Shiladitya Bora, CEO, Drishyam Films, (middle) Sudhish Kamath, director and Manish Mundra, promoter, Drishyam Films
Eleven co-directors of X: Past Is Present claim not paid by Drishyam Films, producer mulls legal action instead
Shaheen Parkar (MID-DAY; August 14, 2016)

The collaborative feature film, X: Past Is Present, with 11 directors on board, has been billed as a singularly unique experiment in filmmaking. However, it has now run into troubled waters.

The filmmakers — Abhinav Shiv Tiwari, Anu Menon, Nalan Kumarasamy, Hemant Gaba, Pratim D Gupta, Q, Raja Sen, Rajshree Ojha, Sandeep Mohan, Sudhish Kamath and Suparn Verma — claim they are still awaiting their dues from producer Manish Mundra of Drishyam Films. The banner's projects include the recent award-winning Punjabi film Chauthi Koot as well as Neeraj Ghaywan’s Masaan (2015).

Kamath argued, “It is a betrayal on many levels. We have given them adequate time. We were operating on good faith, but realised that they [the producers] are not making any efforts to sell the film or censor it for TV. They just wanted to get rid of it. We are all co-producers and we were experimenting with a different kind of cinema being made by people from different parts of the country. I recently mailed Manish Mundra saying that it’s okay not to pay me, but he should at least pay the others. To which he replied, ‘You are a real pain in the a***!’ After that he disappeared. What is so shameless when directors and writers ask for money? The master and slave mentality of the producers need to change.”

However, Shiladitya Bora, CEO, Drishyam Films, argued, “Kamath had signed a contract with us which clearly states everything. All the allegations are baseless. We are planning legal action. We have provided the contracts to our lawyers. They are working on it and we will get a clearer picture next week. We do not want to comment about the tweets because then there will be no end [to this mud-slinging]. We have done more than what was needed; there was no default. We can provide all documents.”

Earlier this week, Kamath took to Twitter to vent ire over the non-payment of fee. He posted a series of telling tweets which read: “Drishyam Films has infringed upon the copyright of the original authors & does not have the authorisation from us to distribute the film. All channels and networks distributing XPast isPresent are infringing upon the copyright of 11 writer directors who haven’t yet been paid. We did put in money as coproducers but the terms kept changing because Mr Manish Mundra wanted solo producer credit.”

Rajat Kapoor, Anshuman Jha, Radhika Apte and Swara Bhaskar feature in the film.

How the drama unfolded

X: Past Is Present released in November 2015 after doing the rounds of various film festivals. The idea to make the film took shape in 2013. Sudhish Kamath approached the other 10 filmmakers and got the project got rolling. Early this week, he claimed that the directors were not paid by Drishyam Films and anyone dealing with the project on any platform amounted to copyright infringement.