Kochi: The High Court on Wednesday struck down the decision of the ministry of information and broadcasting (I&B) to deny censorship exemption to two documentary films which were barred from screening at the Xth International Documentary Short Film Festival of Kerala (IDSFFK) in June.
The court, which cleared the two movies, March March March and The Unbearable Being of Lightness for screening, refused to clear the censor ban on In The Shade of Fallen Chinar, the documentary on Kashmir.
The Unbearable Being of Lightness by P N Ramachandra and March, March, March by Kathu Lukose were given the green signal while the HC upheld the I&B's decision not to give censor clearance to In The Shade of Fallen Chinar, directed by Shawn Sebastian and Fazil N.C.
The makers of the film had approached the court seeking to upturn the union information and broadcasting ministry's order gagging.
"Even though we couldn't screen the films in the festival, the Academy believed that the fight must go on. I hope the judgment would probably help in the future to screen my film in other festivals," Ramachandra said.
In The Shade of Fallen Chinar, an engaging political commentary, was directed by Shawn Sebastian and Fazil N.C and was shot in the Kashmir valley merely days before the death of Burhan Wani, which had triggered widespread protests in the restive valley.
A conversative plot revolving around a generation of Kashmiris who grew up in the 1990s when militancy was at its peak, the work had attracted rave reviews.
Tracing its way through the life of young artists who are students at the Kashmir University, it talks about art as catharsis and resistance in the strife-torn Valley.
March March March, a film on the protests in Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University, and The Unbearable Being of Lightness, which has a plot with the backdrop of the Hyderabad University scholar Rohit Vemula's suicide had also irked the union government's censors.
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