Buddha Doesn’t Smile Here Anymore

Filmmaker Tarun Majumdar,a contemporary of Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak, was one of the very few dignitaries to attend the inauguration of the week-long festival on November 10. “I am used to seeing youngsters catching back-to-back shows at this festival. They rush from one venue to another,without stopping for lunch,and grab a quick bite whenever they can. That sight inspires me,” he said.

Had Majumdar spent some time at the Nandan complex during the 16th edition of the festival,he would have been disappointed. When security personnel outnumber visitors in a cultural festival,you wonder if the plot has been lost. “It’s like a lemon that has been squeezed of all its juice. Everything is dry and bitter now,” said a member of the festival organising committee on condition of anonymity.

For Shuvajit Payne,a film-loving IT professional from Bangalore,the yearly pilgrimage to Kolkata was a disappointment. “Usually,I spend hours in a queue to get a delegate card. This year,I got it easily. Now I know why. The selection of films was a big disappointment . It’s frustrating how they fall back on Ray and Kurosawa almost every year. They are wonderful but we want to see something new,” he said.

Yet,even a few years ago,the Kolkata Film Festival was one of the most prized cultural accomplishments of the Left Front government. It was the CM’s pet project,and Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee took a keen interest in the film selection. He was the minister of information and cultural affairs when the festival began in 1995. Year after year,a beaming Bhattacharjee would light the ceremonial diya in a very Bengali inaugural function (read stacks and stacks of rajanigandha sticks),while chief guests like Shyam Benegal and Mrinal Sen looked on. Film lovers of Kolkata would queue up outside the Nandan complex (and other associated venues) for their fix of Ingmar Bergman,Wong Kar-wai and Kim Ki-duk. One could bump into the likes of Jean-Claude Carrière (screenwriter to Luis Bunuel) and legendary Argentinian filmmaker Fernando Solanas.

This year too,the chief minister lit the diya while Mrinal Sen looked on,but there was something listless about his body language. In a press meet,Bhattacharjee announced that they were making do with the “barest minimum”. With a selection of about 127 films (80 foreign films),as opposed to over 200 films last year,a massive slash in budget and hardly any foreign delegates,“minimum” was the key word. “We have decided to do away with all the flab. People will anyway get to see most of the films that we are showing online. Films are freely available nowadays on the Net. When we started this festival,things were very different,” he said.

But Bhattacharjee would know that a film festival is not just about watching films in a cinema hall. “More than the films that I have seen at the Kolkata Film Festival,I remember the stimulating post-screening discussions that we had at Nandan. I visited the festival after three years and was disappointed to notice that none of the regulars were around. Even the public seems to have stayed away this year,” said filmmaker Raj Chakraborty,who has directed several Tollywood hits.

The Kolkata film industry has stayed away from the fest since November 2007,when several intellectuals protesting the Nandigram attacks were injured in a police baton-charge. Filmmakers Aparna Sen and Rituparno Ghosh boycotted the festival. “I have always felt close to and been proud of the Kolkata Film Festival. It was with a heavy heart that I decided to stay away. I could not bring myself to be associated with it after renewed violence in Nandigram,” said Aparna Sen.

Actor Kaushik Sen sees a parallel between the waxing and waning of the KFF’s fortune and the “inevitable” shift of power in the state. “There is a feeling that this will be the last CPM-led KFF (the 2011 Assembly elections are a few months away). People think that next year’s film festival will be a grander,bigger affair as a Trinamool government would try to make a point. But I would give Bhattacharjee his due. He is a culturally evolved person. He took keen interest in every aspect of the KFF. I don’t think Mamata Banerjee shares his passion for cinema,” said Kaushik.

Many,like Sanjay Mukhopadhyay,professor of film studies,Jadavpur University,say there is no reason why an event like this can’t be freed of political influence. “Film scholars and students should be more involved. This year’s selection of films lacked imagination. They have fallen back on canonical works and have hardly brought any films from China,Iran and Korea,where many exciting movements are happening. You can’t expect a bureaucrat to understand these things,” he said.

Newspapers and periodicals across the state have dismissed the festival as a damp squib,but those who have been associated with it for years refuse to write it off. “For me,the festival is still a place where the average person can come to see films from far-flung places,” said Mrinal Sen,who has been associated with the festival since its inception. Actor Soumitra Chatterjee said the festival reaches out to the common man: “The Kolkata Film Festival is still the most people-friendly festival I have been to. It has opened new vistas for budding filmmakers. The best thing is that it travels to smaller towns like Siliguri and Burdwan,” said Chatterjee.

The government’s PR machinery is in denial. Sitting in the media centre at Nandan,the state deputy director of information,Manab Bandyopadhyay,said,“The response to the festival was very warm. If you’d walked around,you would have heard the chatter of film lovers.” Outside,an eerie silence greeted visitors as bored security guards waited for their next tea break.