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Ervell E. Menezes
checks out the films for the 10th edition of MIFF
The Mumbai International Film Festival (MIFF) for Documentary, Short and Animation Films is being held at the prestigious National Centre for the Performing Arts at Nariman Point in Mumbai from February 3 to 9, an event held every other year and eagerly awaited by filmmakers and cine-buffs alike. Organised by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting with the active support of the Films Division and the Maharashtra Government it has gained in stature over the years and is today almost on par with Oberhausen, Leipzig and Cracow. MIFF 08, as it is called in short, is in its 10th edition, having begun in 1990 under the chairmanship of V.B. Chandra and has attracted 228 films from 37 countries and 543 films on the national level but these have been watered down to 44 films in the international competition and 54 films in the national competition after a stringent screening process. Ten foreign films and 13 Indian films will be exhibited in the special screening section. Among the foreign films the War Made Easy (US) by Loretta Alpi and Jeremy Earp and Yehudi Menuhin — the Swiss Years (about the violinist who often visited India) are said to catch the eye as is the Croatian animation film Silenciem, by Davor Medurcrecan and Martina Egi. Then there is the Canadian Trading the Future. The Indian entries are Tiger — the Death Chronicles, by Krishendo Ghosh and Cherub of the Mist by Naresh Bedi. MIFF is basically a documentary festival and in the absence of a regular documentary channel on TV (apart from in the international ones), it is the only support for documentary filmmakers whose number increases by the day because of the issues to be raised. Lakhs of rupees are also given in prizes. It is much more powerful than the feature film genre because of its role as an instrument of social change. It also takes a peep into what’s happening in the world around us and in India too and this is its biggest selling point. In the early 1990s Manufacturing Consent really made waves and brought to the fore Noam Chomsky, a phonetics professor who became arguably the most scathing critic of the United States and its foreign policies and in this film by Peter Wintonick it details the print media’s blacking out of the main issues. After this film Chomsky paid two visits to India, one after the Iraq war for which he was roundly applauded. Marilyn Warring on Sex, Lies and Global Economics is another as it underlines Kiwi MPs role in highlighting the grievances of housewives who worked Herculean hours without appropriate reward. Tom Zubrycki’s Vietnam Symphony is yet another as it covers the movements of the Hanoi National Conservatory of Music which was relocated to a nearby village because of the Vietnam war to preserve their national heritage of music and scores of films on the South American banana republics to say nothing of the national films which made Anand Patwardhan a byword in this genre with In the Name of God being especially controversial because the Bharatiya Janata Party government did not let it go past the Censors. To come back to MIFF 08, it comprises a wealth of sections. There is South Africa — From the Margins to the Centre, SAARC films, Films from Brazil, Oscar films, Films on Second World War and classics (in the documentary category) with masters like Robert J. Flaherty, Bert Haanstra (who visited India), Istvan Szabo and Ritwick Ghatak. And, of course, it could not be complete without Glimpses of Films Division.
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