A report on Mumbai International Film Festival of documentaries, shorts, and animation films (MIFF) and Vikalp

Two interest groups fight for supremacy, both have their own agenda, and both are doing their best to destroy Cinema.
 

The Films Division is organizing MIFF. The filmmakers whose films were not selected for MIFF are miffed and they have their own film festival in the name of Vikalp. Both are vying for attention. Vikalp proponents stood at the gates of the new Ravindra Natya Mandir at Mumbai and distributed leaflets saying 'India does not shine on everyone'. Vikalp gang consists of filmmakers with leftist leanings. Many of these guys once dominated and milked the publicly funded film promotion bodies till the BJP came into power. These guys have donned the garb of globalised anti-globalisation film activists. Their hatred towards the present dispensation is understandable. They are now joined by the Church sponsored propaganda filmmakers who hate the BJP, VHP, and the rest of the RSS family with greater ferocity. These are the people who have been behind a score of anti RSS films that are in circulation. Almost all these films are pure propaganda, and have nothing to do with facts. They are simply using the misery of Muslims to further their own cause. And what is their cause? Probably, to make Sonia Gandhi the PM of India. If these guys get a free rein, they may hand over the whole of India on a platter to the Pope for his breakfast.

Strangely, these fellows had their opportunity to showcase their talent as smart propaganda filmmakers at the recently concluded World Social Forum (WSF) in Mumbai. Vikalp is operating from the WSF office at Prabhadevi. The films shown in the WSF film festival had a definite political agenda. Majority of them were blatantly biased. The films that were not in tune with leftist ideas and the agenda of the church were deliberately excluded. Now they say that the government is not allowing them to enjoy the benefits of a ' Shining India'. Are they admitting that India is actually shining? How come the WSF festival films did not show it? How come those films projected India as a hell hole ruled by ferocious looking Bajrang Dal activists?

Vikalp organizers say that their entries were rejected by the Jury of MIFF under pressure from the government. They call it backdoor censorship. Why did they pressurize Girish Karnad to resign from the Jury? Why did they try to sabotage MIFF using backdoor methods? Is it not strange? The Vikalp gang wanted the Jury of MIFF to work under their pressure and not the government's? One also has grave doubts about the capacity of an inept Ravi Shankar Prasad to pressurize the members of MIFF jury. The BJP guys hardly know as to who is their friend or foe in the film industry. Had they known it, many a head would have rolled by now in FD, NFDC, and CFSI. They are generally guided by bureaucrats who have no cast, creed, or commitment and who prefer to maintain status quo. They would not like to upset the apple cart by annoying their bosses. They could not have allowed blatant anti-government propaganda in a film festival funded by the government. It could have also led to the hijacking of the festival by the leftist pamphleteers like Anand Patvardhan.

Ironically, all these Vikalp guys sound like high priests of democracy and free expression in their pamphlets and speeches. They seem second only to George Bush in this regard.

What would you say if  you heard Stalin and Mao talking of free speech and democracy?
 

Why is Vikalp fulminating against the BJP government? The MIFF has not rejected their films in preference to RSS or the BJP propaganda films. Had the BJP fellows been smart, they would have done so. They are novices in this game. They have yet to cleanse the FD establishment of well entrenched leftist elements. They have succeeded in checkmating the leftists in academic circles because they knew about them. It will be some time before they can identify and purge various film bodies of the leftist elements.

This is the state of affairs of documentary film making in India. The cinema of truth is replaced by ideological propaganda of various hues - red, green, blue or saffron. We have started 'scripting' the truth instead of discovering it. The left establishment must share the blame. It continues to follow the path shown by ideologically committed documentary film making of Soviet era. They also have NGOs sponsored by the Church to give them company these days. The saffron brigade has yet to learn the tricks of this trade and employ it effectively. 

There is nothing wrong in it so long as the filmmaker accepts that he/she has made the film to propagate either his/her ideology or that of the funding agency. Such films should be presented in film festivals in a separate category called 'Propaganda Films'. Most of the films on Gujarat riots could have been included in this category. There are quite a few films in the competition section of MIFF that could be placed in this category. The 'Sandstorm' and the film on circumcision in Somalia belonged to this category.

This categorization is important. The blurring of boundaries cannot be acceptable here. We cannot allow the camouflaging of filmmakers real intent. It would compromise the integrity of the process of documentary film making. Can we accept the films that are made with express purpose to raise funds for a cause as documentary films? Should blatant doctoring, distorting, montaging, and gross misrepresentation of documentary footage be allowed? Can we call Battleship Potemkin a documentary film? These questions must be pondered over.

'Documentary films' are all about truth and credibility. It has to be somebody's truth, it is bound to be someone's POV- people may raise these academic issues. This writer knows one thing for sure. The truth has universal appeal. It always works, in every sphere of life, in arts and even in politics. It has the capacity to move the whole of humanity. It can be discerned by people of different races, colours, religions, who live across the continents and speak different languages. People search for it in whatever they do. They want to be overwhelmed by it. However, they are let down all the time by various establishments who place their narrow objectives, agendas, and survival before everything else. They try to manufacture their own truth. It does not work.

Vikalp and MIFF are the two establishments that are merely concerned about their own upkeep and survival. Ek hi thaili ke chatte batte hain sab. We do not have any 'Vikalp' here, not yet.