Cinematographers protest charges against director, cameraman

The Cinematographers of Union of Malayalam Cinema (CUMAC) today strongly protested against the statement of a producer that the director and cameraman were responsible for the commercial failure of a Malayalam film.

Vaisakha Rajan, producer of the film 'Padmasree Dr Saroj Kumar' had alleged the "incompetence" of the director Sajin Raghavan and the cameraman S Kumar was responsible for the failure of the movie.

Rajan had also said he suffered a loss of Rs 75 lakh as the film could not be completed within the scheduled time period of 50 days and as a result the shooting had to be extended to 70 days.

Noted actor Sreenivasan, who played the lead in the film, which is a satire about the Malayalam film industry, had also written the script.

Sunny Joseph, president of CUMAC, told reporters here that the "derogatory statements" against a cinematographer of repute S Kumar by the producer was "most unfortunate".

The CUMAC would support all legal steps that could be taken by Kumar against the producer, Joseph said.

Kumar, a senior cinematographer, has done commendable camera work in Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Tamil and Malayalam films for more than 30 years, he said.

"Ignorance" about technology might be behind Rajan's statement, Joseph said. The CUMAC wanted the producer to withdraw his statement and they had approached the state Film Producers Association and Film Employees Federation of Kerala in this regard, he said.