Non-international IFFI opens on iffy note

NEW DELHI, JANUARY 10: It can only happen at the non-international International Film Festival of India which began in the Capital on Mond...

NEW DELHI, JANUARY 10: It can only happen at the non-international International Film Festival of India which began in the Capital on Monday: one of the country’s few stars abroad, Om Puri, had to perforce sit in a chair reserved for the Ambassador of Greece, and was heard telling an enterprising cameraman who spotted him milling around, that he was “feeling lost.”

Guests assembled at the inauguration in Siri Fort had to listen to Chief Minister Shiela Dikshit nattering on about a schoolgirl crush she had on Dev Anand — “he made my heart go pitter-patter when I saw his film as 16-year-old”. Chairman of the Asian Competition Jury Mrinal Sen was overheard telling a veteran critic that he wasn’t sure the award would go to the best film: “You never know with these things.” And the festival itself opened with a Cuban film, Life is to Whistle, that everyone — from master of ceremonies Sunit Tandon to Director of Directorate of Film Festivals Malti Sahai — assured us had won eight awards at the Havana film festival. They omitted to add that it was in the year 1998.

So it was that another festival, the 31st in India and the first of the millennium the world over, began with obligatory bureaucratese. Subhash Ghai didn’t have a place to sit until a helpful guest escorted him to the reserved seats. Southern cinema was almost not represented — except brief glimpses from Thai Saheb and Roja — in the Rajit Kapur and Deep Dudani-directed audio visual on the magic of cinema.

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The flashbulbs popped and the TV lights blinded everyone only when Karisma Kapoor walked to the stage and back. TV star Kanwaljeet and his gorgeous wife, former actress, Anuradha Patel, had to depend on the kindness of strangers for a place upfront. And so starved were photographers of glamour that they ended up taking pictures of the long-in-the-tooth Ramanand Sagar.

And yet some things never change. The eternal revolutionary, chief guest and Satyajit Ray’s favourite actor, Soumitra Chatterjee, urged everyone present to think seriously of a Third World cinema, so that filmmakers everywhere who are using “cinema as a weapon” can join forces. Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Arun Jaitley, who was described as dynamic by at least three different speakers, made promises about ridding the entertainment industry of its piracy woes.

Sahai promised a festival that would be both reflective and forward-looking. When poor P V Gangadharan, president of the Film Federation of India, went on a bit too long, he was clapped off the stage. And sometime starlet Smriti Mishra turned up, as she does for every festival, in an eye-popping black gown, waiting for her big break.

As the evening wound up smoothly, Fernando Perez, the director of the opening film, Life is to Whistle, said how his movie was about the three things he loved most: children, food and cinema. His lead actor, Luis Alberto Garcia, wore a Che Guevara cap and made the shortest speech of the evening: “I hope you enjoy the film.” And all the stars present — including a white tanchoi-clad Karisma Kapoor whose cousin, Sanjana Kapoor, was co-emcee, was dressed in red, including the flowers in her hair — departed the minute the film started.