Curtain-raiser to mami

November 19, seems to have worked out all the anguish that last year’s fiasco generated. The event has been made possible by the all-important sponsors and a state government grant of Rs 15 lakh. For a whole week, cinema buffs can feast on the pick of Indian and international cinema. Already, around 2,000 passes have been issued.

Organisors say this is the first time that independent directors, producers and cineastes have put their heads together to make a festival possible. Producer Manmohan Shetty, whose Adlabs is sponsoring screenings in suburban theatres during the festival, says, “Last year, the kind of money the state government was willing to pay just wasn’t enought to hold the festival.” This time, adds Shetty, organisors started off early and got enough heavyweights to pledge their money to the festival. MAMI’s organising committee will also work through the year to ensure that next’s year’s festival is a smooth affair.

The committee counts the likes of representatives of IMPAA and exhibitor and distributor associations as well as Bollywood biggies like Yash Chopra, Subhash Ghai, Ramesh Sippy, Amit Khanna and Yash Johar as its members. But Chopra shrugged off the importance of people like him being on the committee. “We are just trying our level best to do something for the festival. After all, Mumbai is the city of films,” he told Express Newsline.

The dream is to make the festival an annual staple in Mumbai that cinema buffs will make space for in their yearly planners. The states of West Bengal and Kerala host festivals organised by the government every year, but in Mumbai, cinema hounds have only had the odd retrospective organised by foreign embassies or by film societies to look forward to.

MAMI, which is also being aided by the Yashwantrao Chavan Pratishtan and the National Centre for the Performing Arts — hopes to tap just that crowd. “We hope that by showing different kinds of films from different countries, changes will come about in our kind of cinema as well,” says Sudhir Nandgaonkar, programme co-ordinator for the festival. Cooped in a makeshift booth at the Y B Chavan Centre, Nandgaonkar, in between fielding numerous calls, explains that film festivals are vital ingredients in shaping audience preferences. “Market forces may compel producers to release big-budget films all over the country. We cannot change that, but we can change audience tastes to get create a good cinema,” he says.

By international festival standards, the guest list seems unimpressive: By their own admission, organisors have not been able to invite too many big names, and the festival’s hottest ticket, Manoj Night Shyamalan whose Sixth Sense will open the festival, may just not make it. “We have a budget of just Rs 50 lakh, and within that amount, it’s not been possible to invite too many people,” pointed out Nandgaonkar. But the organisors hope that the festival will leave its stamp on the city, most importantly, on that lover of the moving image who will now know where to get his staple of good cinema from.