New Delhi: Oscar-winning British film director David Lean visited Pune’s FTII (Film and Television Institute of India) campus in the early 1960s, watched a bunch of short films made by the students and tersely told the teachers, “Something is wrong with your teaching,” reveals a new book brought out to celebrate 60 years of the institution.

The attention-grabbing nugget is part of an article written by Hindi film director Sriram Raghavan (Johnny Gaddaar, Andhadhun) following a conversation with actor-director Asrani. Both are FTII graduates. Asrani, who belonged to the first batch, was in the campus when the Oscar-winning director made his visit.

Lean (Lawrence Of Arabia) made his remark after noticing that the diploma films made by the students were derivative in nature. “I can tell you which shot is from which German or Czech or French film. You should watch the films of V Shantaram and Bimal Roy too,” he said, according to the article.

For the record, FTII went on to produce many first-rate directors and actors: Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Shaji Karun, Subhash Ghai, Jaya Bhaduri, Shabana Azmi, Naseeuddin Shah, Om Puri, Rajkummar Rao, to name a few.

Raghavan further writes that Lean had come to India on a holiday with his fourth wife Leila Matkar who had relatives in Kolhapur. At that time the sets of Dr Zhivago were being erected in Madrid. “He was dressed in a bush shirt and pants and was wearing Kolhapuri chappals,” Asrani told him. 

Interestingly, the British filmmaker’s name also figured in the interview of award-winning Malayalam film director Shaji Karun (Piravi). He had applied for a seat in FTII’s cinematography course and was quizzed about his views on the photography in David Lean’s films.

“The simple confidence that soon I would be on the train back home gave me the audacity to openly expose my lack of knowledge of the subject,” says Karun self-deprecatingly in the book, “Being FTII: Perspectives on the Film and Television Institute of India.”