakers who returned their awards on Wednesday were Paresh Kamdar, Nishtha Jain, Kirti Nakhwa, Harshavardhan Kulkarni, Hari Nair, Rakesh Sharma, Indraneel Lahiri and Lipika Singh Darai. The three FTII alumni who gave up their honours were Vikrant Pawar, Rakesh Shukla and Prateek Vats. IANS