An excerpt from a book on Jagat Murari shows how the Film and Television Institute of India initially relied on famous guest lecturers

An excerpt from a book on Jagat Murari shows how the Film and Television Institute of India initially relied on famous guest lecturers

- Radha Chadha

Jagat might not be able to get filmmakers to give up filmmaking, but perhaps he could persuade them to teach part time. Then there was the option of 'guest lecturers', where the time commitment was even less, as little as one lecture. Jagat had experienced that at the summer programme he had attended at the People's Educational Center, where top Hollywood insiders and notables came by for one lecture each.

That was it. Jagat declared Fridays as the day off and opened up the Institute on Sundays instead because that was when the professionals had their day off. He then invited the best and the brightest of Indian filmmakers to give guest lectures on Sundays. His persuasive powers must have been exceptional. For the academic year 1963-64, he pulled in as many as fifty guest lecturers. Keep in mind that this was then a little-known Institute in 'far-off Poona, which had yet to produce its first full batch of graduates. Yet, the guest lecturers' names read like a Who's Who of Indian cinema, representing both commercial and art-house.

His handwritten notes show his thought process—he worked out the syllabus in detail, broke it down in topics, then made a wish list of filmmakers who could best deliver on each of those topics. He was remarkably successful in making that wish list a reality. For example, in the first half of 1963-64, the twelve Direction lecturers he brought in included Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, Vijay Bhatt, Ritwik Ghatak, Gajanan Jagirdar, Ezra Mir, and J.B.H. Wadia, all of them important names in the industry, notable not just for their stature, but for the breadth of their work.