MUMBAI: The Cinematographers of Union of Malayalam Cinema (CUMAC) have come down heavily against the statement of a producer that the director and cameraman were responsible for the commercial failure of a Malayalam film.

Vaisakha Rajan, the concerned producer of Padmasree Dr Saroj Kumar, had alleged the "incompetence" of director Sajin Raghavan and cameraman S Kumar was responsible for the failure of his film.

According to Rajan, he had also suffered a loss of Rs 7.5 million as the film could not be completed within the scheduled time period of 50 days. As a result, the shooting had to be extended to 70 days.

Sunny Joseph, president of CUMAC, has said that the derogatory statements against a cinematographer of repute S Kumar by the producer was most unfortunate.

In its demand that the producer withdraw his statement, the CUMAC has approached the state Film Producers Association and Film Employees Federation of Kerala in this regard.

Kumar, a senior cinematographer, has worked in several films in Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Tamil and Malayalam films for more than 30 years.