Good show, bad pick

With the Bollywood element drastically clipped, IFFI-07 was much more organised,
writes Ervell E. Menezes

THE curtain came down on the 38th International Film Festival of India (IFFI), or IFFI Goa, as it has come to be known and it was a good show, the organisation extremely good but the films were slightly below par. And director Neelam Kapur must be commended for her efforts that stood out in contrast to the one mismanaged last year.

Actually, it began with a bang with Golden Palm winner Christian Mingui’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days which really swept everyone off their feet. There were others too like The Poet Child, Goodbye Bafana, Orchestra Seats, Lights in the Dark, Tingya (Short One) and Thaniye (Alone) but there were also some quite bad films, like Love Songs, Iranian Prince and Pretender. The Iranian and Japanese did not come up to the expected standards. The ticketing by computer was excellent and so were the other arrangements, the help desks and the hospitality. Courteous and efficient.

4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days is a Romanian film that deals with abortion is the darkest days of Nicholae Ceauseccu’s communist rule and deals with female camaraderie. Gabita wants an abortion and asks her friend Otilia for help. In fact she transfers all the responsibility to Otilia, giving fickle answers about the length of the pregnancy, so much so it is commendable that Otilia stands by her. Then, there is the abortionist Bebe and how he gets his pound of flesh. It is a deeply humane drama with the communist rule as the backdrop. It has been brought in India and will be released later this month. In France, it will be shown in schools as part of sex education.

Amir Ghasen Ragi’s Poet Child is also a first-rate film in the best traditions of Iranian cinema and deals with a delicate human drama, a love-hate father-child relationship. Morad is literate but his dad is not and as the old man is getting retired, his son does the paperwork, meets officials and dons the role of an adult while the dad tags along, dependent on the boy and playing with his twirler. Often, he is incensed by his dad’s ignorance but love is the stronger element as the story chugs along opening doors that were shut to the old man.

Goodbye Bafana, American East, Thaniye (Alone), Tingya (Little One) and Tsotsi are others which impressed with the Marathi film being touching in its treatment of a boy’s love for his cow told against the backdrop of the farmer’s suicides but it needed a sub-plot to run smoother. The Malayalam film Thaniye is also quite topical as it touches the sensitive subject of neglect of the old and is as relevant in Goa where land prices have escalated beyond imagination. But there have been some really bad films like Pretender, Love Songs and Temptations to mention just three. They are certainly not festival standard. The near-unanimous view is that last year’s films were better.

But Indian filmmaker Jabbar ‘Ambedkar’ Patel thought "the best thing that happened to IFFI was computerisation and this kept the wanabees out and allowed the real cinema buffs to see the films. There was the golden pass for political honchos (read VVIPs) limited to 20 seats in each theatre, usually the last row.

On the market front, the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) is believed to have done a fair job but there must be some way of assessing the quantum of business. The inability to attract major filmmakers is surely a major concern.

Kapur said the festival must develop a brand first but that is an old argument that doesn’t go down easily. It is a case of poor networking and constant changing of directors unlike Cannes and Berlin. With regard to celebrities, in 1965 at New Delhi there were giants like Akira Kurosawa, Elia Kazan, Lindsay Anderson and ‘raging bull" Marlon Brando all there and there is a memorable photo of them against the backdrop of Taj Mahal. The 1980s too saw the likes of Roman Polanski, Volker Schloendorff, Costa Gavras and Margarita von Trotta. Today the plate is empty.

This year thankfully the Bollywood element has been drastically clipped. "If Bollywood actors are involved in films to be screened at IFFI, we will invite them but IFFI must forge a new direction, provide a larger platform for films like Ora Kodal which are hardly likely to recover their money," Kapur undid last year’s disaster "when these stars and bimbets were paid huge sums for turning up." It was sponsor-driven and done at a political level, she said. This was avoided this time and that was IFFI 07’s greatest achievement.

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