As Good as it Gets

The officials at MFF are still working flat out to cover the deficit, and festival director Narayanan says he is overwhelmed by the outpouring of contribution and emotion. The big learning from the past few months is to prevent such a crisis again: a “business plan and a vision plan” is being worked upon.

It is good news, not just for festival enthusiasts in Mumbai, but for all those who understand how crucial an event like this is to the cultural health of a city.
In this age of superfast downloads, where music files and film clips have become a commonplace item of online exchange, the gathering — repeat after me — the gathering of a large number of people, to listen and watch, is an experience beyond compare.

You can sit right across your laptop, and get lost in a tune, or a movie. But there is nothing to match the rush of communal viewing with regular festival junkies and first-time viewers wondering what the fuss is about, and all shades of audiences in between.

A good film festival delivers films. What it also does is to build an edifice — of people engaged in the valuable exercise of viewing and learning, of learning how to respect and appreciate multiple points of view. Good cinema, above all, teaches us to be humane and human.

The problem with festivals globally, even the established ones, is one of adequate funding, efficient management and programming acuity and integrity. It is about finding the right partners: it is the duty of the state to encourage good cinema and to provide financial and logistical support; but the expertise of running such an event and staffing it and curating it is usually best left to a private partner.

The big film festivals in India are still struggling for space, and for identity. Ever since the International Film Festival of India moved away from its bi-annual perch in New Delhi, the capital has been bereft of a big-ticket film event. In the last 10 years, the capital’s calendar was brightened by the Osian’s Film Festival, but now the festival is dead.

As a result, New Delhi, shockingly, has no film festival. IFFI, after many years of having to get last-minute permissions to function annually out of Goa, has finally been assured that the venue is permanent: it can now strive towards betterment.

The Thiruvananthapuram Film Festival, arguably the one with the biggest draw in India, may not be able to sustain its reputation because its long-time artistic director, Beena Paul Venugopal, is no longer around. And that brings me to the importance of the people who shape these festivals. Without a helmsman (or woman) who understands the rhythm and ripples across the world of cinema, a festival becomes merely a pointless list of movies.

Osian’s became a great hub of contemporary Asian and Arab cinema because its original director and originator Aruna Vasudev had deep knowledge of the cinema from these countries. That the festival no longer exists is a great loss, and who knows what Thiruvananthapuram will look like this year.

A good film festival fills up the interstices of a city, and it ripples outward into the world. Which is why the continuation of MFF is not just a good thing, but an excellent thing.