The jury for the Mumbai International Film Festival (MIFF) expressed dissatisfaction on Monday with the quality of documentaries that were screened at the festival.
One member remarked, “Many of the films were of poor quality and it is a surprise that they were selected in the first place. Maybe they were chosen because there were not too many participants from foreign countries.”
The jury, however, appreciated the student documentaries that were screened. Film-maker S Krishnaswamy, who was on the jury, said many of them were excellent.
The jury included director Gianfranco Rosi from Italy, producer Pieter van Huystee from The Netherlands, and yesteryear actress Asha Parekh, and was headed by American director Trinh T Minh-Ha. It was Parekh’s first time on a festival jury.
Trinh said a film should only be seen as a film and not categorised as a documentary, short film, animation film, and so on.
The jury stressed that to reach out to a wider audience, MIFF’s organisers need to concentrate on marketing. Ironically, the Films Division of India has done away with its marketing department.
Trinh, however, said the success of a film-maker does not lie in making money but in making quality films.
Rosi was vocal about scaling up the quality of films. “Mumbai is a city of cinema,” he said. “This gives us a lot of potential and subject ideas for film-makers. We must learn to take from them too and upgrade our quality offilms.”
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