6 times Censor Board's ridiculousness was proved beyond doubt

PARAMBRATA CHATTERJEE
FACED PROBLEMS WITH ANIMAL SHOTS IN LORAI
I've faced many hurdles from the censors, but the funniest ones have to do with norms on showing animals. Which is why you can show someone eating mutton, but can't show a goat. Take the example of Lorai, where there is a shot with chickens, 95% of which were computer generated. The rest were candid shots, where we filmed the animals from a distance without disturbing them. But I faced problems even after sending two DVDs to the censors -one with the entire film and the other showing how the candid shots were taken. After much deliberation, they agreed. But I've realized that the officials there are not bothered about the animals but are more concerned about their own powers.

ANIRUDDHA ROY CHOWDHURY
GOT AN 'A' FOR SHOWING EXTRAMARITAL AFFAIR IN APARAJITA TUMI
I was given an 'A' for Aparajita Tumi because the content was very bold, I was told. They said the film showed an extramarital affair and the rating was justified. Can you believe this in the 21st century? In Buno Haansh, I was asked to delete a scene where Tanusree would kiss Dev on his back. This time the reason was that it was a bed scene. laughed since the two of them were shown sitting on a bed. But I didn't delete the shot. They then had issues with dialogues, which I had to delete. Tell me, will underworld people speak Sanskrit? They are expected to use cuss words! Cinema is a reflection of social, economic and political conditions and there are sex, cuss words, love, hatred -everything! But, censors don't have problems if a girl does pelvic thrusts in a song.

MAINAK BHAUMIK
DELETED REFERENCES TO AN AFFAIR WITH A MINOR IN AAMI AAR AMAR GIRLFRIENDS
In Aami Aar Amar Girlfriends I wanted to show an affair between a schoolteacher and her student. But the censoring authority felt this was illegal, so I had to change every frame where Swastika's character refers to him in front of her friends Parno and Raima. So lines like “he's 16“ or “don't f*** a minor“ had to be snipped. This, in a world that has literary masterpieces like Lolita. And even if I showed it, I wasn't allowed to speak about it. The rulebook logic that was since it was a crime and I didn't show any redemption, it could not be allowed.Who the f*** is anyone to tell me the fate of my characters?

RAJ CHAKRABARTY
WAS PULLED UP FOR PISSING SCENE IN PROLOY
Why constrain directors with rules like banned cuss words? Thank God they've put it on hold.Why not educate people instead, since cinema reflects what we see in real life? I remember, in Proloy, there was a shot of a goon, played by Rudranil Ghosh, pissing on the face of an old man (Paran Bandyopadhyay).Later, Saswata Chatterjee's character takes revenge on the goon by doing the same to him. But the censor board had a huge problem with these two sequences. I explained that no one would actually be pissing, but they maintained that it could not be shown. I had to cut these two scenes, but when I asked them why no one stops people from pissing in public, they didn't have an answer.

ANINDYA CHATTOPADHYAY
SNIPPED SCENE THAT HAD A RELIGIOUS REFERENCE IN OPEN TEE BIOSCOPE
Freedom of expression is a democratic right. But the way the censor board is going, we filmmakers will be throttled, since there will be no freedom of expression in cinema, which is supposed to portray what is happening around us. I had to delete a line in Open Tee Bioscope which went -“joto mod, tato pawd" -basically, more booze calls for more food. But the censors felt it would hurt Bengali sentiments as it is a take on the adage, joto mot toto poth! Again, another scene had kids doing a rock step trying to imitate Ramkrishna Parmahansa's pose in a calendar picture. But board members felt it would hurt religious sentiments and I had to delete the scene. My film is about young children growing up where they learn slang, smoke, have interest in girls and sex — and I wanted to show all of this. How else could I make my film realistic?And the narrative of a film follows an internal logic. So how can anyone control my thought process?

KAMALESWAR MUKHERJEE
HAD TO CUT SCENE OF CHARGING ELEPHANT IN CHANDER PAHAR ON GROUNDS OF VIOLENCE
Cinema will suffer if arbitrary rules are imposed by the censor board. We live in a free country where we are entitled to think and see what we want to. One can't show violence on a woman in films, but it can happen in reality every second — how convenient is that? Are those sitting in the censor board born with a superior authority to decide on and dictate our thought process? In Chander Pahar, there is a scene where Dev kills a lion, but it couldn't be shown. We had to make do with a shot of blood splash. We wouldn't have killed a lion in reality, right? But even that was not allowed by the censor board! Again, we had to cut another scene in which elephants were running towards Dev. The censors felt it was too violent!