FTII impasse still on, yet another meeting on Wednesday

PUNE: The deadlock at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) continues, with the management and the students failing to arrive at a consensus at Tuesday’s meeting.
They will meet again on Wednesday — the fifth so far — over a two-week long stir over issues related to the infrastructure and syllabus.

After the marathon last meeting — on Friday — the management had claimed that a solution “was imminent” at Tuesday’s meeting. However, they admitted that some outstanding issues that needed to be ironed out came up for discussion on Tuesday, and will need another day to be solved.

Students have boycotted classes for more than two weeks over allegations that the infrastructure is inadequate for a number of practical assignments at the same time, and that the syllabus has not been structured on a lecture-by-lecture basis.

The stir was started by students of the art direction and cinematography departments of the 2017 batch, after which most other batches joined them in solidarity.

“We have another meeting scheduled with the students on Wednesday morning. Beyond the issues raised by the students in previous meetings, many other aspects also came up during the course of discussions, including the issues of initiatives taken by the heads of departments. We hope that Wednesday’s meeting is the one where we can resolve all the outstanding issues,” FTII director Bhupendra Kainthola told TOI.

“The management has offered us some compromises. They accepted the fact that we do not have enough space for sets, and offered us some technical liberty in terms of lighting. As for aspects like the syllabus, we are only offered a framework. That is also something we will raise tomorrow,” said a student of the cinematography department.