Much media space towards the end of 2007 might have been devoted to the so-called ‘battle of the year’ between Shah Rukh Khan-starrer ‘Om Shanti Om’ and Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s ‘Saawariya’ and its by-now well-known outcome, but the real war of the year in the world of Indian cinema was fought — or rather, is still being fought — in the courts.
Filmi ishtyle
Far away from the blue-tinged sets of Bhansali’s critically-panned films that have done lukewarm business in the box office, and the colour-riot in the form of Farah Khan-directed monster hit produced by King Khan’s Red Chillies Entertainment, this battle is being fought in the courtrooms of Mumbai, and this might just finally set clear guidelines on how to select India’s entry to the Best Foreign Film Oscar.
More than anything else, this full of drama-development that would do a Bollywood scriptwriter proud, firmly focussed the often questionable results that the selections’ process steered by the Film Federation of India throws up. And in the long run, this could just be the biggest development relating to Indian cinema that occurred during 2007.
The genesis of the case lies in the overlooking of the critically-acclaimed ‘Dharm’, as its director Bhawna Talwar dragged the FFI to the court over the selection of Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s ‘Eklavya-The Royal Guard’.  First-time director Talwar accused several jury members, including noted director Sudhir Mishra, of being close to Chopra and questioned their motive behind rejection of her film that reportedly lost out by a whisker in the final selection.
The last word on the issue is yet to be heard, but it will be definitely worth waiting for.
The year also saw the 53rd National Film Awards getting embroiled in litigations, when a group of documentary filmmakers filed a petition demanding that uncensored films should also be allowed to compete in the non-feature section. The plea was upheld by the Bombay High Court, but rejected by the Supreme Court later. Feature film jury member Shyamali Banerjee Deb was the next to drag the awards to court, filing a writ petition in Delhi High Court alleging favouritism in selection of certain winners by the jury.
 However, her plea was rejected by the court, but it once again highlighted the controversies that the most prestigious film award of India often finds itself, because of obvious reasons. All this delayed the announcement of the awards for 2005, and even as 2007 is coming to an end, there is no sign of the 2006 awards as yet, because of the delays. Surely, there is a better way to device the National Awards procedure to avoid all such unnecessary controversies. 
 The year 2007 was India’s 60th year of Independence, and also was the diamond jubilee year of the Cannes Film Festival. The festival, which is having fewer and fewer selections from India in recent years in any of its official sections, had a special package of Indian films in the section ‘Tous les Cinemas du Monde’ (All the Cinemas of the World), to mark the coincidence. The films screened were ‘Guru’ by Mani Ratnam, ‘Lage Raho Munnabhai’ by Raj Kumar Hirani, ‘Dosor’ by Rituparno Ghosh, ‘Missed Call’ by Mridul Toolsidas and Vinay Subramaniam, ‘Veyil’ by A Vasanth Balan, ‘Saira’ by Biju and ‘Dharm’ by Bhavna Talwar.
The only official selection in the festival from India was Raka Dutta’s 28-minute ‘Chinese Whispers’ in the Cinefondation section meant for student filmmakers.
Assorted gifts
 During the year that saw Sanjay Dutt going in and coming out of jail in connection with the 1993 Mumbai blasts case, surely leading to wild fluctuation of blood pressures of producers of films involving him, the most significant event was not the OSO-Saawariya clash, or the making of superduds like ‘Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag’, ‘Tara Rum Pum Pum’, ‘Jhoom Barabar Jhoom’ or  ‘Aaja Nachle’, or even the fact that small, multiplex-oriented cinema came of age in the form of hits like ‘Bheja Fry’, ‘Metro’ and ‘Khosla Ka Ghosla’ or commercial Bollywood cinema deciding to put on the thinking cap through Yash Raj Films’ Shimit Amin-directed and Shah Rukh Khan-starring superhit ‘Chak De India!’. The event of the year, missed by most of the media in their year-end reviews, was the Rajnikanth magic that probably for the first time saw a Tamil film becoming a big hit even in the rest of the country without any dubbing.
 If Bollywood gave hit films like Mani Ratnam’s ‘Guru’, David Dhawan’s ‘Partner’, Imtiaz Ali’s ‘Jab We Met’ and Vipul Shah’s ‘Namastey London’ during the year, it also saw India’s most-venerated art filmmakers Adoor Gopalakrishnan and Buddhadeb Dasgupta woo the international festival audiences through their thought-provoking and powerful ‘Naalu Pennungal’ (Four Women) in Malayalam and ‘Aami, Yasin Aar Amaar Madhubala’ (Me, Yasin and My Madhubala) in Bengali. The year 2007 that ended with Aamir Khan’s much-awaited directorial debut ‘Taare Zameen Par’ and Sudhir Mishra’s ode to the Bollywood of 1950s’ and 1960s’ ‘Khoya Khoya Chand’, hopefully would pave the way for much better cinema in 2008, not only bettering its own revenue return figures but also measuring up to standards of international cinema going beyond the homegrown or NRI/PIO viewers.