Story Call

We have grown to include many kinds of storytelling in one festival. The festival’s palette has included many forms — from “Indian Gold” to the segment on new medium, “Half Ticket” for children and “After Dark” (horror films). We are also engaging with storytelling in other ways such as writing on cinema and working on scripts. Last year, we also had a section on television programmes. So, different kinds of storytelling and voices are something we wish to invest in.

Will there be new additions for the festival’s programming?

The programming is going to be pretty similar. Last year, we made some new additions and we want to consolidate them this year and make them comprehensive. For instance, we added the section on a new medium (SPACE) in 2015 and taking it forward we added a new vertical in 2016, expanding the form of movies beyond the narrative cinema. We wish to make the television section more comprehensive this year. The kind of writing that’s happening in television as well as the digital world is very important for us to include in our festival.

For the last two years, “Half Ticket” has showcased the best of children’s films

That’s one of the first things we decided on when we stepped in. There is an acute lack of content that we can expose our children to. Cinema has pretty standardised content for them. Not much intellectual investment has been made in developing content for them. We are very committed to this and to complement the week-long “Half Ticket”, we want to host a workshop about what’s cinema. It will be conducted by the Film Heritage Foundation as part of Mumbai Academy Of Moving Image’s (MAMI) year-round commitment.

This is your third year as the festival’s chairperson. Do certain challenges still persist?

The challenges always remain — some of them diminish and new ones come up. While trying to source the best of cinema for our viewers, we have to deal with stumbling blocks such as sales agents who charge exorbitant fees. In a city like Mumbai, there are problems associated with taking the movies to theatres in different parts of Mumbai as well. Then we have to deal with the bureaucracy of holding a festival from — from trying to get tax exemption to censor exemption.

What are the movies that you badly want to get for the upcoming festival?

For the screenings under MAMI Film Club, we have got a couple of exciting movies from the Berlin Festival. It is too early for the festival and we have just opened for entries.

You have been writing the script of your next.

It is the daily struggle of fighting the demons and sitting down to writing. There are good days and bad days. Hopefully, it will be a good draft at the end of it. There is light at the end of a very long tunnel.