E-Paper
This Act frustrates cinema owners? digital love
THEIR DIGITAL passion has begun. But, the Act is not letting them go like an old karma! Yes! City cinema owners want digital downloads and not the old cans of polyester films from Mumbai distributors.
THEIR DIGITAL passion has begun. But, the Act is not letting them go like an old karma! Yes! City cinema owners want digital downloads and not the old cans of polyester films from Mumbai distributors.
But, the UP Cinematography Act does not allow screening of movies digitally downloaded on servers of digital projectors in cinemas. The Act allows only those films to be screened in the cinema houses which are available on conventional polyester coated films.
The cinema exhibitors in the city are now demanding the Act to be amended for enabling them to screen digitally downloaded movies received via satellite from film distributors. Ironically, Devdas was the first Hindi movie on which a pilot “e-cinema” run was conducted in a cinema in Uttar Pradesh. However, nothing whatsoever happened thereafter.
The Uttar Pradesh Film Industry Policy has this to say : “The onslaught of TV, VCR and now Cable Television has drastically affected the fortunes of film industry. The decline in the number of cine-goers has led to widespread closure of cinemas and deterioration in the maintenance and services of the surviving ones. The States recognise the importance of high quality cinema exhibition facilities for the proper growth of film industry.”
The policy further states: “It ( the Government) is, however, also convinced, that cine-goers will return to cinemas only if viewing films there provides a different experience from home-viewing. It will therefore, encourage upgradation of physical comforts and technology in cinemas.
To achieve this objective a scheme for the technical upgradation of existing cinemas is proposed”.
In the age of satellite television , when cinema exhibitors are willing to digitally download movies for screening, the UP Cinematography Act should be suitably amended to make the laws more relevant in the current era, Sharad Khandelwal, General Secretary of the UP Cinema Exhibitors Federation told HT Lucknow Live.
He said that a cinema owner in Bharaich was not offered permission by the government authorities when he tried to digitally download a movie for screening some time back in the state. “Since the UP Cinematography Act is a State subject, we request the government to bring about suitable amendments to the Act at the earliest”, he said.
“The digitally downloaded films if screened in cinema houses could help in combating the menace of video piracy which is eating into the business of cinema exhibitors while also causing great revenue losses to the state exchequer”, he said.
Khandelwal said that most states in the country including Gujarat, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh already allow digitally downloaded movies to be screened in the cinema houses.
On the other hand, millions of Home PC owners across the state digitally download Hollywood movies via the internet and watch them in the comfort of their homes every month. However, the very same movie lovers still prefer to watch a film again on a large screen in a cinema house to enjoy the special effects which are not as entertaining on high resolution plasma screens of television sets , commented a manager employed with an Internet Service Provider (ISP) in the city.
And with the dream of Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) only a few years away from becoming a reality, the cinema exhibitors are demanding a level playing field to be able to digitally download movies for screening purposes in the city, he added.
