FILM CERTIFICATION. A conservative grandmother who has snipped away kilometres of film

When issuing the order on Udta Punjab case on Monday, the Bombay High Court asked the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) “not to act like a grandmother and change with times”.

A look at the certification trend of Indian feature films from 2006 to 2014-15 reveals an increasingly conservative grandmother in action.

The CBFC’s initial refusal to grant any certificate surged up, from 43 out a total of 1,091 films in 2006 to 114 out of 1,845 films in 2014-15.

Let us quickly look at how CBFC certifies films. Films considered suitable for unrestricted public exhibition are granted the ‘U’ certificate. Films that contain portions considered unsuitable for children below 12, but otherwise suitable for unrestricted public exhibition, are granted the ‘UA’ certificate with a caution to parents to that effect.

Those considered suitable for exhibition only to adults are granted the ‘A’ certificate. Films considered unsuitable for public exhibition are not granted any certificate.

Till 2008, a majority of films (almost 55 per cent) were given ‘U’ certificate. However, in recent years a significan number is getting the ‘UA’ certificate. In 2006, nearly 20 per cent of the films were certified ‘A’. ‘A’ certified films remained in the 16-18 per cent range till 2013-14. In 2014-15, it dipped to 13.8 per cent.

The data since 2006 available for Indian feature films show that nearly one-third of the films got certification for public exhibition after recommendations for cuts in scenes or visuals. During 2014-15, as many as 48.24 per cent of the films were certified after cuts.

The scenes and visuals thus excised run into kilometres in the case of celluloid films. On an average, CBFC has undertaken around 9.7 km of excisions in Indian feature films every year from 2006 to 2014-15. It reached a high of 19.94 km (19946.29 metres to be precise) in 2008.

From October 2011, CBFC began issuing separate certificates for digital films meant for theatrical release. Of the 1,845 certificates issued to feature films in 2015, only 18 were for celluloid films.

Now, the excision figures for digital formats are given in minutes along with the celluloid format in metres. In the changed digital platform scenario, CBFC recommended excision for 1016.26 minutes of feature films during 2014-15.

The excisions undertaken in celluloid platform stood at 611.93 metres during the period.

Comparatively, feature films from South Indian languages have seen more excisions than Hindi films.

During 2007-11, more excisions were seen in Tamil, Telugu and Kannada films.

It will be now interesting to see if the “grandmother’s influence” on certifying Indian feature films — which one felt is growing over the years after analysing the 18-year certification trend — will change with times.

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