The Federation of Western India Cine Employees (FWICE) wrote a letter to Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Tuesday, seeking permission for resume post-production work in the media and entertainment industry.
The letter, signed by Ashoke Pandit, chief advisor of FWICE, reads: "With reference to the subject matter, we would like to bring to your kind notice that there are numerous projects of the media and entertainment industry which are halted due to lockdown and can be completed soon as only the post production activities such as editing, sound recording, music recording and others are pending. If permissions are given to carry out such post-production activities of these projects, which can be done in closed studios with minimum workforce, it would be a great relief to the producers who have poured in huge funds and that they shall be all set to release their projects immediately after the lockdown is lifted."
IMPORTANT... #FWICE appeals to Shri Uddhav Thackeray ji - Hon Chief Minister of #Maharashtra - to permit post-production and recording studios to function, so that unfinished work can be completed + technicians can get back to work pic.twitter.com/S8F0ETkGRR
— taran adarsh (@taran_adarsh) May 19, 2020
The letter further reads: "We assure you of complying with all the necessary guidelines pertaining to the health, safety and security of the workers involved in such post production activities if permitted to do so." FWICE is the film industry workers' union based in Mumbai. As of 2020 it has 5,00,000 members.
Tamil Nadu government has already given permission to Tollywood films to start their post-production work adhering to strict guidelines. This decision was taken after the Southern producers and directors wrote a letter to the State government citing the humongous loss the industry is facing because of the lockdown.
A couple of days back, Rana Daggubati had also voiced his opinion on the same and said, "I speak from Hyderabad and I speak from a different movie industry as compared to Hindi cinema where rules are slightly different. In all of the industries that will get back, probably Malayalam industry can get back much faster than all of us because they use the smallest units and so they can get cinema done very quickly. They have very limited resources and they have made big cinema with that. It’s not very hard to adapt to the change of working with minimum resources and I’m sure that other industries too will adapt to this change very fast.”
(Source: FWICE/Samacharnama)
