‘Guardians of Economic Frontiers’ - Film on Customs – disappointing and untimely?
I persuaded many to watch the Customs film on NDTV and CNN – the Customs officers who watched the film said there was nothing new or inspiring. The others told me it was so boring, they could not watch it till the end. Further it was election time and weekend – the channels were full of Varun Gandhi, elections and full-scale entertainment – people were simply not interested in watching a documentary on Customs. The film was truly Door Darshan type documentary, but strangely it was not telecast through DD! Apparently even the government has scant respect for DD. Government must have paid good money to NDTV and somebody should have ensured that the subtitles are not obliterated by NDTV with its own ad bits. If there was a little more planning, NDTV could have been told not to tinker with the titles or the sub-titles could have been given at the top or the centre, so that they could be viewed.
Long ago there was a serial on Door Darshan – Customs file se and in 1993, there was a Malayalam film Customs Dairy written by former Chief Commissioner of Customs ASR Nair, both of which were far more attractive than the present documentary.
It is not known who the film was meant for – anyway an effort had been made and that itself is commendable. It takes huge efforts and planning to make a film and we can criticise it without appreciating the hard labour that has gone into it. To find fault is easy, but to create is tremendously difficult and to make a 25 minute film on Customs is like putting an elephant in a bottle. They bottled the elephant – Congrats!