NEW DELHI: Oscar-winning British film director David Lean visited Pune’s FTII campus in the early 1960s, watched a bunch of short films made by the students and tersely told the teachers, “Something is wrong with your teaching,” reveals a new book brought out to celebrate 60 years of the institution.
The attention-grabbing nugget is part of an article written by Hindi film director Sriram Raghavan (Johnny Gaddar, Andhadhun) following a conversation with actor-director Asrani. Both are FTII graduates. Asrani, who belonged to the first batch, was in the campus when the Oscar-winning director made his visit.
Lean (Lawrence of Arabia) made his remark after noticing that the diploma films made by the students were derivative in nature. “I can tell you which shot is from which German or Czech or French film. You should watch the films of V Shantaram and Bimal Roy too,” he said, according to the article.