Claiming that ‘Devi’ movie has utterly violated the tobacco control law, SUPRO-CTFK called on the government to stop its broadcast in the soonest possible time.
Alongside this, the anti-tobacco group called for immediate corrective measures against the film as per the law, in a statement on Sunday.
There are 12 times of smoking scenes in the film, they said, adding: “It is highly evident that tobacco Industries have heavily influenced our film industry altogether.”
The SUPRO-CTFK analysed the smoking-related scenes of the movie according to the tobacco control law-Bangladesh Gazette, additional issue (March 19, 2015) followed by FCTC rules, which is given below verbatim:
- Breaking the law 5(a): In Devi cinema, the health warning words in Bengali with the following words "Smoking/consuming tobacco causes death” was just observed at the left side of the screen in small fonts. The total number of the smoking scene was observed 12 times in Devi cinema. Not only the health warning tag missing at the middle of the screen but also not covered by one-fifth of the screen.
- Breaking the law 5(c): Before starting the movie, health warning issues are supposed to be shown in full screen for 20 seconds but it was shown only about 13 seconds. Neither was the health warning issue showed before and after the break, nor was displayed at the end of the movie which is a complete violation of the tobacco control law.
- Breaking the law 9: In the context of the story, Misir Ali (Actor-Chanchal Chowdhury) was a chain smoker. In the 10th smoking scene of the movie, it was observed that he used to smoke from a Winston brand packet of cigarette. It was an advertisement in favour of the company. In this packet, the pictorial warning was also found missing.
Devi Cinema is directed by Anam Biswas and produced by Jaya Ahsan based on the story ‘Devi' by Humayun Ahmed with sponsorship from the government of Bangladesh.
Distributed by Jaaz Multimedia, the movie has been being shown since it was released on October 19 of this year.