A Report on MAMI’s 9th IFFM
 

It started with great pomp and show with Amitabh Bachhan being given an award for being the global face and icon of Indian cinema and ended with a lot of thanksgiving. We were reminded time and again that the only film festival of the famed film city of India owed its survival to Adlabs and Tina Ambani.

They deserve our thanks and gratitude for their benevolence and support to the great cause. God bless them. Let their industrial empire grow multi-fold so that the film buffs of Mumbai do not miss their annual opportunity of watching films from all over the world.
 

 

The highlight of the festival was Aparna Sen’s speech in the closing ceremony on being given an award for completing twenty-five years as a filmmaker. She referred to the incidents at Nandigram without naming them and how the voices of the marginalised sections were not being heard any more. She is sensitive to happenings around her, which is the first prerequisite of being a true artist. She could have chosen not to mention anything about Nandigram. The fact that she spoke about it clearly shows that everyone in West Bengal has been disturbed by the events in this village. One hopes that the intellectuals of Bengal speak openly now about the misdeeds of the Marxists and their undemocratic means and methods to perpetuate their political stranglehold on the state.

One also hopes that MAMI gets enough money to get the best of the films from across the globe and does not have to rely on embassies, consulates, and some self styled programmers who have nothing but the usually available mediocre fare on offer.
There should be a proper MAMI secretariat with a competent set of programmers who would go around the world, attend big film festivals and pick up some really exciting and the latest stuff that is not yet freely available on DVDs.
 

 

Girish Karnad, the chairman of the jury that judged the films in the Indian competition section, felt that the quality of films left much to be desired. So did I. But what can the artistic director of the festival do about it? He can put together a package that is available. The quality of cinema across the globe has deteriorated so much. He cannot conjure classics out of nowhere.He could have had some retrospectives though. Yet, some award-winning and Oscar-nominated films from all over were shown - films like Volver, Barbarian Invasions, Yesterday, and Vanaja. Then there was this package of Spanish and South African films as well. What more could be done under the daunting circumstances?
 

What are these circumstances?
The root cause of MAMI’s problems is MOOLAH. In the last few years, since Govind Swaroop has retired from the post of Culture Secretary, things have become really tough. The Maharashtra government has washed its hands off MAMI. After much effort, MAMI somehow manages to get a few sponsors at the last moment, who invariably desert it after the realisation that promoting art house film festivals may not yield great PR dividends. Which is not true and they are being shortsighted. The only international film festival of Mumbai has great possibilities of being turned into an effective corporate communications vehicle. You need a bit of strategic thinking and planning, backed by money and marketing effort. IFFM can certainly be turned into a major event from the media perspective.

Year-round planning and organising are required to put up a film festival of international standards these days.
You also need hard cash to go about scouting for films and acquiring them against payments till filmmakers discover the big business advantages of showcasing their stuff to Indian audiences through IFFM kind of festivals and creating a market for their films. Look at the popularity of Iranian films in India. It happened because of film festivals like MAMI’s IFFM. I knew nothing about Majid Majidi and Abbas Kiarostami till I watched their films in such festivals. I am sure the DVDs of Majid Majidi films will be selling the most in India.

Here is a khullamkhulla suggestion.
MAMI’s IFFM and the Third Eye Asian Film Festival should be merged to create a much more attractive and potent festival package. Let it be a ten-day film festival, the first in the calendar of film festivals in India. I am sure there will be valid reasons for not doing it thus far. No harm in reconsidering the idea anyway. The issue is why fritter away your limited resources on organising two film festivals. Have a big one instead, put all your might into it, and make it the leading international film festival of India. Give it a character and brand it as the most democratic, transparent, liberal, informal, and bindaas film mela in this part of the world. Why should you bother about IFFI’s schedule any more when you receive no help from the Central or the State governments in your efforts?

 

We have been told that Adlabs (Reliance and Mr. Manmohan Shetty) and Tina Ambani will continue to support IFFM in future as well.
One hopes this goes beyond short-term sponsorship of the organisation of the actual event. MAMI should be provided with a corpus of funds to develop a long-term strategy to turn IFFM into an important international film festival. The city of Indian cinema deserves to have one. And whosoever brings in the seed capital to make it happen, the film buffs of the city will remain grateful to the good soul. A venture like this should be able to self-sustain itself after a while.
 

Yet again, millions of thanks to Mr. Anil Ambani, Tinaji, Mr. Manmohan Shetty, Ms. Pooja Shetty, Adlabs, and to the government of Maharashtra in anticipation of their continued financial support to MAMI. Please keep it up and we shall never stop thanking you for your generosity.

I also  mourn the death of a friend deeply who I would meet at the MAMI’s IFFM every year, 2007 being an exception. Pradeep Tewari was introduced to me through Ashutosh Pathak who came to see me a few years ago. Banaras Hindu University (BHU) was the common factor in this association. We all had studied there. I was much senior though. Pradeep Tewari had also studied at JNU. He was a keen student of cinema and a journalist and a man of letters. He also wrote a film for Babloo Pachisia. He must have been working on other projects. He was full of ideas. He died all of a sudden on 14th March 2007, in a Mumbai hospital, and was cremated on 15th March the day the 9th IFFM came to a close. He was hardly 39 years of age, and on the verge of some important achievements in life. He is survived by his wife Jyotsna Tewari who works for Dainik Jagaran. May God rest his soul in peace.

RKS