BackLetter from... a film festival
How do you combine entertainment, math and social skills while learning about the world? Watch the world's most creative artists at a film festival
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My fastest 200m sprint, since leaving school, was possibly under 50 seconds. At least, it felt like it. This happened not on the track but on the road, between Metro and Liberty cinemas in Dhobi Talao, Mumbai, and unlike most fast sprints by this city’s residents, this was not while chasing a public transport vehicle.
This was few years ago, at the Mumbai Academy of Moving Image (MAMI)’s annual film festival, a week-long affair usually held in October (the latest edition of the festival started on Friday), which has some of the world’s best international movies on display. I was running from one screen to the other (I did make it eventually on time thanks to a ruckus at the screening, but more of that later).
Though not really a connoisseur of cinema, I share a fair deal of enthusiasm for the movies, like the thousands of people who register for this festival every year. It gives movie lovers access to films that may not get a Friday release. This year, for example, over 175 films from 54 countries, including features, documentaries and short films, will be shown at MAMI.
International movies that are screened in India tend to be mostly English language and the blockbuster variety—Superman, Batman, Jurassic Park, Independence Day, James Bond etc. Even Indian films, in languages other than Hindi, are not easily available everywhere unless they are big-ticket films. Then you have to wait for them to show up on DVD or to be played on television, if at all.
The film festival, in that, provides an ideal opportunity to watch the country’s and the world’s latest offerings, subtitled, on the big screen. The only obstacle is to juggle work commitments accordingly, which can be done even if you choose to watch one late-night film every day.
In our busy, insular, urban lives, it’s rare to strike up a conversation with a stranger or to find common ground with the unknown person sitting next to you in a public space or even to have a laugh with someone whose name you don’t know. But at a film festival, it happens easily, because everyone has a common cause. You make new friends, you debate with fellow enthusiasts and you make choices based on strangers’ opinions.
The most joyous part of the whole thing is in the planning. This year, films will be shown on 19 screens at seven venues across the city, from Andheri in the north, through Bandra and Lower Parel in central Mumbai, and Apollo Bandar in the south.
In a city as large as Mumbai, the idea is to have screenings as widespread (geographically) as possible to attract more people. But this also means, you have to match the movies you want to watch to where you want to watch them and when—it’s a complex mesh of permutations and combinations. The two films you want to watch may overlap in timings or may be at different venues or the film may not be playing at a convenient time.
Like planning for a vacation—where are we eating lunch on Thursday? If we skydive at 1pm, can we get on a boat at 3pm? If the museum of human bones costs $10, should we instead walk 5km to the museum of Samoa innerwear which is $9.25?
As a colleague pointed out, this may require hours of planning and research, an Excel spreadsheet, watching many trailers and reading many synopses, discussions with friends, cancellations with friends, fights with friends, having no friends for 10 days, etc.
The other advantage, odd as this may seem, is weight loss. Considering how terrible and how terribly expensive food is at multiplexes, back-to-back movies do not allow you time to often go out of the venue looking for food. So you eat less. If there is sprinting involved, like that fateful day for me, then the cardio adds to the slimming process.
As actress Jacqueline Fernandez pointed out at the opening ceremony on Thursday—at the magnificently refurbished Opera House—here, you also get to watch films uncensored, without the interruption of an interval and minus the annoying anti-smoking public messages.
Finally, the entertainment need not be restricted to the screen. Serious filmgoers are, well, serious people. They do not like delays or missing out, because everything runs by the clock—not everyone can run from Metro to Liberty in under 50 seconds. So if a film gets delayed or if there are not enough seats available, invariably there are grumblings, funny comments and sometimes pandemonium.
An important warning here though: The relentless pursuit of films can also be exhausting—many an achingly silent moment in a film has been broken by snores.
Over the years, I have managed to watch some excellent stuff at festivals—including Pan’s Labyrinth, Blue is the Warmest Color, Lobster, Room, Court, Aligarh and Thithi, to name a few. There have also been some strange films—the much-acclaimed Holy Motors was one—that can give you a perspective on how far the creative world can stretch its imagination.
In the “industry" there are certain movies labelled as “festival films"—the kind with unconventional storylines or gentle narratives, no songs, no glamour, no big stars, which abound at MAMI and other film festivals. But cinema can achieve so much more than just provide entertainment.
They give you an insight into other cultures and countries—like 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, which talks about illegal abortions in 1980s Romania; most of Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi’s works, including A Separation; the Italian film Caro diario (Dear Diary); and most of Pedro Almodovar’s films, including Volver, which I saw at the International Film Festival of India in Goa many years ago. These are just a few examples from the past.
In our otherwise drab, monochromatic world, a dose of creative imagination over the course of one-and-a-half or two hours (or if you sign up for a film festival, then in little doses over the space of a week) works like magic.
Letter From... is Mint on Sunday’s antidote to boring editor’s columns. Each week, one of our editors—Sidin Vadukut in London and Arun Janardhan in Mumbai—will send dispatches on places, people and institutions that are worth ruminating about on the weekend.
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