Mumbai Diary: Saturday Dossier

Filmmaker Kiran Rao shares a laugh during an ongoing film festival, at a five-star in Juhu on Friday. Pic/Atul Kamble

A message that fits to a T
Kiran Rao is one cool cat, and her thoughtful sartorial choices (think handloom sarees with sneakers) reflect the same. On day two of our city's ongoing film festival, Rao, who is its chairperson, wore a simple-yet-fun T-shirt that read "Read or die", with wrap-around-style pants. Curious, we asked her to divulge the details of her purchase. "It's from a comic book shop called Modern Graphics in Kreuzberg, Berlin. They make them in-house. I always visit the store when I'm there because I love graphic novels, and they keep great merchandise for nerds of all kinds," she said.

Passers-by walk down a palm grove at Tadwadi Qabristan in Dharavi

For Mumbai's arboreal treasures
Yesterday, this newspaper had carried the news of how a year after being allegedly poisoned, trees outside the Zara store in Hutatma Chowk have died. As if for a virtual healing touch, we came across an online campaign that urges people to photograph, and therefore document, trees in the metros they live in. Under #50Trees, residents of Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai have jumped into action. Popular Twitter handle, Mumbai Paused, is adding a quirky comment to each picture, too. Sample this: "A surviving bunch of Mangroves. (Rhizophora mucronata?) Location: Ganesh Murti Nagar. There are different types of trees there and I will collectively call it Mayanagaricha Mutrapind or Renibus Folsum Urbs." This is one green campaign that ought to go viral, offline too.

Chef Toine Hoeksel

Chef to get a taste of India
Once upon a time, and it does seem really long ago now, there was only Sanjeev Kapoor's Khana Khazana. But as the cable television boom gained steam in the country, food shows gradually began taking over our screens. And one of these shows has now led to a doyen of the culinary world visiting the country, as judge. Chef Toine Hoeksel has led the kitchen in a host of Michelin-starred restaurants. These include De Hoefslag in the Dutch village of Bosch en Duin, Paul Bocuse in France's Lyon, and The Ritz Carlton in Japan's Osaka. Here's hoping that he has a splendid time in India, and leaves the country with a tummy full of memories.

Raghu Dixit

Online content takes centre stage
Since its inception in 2011, India Film Project - which is touted as Asia's largest content creation festival - writers, storytellers, poets, composers, filmmakers, cinematographers and editors have been presenting and discussing their works there. This year's edition, which will be held at NSCI, Worli, will see film director Vikramaditya Motwane, screenwriter Juhi Chaturvedi, musician Raghu Dixit and author Ashwin Sanghi participating. One name that we found noticeably interesting, though, is YouTuber Bhuvan Bam. The inclusion of Bam, who has 9.5 million subscribers on his channel BB Ki Vines, shows the force that the Internet is and how content for the web can have a reach wider than Bollywood too. We also hear that this year, 35,000 participants from over 20 countries have submitted over 1,700 short films, and their popular 50-hour filmmaking challenge will see the generation of 10,000 minutes worth of short story content. Should we start the quality vs quantity debate now?

A director's life and works in focus
Even as the Mumbai Film Festival goes full steam ahead, the dates have been announced for another such event that will be held three hours away from the city. The Lonavala International Film Festival India (LIFFI) has now entered its third year, and the theme this time is the life and times of legendary director Bimal Roy, who directed the original Devdas. Apart from the screening of his films, the event also includes a documentary on Roy curated by Rinki Roy Bhattacharya, his daughter.

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