Can the popularity of a film festival turn into its own enemy? That certainly seems to be true of several cinema events, whether it’s in the ones Kerala, Mumbai or Panaji, where the International Film Festival of India is in progress.

Organised by the Directorate of Film Festivals, which is attached to the Union Information and Broadcasting Ministry, and the Goa government, IFFI aims to balance the cerebral pleasures of arthouse cinema with the fairground thrills of popular filmmaking. The near-stampede is one of the features of this year’s IFFI, in its 45th edition and its tenth in Panaji ever since the wandering event was relocated permanently to the Goan capital.

Every day since November 20, when the ten day-long festival kicked off, thousands of delegates, journalists and invited guests (including programmers and filmmakers) have been forgoing meals, lining up for films at least an hour in advance, haranguing student volunteers into opening the gates of the venues earlier than stipulated, getting into minor fights over people trying to jump the queue,  and shaking their heads at the specific inefficiency of the organisers and the general reality of living in an overpopulated country.

One such near stampede took place on Sunday evening, where two queues for the Marathi movie A Rainy Day and the Polish drama Ida got intertwined, leading to short tempers and temporary mayhem. Some nimble thinking by the organisers might have reduced tensions, but they left the situation to their young and able volunteers, who displayed admirable calm in the face of avoidable ugliness.

Organisers love queues

It’s no secret that film festival organisers adore queues, because there is no better direct evidence of the wisdom of their programming choices, but the snaking formations that lurk outside screening venues can be deceptive. At least 5% of the hall will stumble out with the same enthusiasm with which it entered. Festival audiences are often not too different from the regular cinema-going public that files into theatres week after week. They will talk on their mobile phones. They will loudly express their enthusiasm or shock at particular moments. They will give expression to the itch in their throats. They will update the status of their Facebook accounts. They will yawn and whisper. They will remain unmindful or unaware of public etiquette and behave as though they are at home, curled up in front of their television sets.

It’s a myth that film festival audiences are more enlightened than average moviegoers. If watching artistic and thought-provoking cinema made us better human beings, film appreciation courses would replace peacekeeping modules the world over.

However, the film festival screening is one of the few places where you can tell a noisy neighbour to shut up and be greeted with embarrassment rather than protest. But the greater democraticisation of such annual celebrations of cinema ensures that every screening is a mishmash of seasoned cinephiles, recently minted cineastes, thrill-seekers, flirts and faddists. The last category is particularly tricky. It is made up of people for whom film festival attendance has become as essential as embracing a vegan lifestyle. This crowd is the bane of festival regulars – they wander into screenings cheerfully curious and unabashedly ignorant, watch any and every film simply because it has originated in some exotic overseas nation, and give voice to their wonderment of the mystifyingly myriad ways of cinematic storytelling in the middle of screenings.

Festival organisers cannot wish away this crowd, and they don’t want do. This vocal majority is what is fuelling attendance at festivals. The virgin festival delegate is contributing the numbers that organisers need to justify their art-for-art’s-sake agenda and fund-rising expenses as films and filmmakers get increasingly expensive to transport. A film festival’s costs include spending on the opening and closing ceremonies, hospitality, cocktail receptions and after-party dinners to keep guests entertained, publicity before, after, and during the event. They also need budgets for film transmission and piracy prevention.

Enormous costs

A festival like IFFI, which stretches over ten days, cost a rumoured Rs 10 crore this year, far more than, say, the beleaguered Mumbai Film Festival, which had to cobble together funds at the last minute and still hasn’t paid its trophy winners their prize money. The only justification for carrying on year on year is make the festival mainstream rather than esoteric, infuse the programing with populism and issue as many delegate passes as possible.

In India, especially, film festivals thrive because of an overall culture of repression and restriction. Only a fraction of international cinema titles makes it here because audiences are too small to make this worthwhile for distribution houses and the authorities still censor scenes they consider risque or risky. In previous decades, foreign films were screened by amateur film societies, but these have faded away in the age of the DVD. In the absence of arthouse cinemas that can show international films without fear of censorship or censure, film festivals end up taking on the responsibility and the heat. Despite a growing culture of piracy that ensures that foreign films come to our shores unmolested, cinephiles still crave the big-screen experience, which for now can only be found at a film festival.

The moment we get arthouse theatres that are liberated from commercial pressures, Indian film festivals will be freed of the burden of being the sole torchbearers of world cinema. The crowds might ebb, the flirts might either settle down or direct their passion elsewhere, and festival organisers might be able to orient their programming towards the discerning few rather than the unmanageable masses. Some doors might survive the banging, and windows will open onto new ways of watching and processing the wonders of the seventh art.