S. Thanu

Honorable Minister for Information & Broadcasting of India Thiru M. Venkaiah Naidu and all the other dignitaries present here, I wholeheartedly welcome you to the cultural capital of India, Chennai. It is my great privilege and honor to speak before you and I thank God and the lovers of cinema for giving me this opportunity.

Honorable Minister, being from South India, you know well the great history of Tamil Nadu. Tamil Nadu and its people hold a special place when it comes to accepting an important role for cinema in their life. Tamil Nadu was the first state in India to have a Chief Minister from the film industry. We produced Five Chief Ministers associated with the film industry, commencing with Perarignar Annadurai, Kalaigar M. Karunanidhi, Puratchi Thalaivar MGR, Thirumathi Janaki MGR and the current Chief Minister, who won successively for the 2nd time, Honorable Amma. Today there are many MLAs and MPs from the film industry in South. Such is the importance of cinema in politics and day to day life of the people of Tamil Nadu.

Such an important industry is facing several issues and I seek the attention of the Honorable Minister.

1. Firstly, like how our ancient practice Yoga has been made popular world-wide by your Government with single minded focus, Cinema is our culture and it should be seen as a medium to spread our culture throughout the world than being seen just as an entertainment industry. Cinema requires special support from the Government. China has identified the importance of Cinema and has gone out of the way to support, which has brought in huge growth to them.

2. In 2009, China’s film industry size was just around Rs.5,000 crore against India’s film industry of Rs.6,000 crore. In 2015, China’s film industry has grown to the size of Rs.45,000 crore while Indian film industry’s size is only Rs.13,500 crore. Chinese government focused on the film industry and supported it fully to achieve the growth. We seek a similar support from you to achieve growth of this industry.

3. China focused on cinema screens and increased it from 4,700 in 2009 to almost 32,000 cinema screens in 2015. This was the primary reason for their big growth. In 2009, India had around 12,000 cinema screens and as of 2015, we have only around 12,500 screens. In Tamil Nadu, we have less than 1,000 cinema screens while what we need is minimum 3,000 screens to cater to the 8 crore people.
We appeal to the Honorable Minister to offer tax subsidy to set up multiplexes and miniplexes, convert single screens into multiplexes for 5 years, which will motivate many people to set up multiplexes and miniplexes in every town and city. Unless the Government supports and motivates, the growth in number of cinema screens in India and in Tamil Nadu will be slow and will not meet the needs of the people. Hence, we request the Honorable Minister to kindly look into this.

4. The lack of sufficient cinema screens is motivating the people to watch films through piracy. Today, piracy eats away 40 to 50% of the revenues, which should have rightfully come to the Producers. Many research reports indicate that we are losing almost Rs.18,000 crore due to piracy in India. Tamil film industry loses more than Rs.1,000 crore every year due to piracy. If the Central Government supports and takes strong action, this piracy menace can be greatly controlled. Like you have initiated to control the pornography websites availability into India, we request you to set up a separate cell and block all the Internet servers and online websites offering our films illegally across the globe. As the internet and telecommunication comes under the Central government purview, unless your government takes up strong initiatives to curb piracy by blocking all such illegal internet servers and websites, the piracy will go unchecked and will soon destroy our film industry. We appeal to you to kindly look into this matter urgently as this is the most important request from our industry to you.

5. Tamil film industry is a pioneer for Indian film industry with over 100 years of film production starting with the silent film Keechaga Vadham produced in 1916 by Thiru R. Nataraja Mudaliar. But, we do not have any Government archives to preserve and protect our past. We appeal to the Government to set up an Archives for Tamil film industry like you have set up in Pune for all films. Unless an archives is set up separately for Tamil cinema, our history and heritage will not be preserved for the future generation to know our progress.

6. Lastly, Chennai remains the hub of many South Indian films. Against 100-150 films censored a year a few years back, today Chennai censor office censors over 300 films a year. Yet, we have a small censor office with limited employees, with heavy work load. We appeal to the Minister to increase the infrastructure facilities and officers at Chennai censor office to reduce the work load and faster issuance of censor certificates.

I thank you once again for coming to Chennai and being a part of this august gathering. On behalf of Tamil film industry, I earnestly appeal to you to review the above requests and kindly do the needful for the betterment of the film industry and its growth. Thank you again for the opportunity to speak before you. Jai Hind.

Kalaipuli S. Thanu