Staying alive

There was still an hour to go for the screening of Richard Linklater’s highly anticipated Boyhood, but the endless queue of enthusiastic film buffs had almost spilled beyond the confines of the Cinemax theatre in Andheri. As the clock struck 8pm, the straight line morphed into a mob pushing its way through the gates of the theatre. People flung their bodies on the red seats, crushing anyone and anything that came in the way. Those left behind, settled for a seat on the staircase. The lights dimmed and all was forgiven. Some three hours later, tempers had cooled and the crowd united in giving a thunderous applause to Linklater’s mesmerising coming-of-age saga.

The chaos and risk of physical injury aside, the spirit of those attending the 16th edition of the Mumbai Film Festival was heartening. Not long ago, festival director Srinivas Narayan had admitted to drafting a press release announcing that the festival would be scrapped this year, owing to a lack of funds. With their biggest sponsor Reliance Entertainment pulling out of its five-year association with MAMI (Mumbai Academy of the Moving Image), it was left to the city’s powerful film industry to swoop in and save the day. And so they did. As generous donations poured in from the likes of Karan Johar, Farhan Akhtar, Aamir Khan, Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Rajkumar Hirani, to name a few. The festival was resurrected within two weeks.

The week-long event saw an impressive line-up of contemporary French films, a tribute to Arab cinema and a few interesting panel discussions. From the world cinema line-up, Ken Loach’s Jimmy’s Hall, Dardenne Brother’s Two Days, One Night, Kim Ki-Duk’s One on One and Xavier Dolan’s Mommy, which have been favourites at other international film festivals, were also among the most well-attended screenings here.

It was particularly crucial for upcoming indie and regional filmmakers that the festival see the light of day. Tamil filmmaker Jayakrishnan Subramanian was present at the Indian premiere of his film >Amma and Appa , which got an encouraging response at the Berlinale earlier this year. The film, which Subramanian has co-directed with his German wife Franziska Schoenenberger, explores the complexities of a cross-cultural marriage.

Among the participants of the India Gold competition was filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri, whose political drama Buddha in a Traffic Jam was being screened for the first time at MAMI. Known for making mainstream Bollywood films in the past (such as Hate Story, 2012), Agnihotri’s latest is a far smaller project. A group of students at Hyderabad’s Indian School of Business, where Agnihotri is a professor, had to raise funds for this film in just a week. “I call these festivals the research and development labs of India. This is where people bring their experiments. If we don’t have festivals like this, then films like ours will have no platform,” said Agnihotri, before the screening.

Bollywood not wanted

The Bollywood folk weren’t exactly welcomed with open arms during the festival. Day two of the festival, which was thrown off gear by the Maharashtra elections, went further downhill. A sharp suited Imran Khan was literally booed out of Chandan Cinema by an irate crowd that barked, “What are you doing here?” “I’m not sure what I’m doing here,” he humbly admitted. Khan, was invited to present Dardenne Brother’s Two Days, One Night, a film he was clearly clueless about. The film began late, the subtitles went missing, and a hapless Khan found himself in the firing line. Later, the ‘intellectuals’ and ‘serious’ students of cinema continued to complain that the festival was meant to appreciate fine world cinema, and not to gawk at Bollywood stars.

Even a distinguished panel of filmmakers comprising Vishal Bhardwaj, Vikramaditya Motwane and Rakeysh Om Prakash Mehra weren’t spared at a panel discussion on the dearth of good scripts in Bollywood. Budding writers rued about being underpaid and poorly treated by filmmakers who refused to take their calls. An angst-ridden writer took offense at Bhardwaj for making three films on plays written by a man who was “long dead” when youngsters with original ideas like him were struggling to find work. “If your script was good enough, we would have heard about it. Obviously, it is not,” Motwane replied tersely.

And then there was Deepika Padukone who waltzed into the opening ceremony long after it had wrapped up. The following day, the star proved to be quite a misfit at the Master Class with iconic French actress Catherine Deneuve, who has a 50-year-long career with over 100 films to her credit. One could see members of the audience snigger as Padukone confidently named duds like Aarakshan and Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Se as “socially-relevant” films.

Yet, such discord didn’t deter film buffs from turning up in droves for the screenings. But Motwane, a trustee of MAMI, warns that they need to be better prepared for the next year. “It shouldn’t happen again that we are left in this situation because people are not going to donate every year for the same purpose,” he says. While the fate of the festival remains unsure, this year proved that it is one that continues to make cinema the hero.

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