The Hindu Business Line : Finally, a permanent address!

So, has the International Film Festival of India, finally found a permanent place? The 35th edition of the IFFI closed in Goa last week. It was the seaside haven's first tryst with the festival, and going by what Jaipal Reddy, the Union Minister of Information and Broadcasting, said at the closing ceremony, the festival will return next year, too. That was an advance from what Reddy said on the first day casting doubts about the permanence of the venue, and it seemed that the IFFI was in danger of going back to what it has always been: a travelling circus.

Right from its inception, the IFFI has ricocheted between New Delhi, and the State capitals: when it was held in the former it was deemed `International'; when it arrived every alternate year in a different city, it was a `Filmotsav'. The difference in the name is only a minor indication of the kinds of pressures faced by the people who organise the festival on a yearly basis: the Directorate of Film Festival (DFF) has see-sawed between being headed by persons who have the authority to make decisions, and persons who have been pliable to official bidding.

Riven with factions, and seriously under-budgeted, the DFF is severely handicapped when it comes to planning and running the festival. Globally, the team that puts together reputed film festivals in such places as Cannes, Berlin and Venice, works through the year to source movies. Planning begins right after one is over, and carries right through till the next. Festival directors are all-powerful, film-literate people, unlike most of the ones we have, who are there at the Ministry's will, and are bound to follow political directives.

There are also, in India, too many agencies involved in the festival, and very often they work at cross-purposes, trying to follow through with separate agendas of the people at the head. The babus at Shastri Bhavan, who function under the aegis of the Information and Broadcasting Ministry, are expected to organise the accreditation of the mediapersons and delegates; the DFF is expected to put together the packages of films; and often they have to work in tandem with the officials in the city the festival is being organised in. At best, everyone muddles through, lumping the blame of fiascos, as and when they occur, on the other party: in the blame-game that ensues, the focus often gets lost, and the festival suffers both in terms of quality and quantity.

The other bugbear is the paucity of funds. There was a time when the IFFI was called the festival of festivals: that is, even if the IFFI wasn't the destination of the latest in world cinema, we would get the best movies of the festivals that had already been held. In the past few years, even that distinction has been taken away from us, because other festivals in such Asian countries as Thailand, Singapore and Korea have sprung up. These festivals have both money and organising clout, and manage to get the latest and the best from around the world. In which case, why would anyone want to come to India?

When the festival was wandering around, and coming back home to New Delhi alternate years, there was a growing demand for a permanent place. The State capitals, which have hosted the festival, have been considered and rejected on various grounds. Kolkata, which has some of the most vociferous film enthusiasts in the country, and a great theatre complex, now has a flourishing festival of its own.

The same is true for Thiruvananthapuram. Home to a strong film society culture, the city now hosts a festival which manages to show some of the best movies from around the world. Mumbai, which is synonymous with Bollywood, was considered too frivolous for a serious film festival: it has, in the past six years, become the place to watch cutting-edge, controversial documentary films at MIFF (Mumbai International Film Festival). Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore are venues which might have been: the last was dumped because of the moratorium that the local film industry big-wigs keep threatening the other film makers with (the last festival in Bangalore was marred by the Cauvery water dispute, the politics of which spilled into the movie arena and ruined it); Chennai has been battling charges of provincialism and inefficiency; and Hyderabad has sadly fallen between the two.

And as far as the Capital is concerned, despite the refurbished Siri Fort complex, which houses four theatres and is a near-ideal venue for that reason, there is much too much interference from the powers-that-be, and there are far too many powers at play. The festival is taken over by the functionaries of both the State and central government, and instead of film-lovers and delegates, there are bureaucrats, and their nominees, who invade the venue.

As a concept, Goa wasn't such a bad choice. It has the beaches that Cannes has; it is close enough to Mumbai to be able to import Bollywood glamour; and it has the laidback air, which lets people interact and watch movies without the pressure to do much else. Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar's steely determination to make a success of the first festival has, however, elicited mixed responses from the film fraternity, and the communities of film watchers.

It's all very well to have a Rs 80-crore multiplex in place right on deadline, as well as the occasional entry of big-ticket Bollywood stars (Dilip Kumar was the chief guest at the opening ceremony, Amitabh Bachchan showed up, as did Preity Zinta for the closing, and a smattering of medium-range Bollywood denizens cruised by too). There were glittering parties, too, which got a lot of publicity in the print as well as the electronic media. What there were not were a lot of prestige movies, or even movies which would make us salivate: Mira Nair's Vanity Fair, the opening film, hit the multiplexes that Friday; Sofia Cuppola's much-feted Lost In Translation has been on the DVD circuit for months; and Oliver Stone's Alexander is due out any time now.

The character of the IFFI, Brand IFFI, if you like, is at stake: do we want an increasing `Bollywoodising-Hollywoodising' of the festival? Or, a festival which would have a judicious mix of alternate, parallel and commercial cinema — a combination that the best festivals strive for?

In either case, the IIT-educated technocrat Parrikar will have to seriously look at the way movies get sourced, as well as played. In all those areas, Goa has a long way to go. Cannes is very far away!

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