A lot rides on upcoming Producers’ Council election

What is the role of Producers’ Council, which is going to face election in February to select office bearers for the next two years? 

The Producers’ Council has a prime role in managing the Tamil film industry as other associations have to work with the Council to achieve their objectives. The Council has five primary roles, in addition to various administrative activities like membership registration, title registration and helping members  get special tariff in media advertisements, censor process etc. 

The first role is welfare of the members. The Council currently has 1,200 members. More than half are looking for Council’s support for medical insurance benefits, educational support to children, marriage expenses support, life insurance benefits, monthly retirement benefit etc. The Council has to ensure these welfare benefits regularly so that the members, who are in need of it are benefited. 

The second role is dispute resolution between the Council members and with other association members. This is a very important role as during filmmaking process, several issues arise between members of different associations and the Council has to resolve them amicably. Most disputes come up just before the release of a film due to financial issues and hence the office-bearers spend sleepless nights to resolve them and get the film released. 

The third role is liaison with government authorities and various trade bodies to ensure benefits such as film subsidies, state government awards, conducting film festivals, recognition to film personalities, support in film production through easy permission and reduced charges to shoot in public places, roads, parks etc. In the last four years, Tamil film industry did not connect well with the state government and hence the Council could not play this role effectively. The industry would have achieved better success, had there been a stronger association with the state government.  

The fourth role is business protection. As the office bearers focus more on first two roles, most often they leave out this crucial role, which ensures a better future for members and can motivate them to produce more films. However, this role is not easy as lot of work is required to protect the business of members in areas like controlling piracy, controlling the cost of production, cost of marketing and distribution and reducing the cost of capital through bank funding. Due to limited focus on this, the business protection is weak in Tamil cinema especially for low budget films. 

The fifth important role is business development and securing the future of the members. Preventing the members from going out of business is equally important along with welfare activities. The Council has played a limited role so far on this front and hence every year out of over hundred new producers entering the industry, only 4 or 5 survive and others exit, after losing their investment partly or entirely. The prevention from such exits can be achieved only if there is long term working by the council on project viability counselling, support on revenue maximisation, copyright exploitation and support in  smooth release of films. 

The challenge is, most office-bearers, once elected, are tied up in welfare activities and dispute resolution, and in the process are unable to give necessary attention to business protection and development that would ensure success of new and regular producers. Currently the film industry is on the threshold of several changes post demonetisation and digital economy that requires an active, visionary and forward- thinking team that can tackle these challenges and give momentum to the industry. Let’s hope the new set of office-bearers will become the torch-bearers for the industry.