DEEPAK LAAD
The international film festival (IFFI) was brought to Goa with great fanfare in the year 2004. The pomp and gaiety of the opening year has left an indelible impression on us. We knew all along that IFFI could not be spoken in the same breathe as international festivals like Berlin, Cannes, Venice, and Toronto yet, it held us enchanted during the initial years here.
In the past, during festival time, the venues and the surrounding areas were aesthetically decorated and illuminated. The hostesses were seen sashaying around at the screening venues decked out in vibrant coloured sarees and fineries. Officials scurried in urgency all over the places and delegates hotfooted from screen to screen in search of better fare. Connoisseurs huddled together in groups to critically shred, analyse and review the films they had watched. The festival came alive with sizable number of film fraternity presenting their crafts and delegates cheering them lustily.
In recent years the quality of the movies screened at the event has deteriorated sharply. Many movies were plain insipid and bland. Cannot really blame the curators, if fund paucity was the constraint. Times were when the choice courses brimmed the plate at the festival and it was damn appetising. The main course came from names like Susanne Bier, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Ken Loach, Kim Ki Duk, Abbas Kiarostami, Atic Rahemi , Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Wong Kar Wai, jiri Menzel, Jafar Panahi, Takeshi Kitano, Majid Majidi, Agniesza Holland and many more of their ilk. At times screening schedule of two good movies clashed and to make choice of one for viewing was a difficult decision. We are no more spoilt for choice as there are few good movies among the average lot. The movies from the USA, Canada, UK and Australia have been few and far between. This time the catalogue is surfeited with movies from Scandinavian and Balkan regions. Number of movies from China, Iran, South Korea which were the mainstay in recent past has dried up significantly. In Indian segment majority of the movies are in Tamil, Malayalam and Marathi language. There are few in Bengali, Bhojpuri and Oriya languages. Kannada and Telagu language movies have been missing altogether.
Goa is now the permanent venue of the festival. The festival is being held in Goa for almost a decade and a half now, yet the organising committee has habitually and routinely failed to apply its mind to long standing unsorted issues.
This time around the drearily dull posters mounted on lamp posts in Campal street were indicative the kind of drab festival we were heading for. About other decorations at the venue there is nothing to write home about. The grill fabrication work, with nettings, installed in Inox front yard has nothing to do with creativity or aesthetics. On the contrary, it creates hindrance to movement in the yard. The money wasted on it could have been well spent on erecting a ‘shamiana’ to cover that area to provide shade to the delegates standing in rush lines for hours on end, in hot sun. The skirmishes and screaming while ticketing or before screenings still continue on account of lack of proper system in place and overall absence of administration. The routine of last minute rush of activities to meet the deadlines still continues. The haphazard hurry leaves some activities unfinished even after the festival has commenced.
There was sizable number of national delegates that came to attend the festival in the initial years but it has drastically dwindled in recent years. Now majority of Indian delegates come from southern states of Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Large groups of delegates from North East, Odisha and Bengal have stopped coming. Who is who of regional films who came visiting in the past are now conspicuous by their absence. The Bollywood biggies Khans, Devgans, Kumars, Bacchans attending inaugural or closing ceremony “ arrive, attend and leave from the function venue.
Top A-grade actresses, present or past, of Bollywood were rarely seen. Aishwarya Bachchan and Priyanka Chopra always desperately seek Cannes invitation to walk Red carpet there, but closer home have never stepped here in the backyard. Earlier we used to see some starlets attending but they too have stopped visiting now. Susan Sarandon and Michel Yeoh in attendance in the past was the closest we came to participation of Hollywood in the festival. The glamour factor ,as such, has always eluded the festival.
Building a permanent infra-structure for the festival we will be wasting public money senselessly on another albatross around our necks- just the way we have wasted it on building indoor parking facility near Panaji jetty.
International film festivals cannot be held on shoe string budgets in austere simplicity. Extravaganza is intrinsic to such events closely associated with showbiz and glamour. As things stand, the international festival is fast turning into ‘Tiswadi film festival’. Number of cine enthusiasts coming to the event even from other parts of our own state too has reduced to a trickle.
The case of the festival is analogous to a rich man keeping a pedigree pet and pampering and feeding it initially, but unable to do so when he himself falls on bad times. It’s time he passed the pet to the kind neighbour to keep it alive rather than leave it to starve to death. If some other state with ample financial resources is willing to host the festival grandiosely, we should let it go.
