Gautam Bakhale has a peculiar smile on his face. An ardentfan of world cinema, he eagerly awaits the commencement of the annualInternational Film Festival of India (IFFI). With Goa being a permanent venuefor the event, cinema has come in the limelight in Goa like never before. Thereis certainly far more awareness in Goa about cinema than it ever used to be. Asa result, numerous other film festivals are happening in the state, film clubsare being started and the film culture is booming.
Manoj Srivastava, CEO of ESG says, “When the IFFI started in2004, along with cinema came stars, thought provoking content and theaspiration to rise. All these factors led to the commencement of filmactivities in Goa. The sole motive of having festivals on different themes isto create a niche audience. Contrary to the situation in 2004-05, people nowlook forward to attending film festivals, irrespective of the language of thefilms being screened. I am yet to see any festival with less than 80 percentoccupancy for the screenings.”
Arun Joshi, a filmmaker from Nepal presented his film‘Diyali’ at the recently concluded South Asian Film Festival (SAFF). Accordingto him, “International film festivals like SAFF serve as an excellent learningopportunity, as well as platform to interact with filmmakers from differentparts of the world and exchange ideas to improve the quality of cinema.”
The concept of film clubs was completely alien to Goa till2009. But the increasing passion for films among the Goans has led to thestarting of film clubs across the state. Vinesh Iyer, co-founder of Art Escapeat Benaulim started screening world cinema and documentaries on music, art andenvironment as an experiment, with a vow not to screen mainstream movies. “Theidea behind screening movies at Art Escape is to present the collection ofworld cinema that we have been watching for all these years. Apart fromscreenings, we also have post-screening discussion and exchange of ideaspertaining to the film and cinema as whole. The response we get differs withevery screening as I believe it is an ongoing process of creating awarenessabout quality cinema and things shall only improve with time.”
Similarly, in the same year, Sunaparanta Art Gallery startedtheir film club. Apart from the regular screenings, programmes like the FrenchFilm Festival and Childrens Film Festival are held during the summer holidays.Sachin Chatte, film curator at the club says, “We try to showcase films fromaround the globe, including Indian films that will stir emotion in theviewer. A Jules Dassin French crimethriller could well be followed by Kim Ki Duk's thought provoking Korean film.The response that we have been getting is unbelievable.”
