The Screen Goes Blank

The I&B ministry has decided to bring the curtains down on the Directorate of Film Festivals (DFF)—the sole public organiser of film festivals in the country and abroad. In future, the ministry will call the shots directly. The DFF, with two dozen officials, has been organising the international film festival (IFFI) in the country for as long as one can remember. It was also responsible for preparing the list of national film awardees—an annual ritual conducted with all the ceremonial trappings of sarkari functions. But it was also these two events which often found the DFF in the eye of some controversy or the other year after year. What critics did not know was that the all-important decisions were anyway taken by the I&B minister and his officials. The recommendation for the directorate’s closure was made way back in 2000 when the Expenditure Reforms Commission reccomended that it be shut down—as it was "not performing any useful function".