Out of focus

A strange ritual preceded every movie that was screened at last fortnight’s Mumbai Film Festival (MFF). A young person came onto the stage, put on his or her best call centre accent, and narrated the synopsis of the movie that was to be screened within the next few minutes.

The comperes merely read out what every delegate who was entitled to a festival brochure already knew. Sometimes, they got the gender of the filmmaker wrong. Often, they mispronounced the names of such awards as “Prix Du Jour” (they called it pricks du jew-r).

Seasoned cinephiles laughed resignedly. Newly-minted festival pass holders didn’t notice. As it turned out, mispronunciation and gender-bending were the mildest of crimes committed at this year’s MFF, which was organised by the Mumbai Academy of the Moving Image.

Around 200 films from India and abroad were shown at the festival — several of them out of focus. Be it an old master or an upcoming filmmaker, nobody was spared. You may have been Andrzej Wajda from Poland and have made over 30 films, several of which have been feted across the globe. You may have been Umesh Kulkarni from India, sharing the first print of only your second film with the world. It didn’t matter.

Surely it isn’t too much to expect a festival to get right its most basic function, which is screening films? The MFF had so much going for it this year. Some lovely films were shown, and the organisers took care to organise sidebar events for the edification of those attending the festival.

Yet, the organisers inexplicably allowed their hard work to be undermined by abysmal projection. The staff at the main festival venue (the Fun Republic multiplex in Mumbai’s Andheri suburb) seemed untrained to screen films made in different formats. They were also unprepared to handle the wrath of the audiences.

One of the comperes, a pretty-looking boy with RJ-like diction, warned viewers against “entering the projectionist cabin and manhandling the projectionist”. Whatever else the MFF achieved this year, it never lacked in unplanned entertainment.

No such sloppiness was noticed during the opening and the closing ceremonies — perhaps because of the Bollywood heavies who attended the functions. Not too long ago, a film festival used to be the place that you headed to after turning your back on Bollywood. A “festival film” was considered box-office poison. Not anymore.

Increasingly, the people who control Bollywood want to grace festivals for the prestige this brings. The film festival gives Bollywood the platform it desires to globally broadcast its aspirations. Thankfully, Bollywood’s cannibalising tendencies were restricted to taking over the opening and closing ceremonies at the MFF. Hopefully, the day when we’re treated to sycophantic retrospectives of leading lights at the box-office will never dawn.

India’s most pre-eminent filmmaking city has only one film festival worth the name. The MFF, which has been organised by the Mumbai Academy of the Moving Image for the past 11 years, isn’t as prestigious as the festivals in Kerala or Goa. However, the MFF gives Mumbai the best possible opportunity to watch new and classic  international films.

The festival started off as a small affair organised by professionals from the Hindi film industry and it has grown steadily over the years. This year, the event expanded considerably in scope and ambition after it got a large corporate sponsor. The prize money in various filmmaking categories was vastly increased.

Selectors had more funds to import some of the big-ticket films doing the rounds of the world’s most important festivals, such as Lars V Trier’s deeply controversial Antichrist, Andrea MacDonald’s Fish Tank, Peter Strickland’s Katalin Varga, Giorgos Lanthimos’s Dogtooth and Paulo Sorrentino’s Il Divo. Yet, for all its putative hugeness, what MFF lacked was attention to detail.

Paradoxically, the MFF’s role has only increased in importance even as more world cinema becomes available for consumption. We now have at least two television channels dedicated to screening foreign films and several Indian home entertainment distributors are rushing to acquire foreign titles.

Yet, what you see on television and in the privacy of your homes is subjected to censorship. The film festival remains the only place where you can watch the movie the way its director meant you to see it. One of the festival’s most commendable decisions was to screen Von Trier’s Antichrist, a controversial film that has at least two deeply disturbing scenes of mutilation and several moments of sheer psychological agony.

Antichrist is the kind of movie that can be appreciated only at a festival. It generated vast debate  and gave agitated filmgoers something to talk about apart from the out-of-focus projection.

The writer is film editor, Time Out, Mumbai