The 8th Mumbai International Film Festival (MIFF), unlike in the past, got mired in controversy, following a rumour that all films made on Godhra/Gujarat were rejected by the members of the selection committee under pressure from the Films Division, which hosted MIFF.This led to the staging of an alternative festival, Vikalp, headed by the rebel documentary filmmaker, Anand Patwardhan, of War and Peace fame. But when I arrived in Mumbai as a chairperson of the National Critic Jury, I got to know that some documentaries and shorts, although selected for the MIFF competition, were withdrawn and re-entered in the Vikalp film festival being organised at Bhupesh Gupta Bhavan, a little distance away. Naturally, I felt disturbed by the controversy and planned to meet the noted documentary filmmakers watching films at both venues.Anand Patwardhan, when I met him, put it this way: “We don’t want an alternative festival to MIFF as a natural course but when we find a lack of ‘credibility’ in MIFF we don’t have any other way but to stage it for our creative freedom.” At the last MIFF, his film had won three major awards.I also spoke to documentary filmmakers, presumed to quite progressive, who chose to take part in MIFF since their work had been selected. They argued that there should not be any clash between filmmakers, due to the selection and rejection of their films, as either way they are winners and losers. They stated that they didn’t have any differences as filmmakers as they share each other’s political sensibilities and desire for creative freedom.Incidentally, the film that was judged the best at MIFF — the winner of the Golden Conch — was Way Back Home, directed by Supriya Sen of Kolkata. The film dealt with the trauma that accompanied the partition of Bengal and then shifted to the violence at Gujarat. As Sen put it, “My documentary makes no compromise with reality, inhuman, cruel, shattering and devastating. I stand for truth in the creative medium and I feel honoured by this award.”To get to the bottom of the selection process, I also met some selectors. They claimed that they had faced no “political pressure” while selecting the winning films. They also claimed that it was a film on the Narmada — which had not found a berth at the MIFF — that had caused the controversy, and not the rejection of films on Gujarat. What I found intriguing was that the work of some documentary filmmakers were shown at both venues. Where, then, were the lines of dissent and dissension?All in all, the MIFF this time was marked by a great deal of confusion. But what about the quality of the 75 films shown to the National Critic Jury? I have to say that most of them were either unimaginative, insipid or plain corny. There was a silver lining though. In our section we could zero in on a meaningful four-minute short film, Dharamveer, which had communal violence as its theme. The director is 27-year-old Pravin Mishra of Mumbai.
