The Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) has been in the news, for good reasons. The Chairman of the board, Pahlaj Nihalani, got into several verbal tussles with acclaimed film-makers on censorship issues, while the ‘Udta Punjab’ episode raised question on the film-maker turned bureaucrat’s credibility. Now, the board and its chairman are in trouble over the certification given to a compilation film.
Shor Se Shuruaat, a compendium of short stories, released on December 15th and opened to some rave reviews. The short stories have been helmed by some of the biggest names in the industry like like Homi Adajania, Zoya Akhtar, Imitiaz Ali, and Nagesh Kukunoor. Shor Se Shuruaat features short films in both Hindi and English. As per CBFC rules, films in different languages must be certified individually. However, the movie was passed with an overall U/A certificate, despite the explicit content it is supposed to contain.
The CBFC Chairman admits to contorting rules for Shor Se Shuruaat. He said, “…this was because we believe the film brings forth new, talented directors trained by filmmakers like Shyam Benegalji, and Mira Nair. Each film is socially relevant and so we’ve allowed it a certain amount of creative leverage. The last short, Mia I Am, directed by Satish Raj Kasireddy is in English, and should’ve been certified separately. However, we allowed it to be certified along with the other Hindi shorts, for the sake of creative convenience. In fact, the English movie does not deserve the U/A, but an A certification.”
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Nihalani reveals that in spite of bending the guidelines, the makers of Shor Se Shuruaat have been crying foul against the censor board. “We cut only one word – ‘chutiya’ – from the 6 short stories in Hindi. The word was part of Atul Kulkarni’s dialogues. The last story, Mia I Am, in English was strongly sexual with dialogues like ‘Suck me’ and ‘mother-fu…’ –we’ve never allowed the ‘mf’ expletive in any film–we had to remove because it was going with the other stories that clearly deserved a ‘UA’. And yet we are being accused of double standards by people associated with this project. Now when the film is released we will be asked why we allowed the explicit content in the last story. Clearly the censor board is in a no-win situation.”