Indian Filmmaker Sues NYC and Wins
This has to be a fillip for all the artists and creative personnel who are stumped by some of the paranoid tactics of the city.
Thanks to Mumbai-based filmmaker Rakesh Sharma, documentary filmmakers shooting in New York will no longer require a film permit to shoot a slice of the Big Apple.
In a settlement issued on Wednesday in a lawsuit filed by Sharma, New York City has not only agreed to waive the film permit policy for cinema verité (documentary) style filmmakers shooting in the city, but also decided to create written rules governing the filming and photog raphy of the city.
The New York Police Department (NYPD), which had detained Sharma in May 2005 while he was shooting in midtown Manhattan with a hand-held camera, has agreed to pay the filmmaker an “unspecified sum” in damages for an out-of-court settlement to the suit filed on his behalf by the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU).
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I am sure a lot of documentary film makers around the world who throng to shoot in NYC will thank Rakesh Sharma for taking up the challenge and fighting the city.
I’m also sure the former diplomats that were expelled in 2003 after being apprehended for taping the support structure of the Brooklyn,
Washington and 59th St Bridges, along with tapes of the structural support of the the #7 Queens Plaza line and maps to Indian Point Nuclear Power plant are also very happy about this development.
They were temporarily expelled pending resolution of the Sharma case. I’m sure the NYCLU will have no problem representing them and obtaining a safe return for them.