At a press conference held in South Mumbai on Thursday, a letter was sent to the President, Pranab Mukherjee, appealing for his intervention in the ongoing crisis at Pune's Film and Television Institute of India (FTII). The impasse has been continuing since the appointment of Gajendra Chauhan as the FTII chairman on June 9.

The letter has been signed by around 190 National Award winners. Some of the prominent signatories were filmmakers Sriram Raghavan, Kundan Shah, Hansal Mehta, Dibakar Banerjee, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Oscar winning editor Resul Pookutty and actress Vidya Balan.

Surabhi Sharma, a 1998 FTII graduate and documentary filmmaker, was one of the key organisers. She said that the film fraternity has been concerned about these protests which have continued for the last three months with no solution. “We hope the letter makes a difference. If the voices of so many National Award winners don't matter, then nothing will,“ asserted Surabhi, adding that the same letter would be sent to the Prime Minister's Office and Information & Broadcasting Ministry.

Kundan Shah wants the government to reconsider their decision.“They have made a wrong appointment. We want the government to sit with the students and hear them out. This appointment was a political decision, why should the students suffer for it?“ he argued. “I've been told that they are continuing with their studies outside the classroom on their own, but films are not being made.“

Mehta echoes his views, “This is not only about FTII and the students but also about the level of resistance. Everyday some ban or the other is being imposed, someone has to raise his voice. In this case the students have stood up against the interference of the government. Now the government should accept that it has made a mistake in the appointment of the FTII Chairman and dissolve the committee temporarily. Then let the eminent practitioners of arts and culture come together and draft an appropriate process for the appointment of the committee,“ he says.