NEW DELHI, JANUARY 17: This happens at every film festival, every year. Short, non-feature films, by both acclaimed directors and film-school graduates, are selected by an eminent jury, spoken about at great length at the festival inauguration, and then left to fend for themselves. Some of the usual obstacles: the smallest auditorium for short film screenings (which are lumped together), and timings that always coincide with a big feature film in another theatre.At IFFI 2000, for instance, 19 non-feature films are being screened as part of the Indian Panorama, ranging from Adoor Gopalakrishnan's Kalamandalam Gopi, a 43-minute film on the art and life of a legendary Kathakali dancer, to Aribam Syam Sharma's The Marams, a 38-minute documentation of the cultural traditions of a Manipuri scheduled tribe.Says Joshy Joseph, whose seven-minute Status Quo, a humorous, sans-script comment on the increasing noise levels in cities, is in Panorama: ``They should club a short film with a feature, so that you atleast get an audience.'' Which is exactly how the Australian film package of six full-length features and four shorter films, has been put together.For example, Tulip, a 15-minute film by Australian actress Rachel Griffiths, rode piggy-back on Nadia Tass' Amy, screened at Siri Fort I.``That way, your message reaches out to a much wider audience, because most people come in for the longer film,'' points out Joseph. The need for short documentaries is also rather urgent, since they don't enjoy a commercial release, and a DD telecast (if at all) doesn't guarantee much viewership. Another reason for poor turn-outs may be that documentaries are technically unsound compared to feature films, and tend to be burdened with unwieldy narratives.The short films have also gone almost unnoticed, since there was no intimation from the Directorate of Film Festivals until the day before. All the films, including three which were made made by very young NRIs, were screened at break-neck speed within a few hours, tono more than 10 people at the India International Centre auditorium.While a non-feature by a filmmaker of Gopalakrishnan's stature will attract a fair amount of attention, what about the young filmmakers, mostly graduates of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), whose films have been included in the Panorama? There is Charudutt Acharya's Kajra Mohabbat Wala, which addresses homosexuality. Perhaps one can follow the Mumbai International Film Festival (MIFF) organisers in introducing monetary incentives for non-feature films, to help filmmakers overcome problems in financing.Alternatively, says a MIFF representative, directors could be allowed to screen tapes of their documentaries for interested buyers, in addition to the regular theatre screenings.
