Notes from the Mumbai Academy of Moving Images festival
Notes from the Mumbai Academy of Moving Images festivalSRK sightingsThe Fun Republic complex, where the 11th Mumbai Film Festival is on, also has a few restaurants inside. The lift is shared by patrons of a restobar and festival delegates. A stylishly dressed woman got into the elevator, looked around curiously and remarked loudly, "Why are so many people walking around with badges round their necks?" There's a film festival on, she was informed. "Oh? Film festival... is Shah Rukh Khan coming?"
There's no getting away from SRK fans who are so besotted by him, that they don't even notice the big red banners, posters and hoardings announcing the film festival. The lift erupted into laughter after she got off.
We do it betterIncidentally, there are a lot of films by women directors this year, which is a good sign. German film The Day Will Come by Susanne Schneider, was like Kabhi Kabhi without the romance and music. A sullen young woman lands up at a peaceful French family-run vineyard, and seeks to wreck their lives, because she had been abandoned by her mother as a child. The mother, who used to be a revolutionary, builds a new life for herself, forgetting all about her daughter. The film stars Katharine Schuttler, Iris Berben, Jacques Frantz, all fairly well known, but watching this film in the international competition of debut films just underlined that Bollywood does melodrama better and our actresses are prettier. Those who caught the British film Fish Tank by Andrea Arnold, also came out saying it was Bollywood without the glamour.
Fire in Eden
Several films being screened at the festival are digital prints and there are complaints of poor projection, crooked framing, vanishing sound. It takes shouting, clapping and foot-stomping by the irate audience for those in the projection room to react.
During the screening of Costa-Gavras's last minute entry Eden is West, there was a strong smell of something burning in the auditorium, prompting a hasty and surprisingly calm exodus from the hall. Minutes later, the "problem" was fixed, the film rewound and resumed.
By under 25s On the programme this evening is a package of films under the package Dimensions Mumbai. This is theu00a0u00a0u00a0 competition of short films about Mumbai made by under 25s.u00a0 This year, 25 films have been short-listed to compete for the prizes worth Rs 1.50 lakh. Understandably, a lot of entries are about the 26/11 terrorist attack and the outsider vs son of soil issue. Which means that young people are not totally indifferent to what happens around them.
