The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting on Thursday appointed eminent filmmaker Shekhar Kapur as the new president of the Pune-based Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) Society and Chairman of the FTII governing council which runs the country’s most prestigious film school in Pune.
Mr. Kapur (74), known for such acclaimed films as Bandit Queen (1994) and his lavish historical biopics on Queen Elizabeth (1998 and 2007), will hold the post till March 3, 2023, said the FTII management in a statement.
The tenure of the earlier members of the FTII Society had ended in March 2020. The other members of the governing council are to be appointed soon, said a senior FTII authority.
Mr. Kapur replaces filmmaker B. P. Singh as the new Chairman. Mr. Singh has been nominated to the general assembly of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, tenure he will hold till July 2023.
Mr. Singh, an FTII alumnus of the 1970 batch, who was known as the creator of the popular, long-running television series CID, had taken over veteran Bollywood actor Anupam Kher as Chairman in December 2018.
Mr. Kher, who had stepped down after barely completing a year of his tenure, had cited his pressing schedule as the reason for quitting while remarking that he could not devote much time to the institute owing to his international assignments.
Mr. Singh had been appointed as chairman of FTII’s academic council in 2016, in a move to blunt the students’ resentment against the I&B Ministry’s controversial appointment of TV actor and Bharatiya Janata Party member Gajendra Chauhan as FTII chairman of the governing council, making it the first instance in the institution’s history since its inception in 1961 where the chairman is not head of both the academic council and governing council.
Earlier, the institute had declared the results of its entrance test while online classes and training courses have been continuing during the pandemic months.
