CUTTACK: The jury committee constituted by the state government for a fresh evaluation of entries for the 31st Odisha State Film Awards-2019 has expressed its inability to find out whether the two Odia films ‘Khusi’ and ‘Golmal Love’ are remakes of films in other languages.
The Orissa High Court was on Tuesday hearing the petition filed by Odia film director Bobby Islam who had challenged the legality of the selection list on grounds of violation of the Odisha State Awards for Films Rules, 2010.
The department of Odia Language, Literature and Culture which confers the State Film Awards had published the final selection list on November 5, 2021. In his petition, Bobby alleged that the film ‘Khusi’ is a remake of the Korean film ‘Hope’ and the jury had selected it for the awards in best actor, best actress, best editor and best child artiste categories. The jury had also selected ‘Golmal Love’ for the award in the best comedy artiste category even as it is a copy of ‘Carry on Jatta’, a Punjabi film.
Earlier in an interim order on December 13, 2021, the High Court had directed for a fresh evaluation of the entries for the film awards. Owing to the controversy, the award ceremony, which was to be held on December 14 last year, was postponed by the court till the final disposal of the petition.
The single-judge bench of Justice Arindam Sinha fixed January 17 for hearing along with the jury committee’s report after re-evaluation of entries. In its report, the committee after re-evaluation said that while going through documents of the disputed films ‘Khusi’ and ‘Golmal Love’, it was found that the producers had submitted a declaration that their films are original work and not copied/remade from any other films.
“Hence, the committee has no role to play in this regard”, the jury committee said in the report, adding that every year thousands of films are being produced globally in various languages, regions and there is no mechanism available to detect any kind of plagiarism in film productions.
“In this case, it is beyond the capability of the committee members to find out whether the films ‘Khusi’ or ‘Golmal Love’ are imitations of films of any other country or state”, the report observed.
Justice Sinha also asked the petitioner to file a reply, if any, by the next date. The petitioner had apprised the court that his film, ‘Chhabirani’, based on the true story of the 1980 Chhabirani gang rape, murder, was not selected for the awards. Bobby had alleged that although his film was original and qualified for the awards, it was not selected.