By this time last year, preparations for the Mumbai Film Festival were well underway, but a hefty price had already been paid. After the principal sponsor, Reliance Entertainment, pulled out, the organisers were left scrambling till the 11th hour for funds to pay screening fees for international arthouse titles and bills for cinemas and hotels. The Mumbai movie industry rallied around, sponsors stepped in (including businessman Manish Mundhra and the Mahindra group), and the festival was held on schedule.
The annual cinema smorgasbord returns this year with a new team and a new outlook. Long-time festival director Srinivasan Narayanan has been replaced by journalist and author Anupama Chopra, and she has a new team of selectors and programmers. The Mumbai Academy of Moving Image, under whose aegis the festival has been held all these years, is now headed by Kiran Rao instead of Shyam Benegal. Even the name of the event is different, in deference to Reliance Jio, the new principal sponsor: it now goes under the awkward banner of Jio MAMI.
The festival will be held in Mumbai from October 29 to November 5, and its line-up of close to 200 films will include close to 40 titles made entirely by Indians or in collaboration with international producers. Apart from the first features that will compete in the Indian and international competition sections, the long list of foreign films includes such festival favourites as Paolo Sorrentino’s Youth, Jia Zhangke’s Mountains May Depart, Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s The Assassin, Hong Sangsoo’s Right Now, Wrong Then, Jafar Panahi’s Taxi, Noah Baumbach’s Mistress America, Nanni Moretti’s Mia Madre and Andrew Haigh’s 45 Years.
The festival opens with Hansal Mehta’s Aligarh, starring Manoj Bajpayee and Rajkummar Rao and based on the persecution of a gay Aligarh Muslim University professor. Among the new sections is Midnight Screenings, which will showcase films from the horror and thriller genres, and a package of children’s films that will open with Nagesh Kukunoor’s Dhanak. There will also be screenings of restored classics, including the Apu trilogy by Satyajit Ray, Pyaasa by Guru Dutt and Komal Gandhar by Ritwik Ghatak.
Anupama Chopra has a long familiarity with popular Hindi cinema – she has been a journalist since the early 1990s and has authored such books as Sholay: The Making of a Modern Classic and King of Bollywood: Shah Rukh Khan and the Seductive World of Indian Cinema. She is, however, a self-confessed greenhorn to the film festival circuit, and readily admits that one of her main goals is to synthesise the aesthetic pleasures of arthouse cinema with the seductive glitz of show business.
Here are excerpts from an interview with her:
From Mumbai Film Festival to Jio MAMI – what’s in a name?
It is the Mumbai Film Festival, but MAMI is the way it has been known all these years because it has been organised by the Mumbai Academy of Moving Image. We also have MIFF [the annual Mumbai International Film Festival of Documentary, Short and Animated Films]. So from this year, its official name is Jio MAMI.
How did you get involved with the festival?
I am ashamed to say that I am not a regular festival goer. It was always easier for me to attend festivals abroad, where I could take off three hours to watch a film. I must have been to MAMI about three times.
How did I get involved? It’s all the fault of Twitter. I had read on Twitter last year that the festival seemed to be shutting down, and while I wasn’t one of those passionate MAMI fans, it seemed insane not to have a film festival in a city that is all about the movies, more than any other city in the world. The first thing you associate with Mumbai is Bollywood. I asked Mr [Srinivasan] Narayanan how I could help. We started calling people and asking them to give us money, tax exemptions and so on.
After the festival, Shyam Benegal [former MAMI chairperperson] and Narayanan told us that they were done. We had a meeting of the board of trustees, where Kiran Rao was named MAMI chairperson and I the festival director. Only in India would you go from being nothing to festival director.
You have attended festivals in foreign countries. What lessons did you pick up from there?
I have been to Cannes, Toronto and Berlin several times. They have perfected the art, but then they have had 60 years to do it. What I see when at those places is a great cocktail of art, commerce and glamour. That is very clear in my head – if you want one word for the MAMI festival, it is ‘inclusive.’ There is something for every taste, whether you are a fan of Hindi movies or arthouse French cinema.
The big thing we have to break down is the notion that a film festival is ‘arty-farty.’ Cannes has red carpet glamour, a market that is buzzing and doing serious dhanda [business] and great cinema. There is no compromise in the programming. To say that cinema is not about beautiful people and glamour is myopic. There is no shame in it.
The Jaipur Literature Festival was one of the inspirations – if they can do it around books, why not around the movies?
Are Indian festivals not striking this balance?
Indian festivals were not doing this – there wasn’t an engagement with the mainstream. I can’t speak with authority about the previous MAMI editions, but there has been a traditional divide between the parallel and the mainstream. That is no longer true. Look at the cinema we are now creating – you cannot even categorise half these films.
To do a festival in Mumbai and not engage with this global brand that is Bollywood is to not leverage what you already have. The festival thrived last year because of the support of the film industry. This year too, we have the support of AR Rahman, who composed the signature tune. Vikramaditya Motwane directed a short film for the festival. They are endorsing Jio MAMI without asking for money. Salman Khan tweeted about the festival too after I approached him. Bollywood doesn’t need a film festival, but the festival needs Bollywood.
Kiran Rao and I have been making these personal visits – we joke that it is like one of our kids is getting married, and we are saying, "Shaadi pe zaroor aana!"
But events such as the government-sponsored International Film Festival of India in Goa have been criticised for being too glamour-struck. Will Jio MAMI maintain a balance?
Glamour and cinema is a tough cocktail. It is not easy, and you are not going to get it exactly right. I love Bollywood cinema, it is a great art form and a great industry, but I would not have Bollywood there for the glamour. To get all the flavours right is tough, and I would never want to make anything vacuous or frivolous, because there is enough of that in the city.
The thing is that people listen when these guys talk. After PVR Cinemas played a call for entries film in their multiplexes across the country, we got close to 250 features for the Indian section. We got 100 films on the last day. In a way that Karan Johar would distribute a film like The Lunchbox, you can see that the muscle and might of the mainstream can be used to distribute alternative content that would not otherwise get a platform.
At Jio MAMI, for instance, we have organised a one-day ‘movie mela’ where we will hold a master class with Rishi Kapoor. Raju Hirani and Abhijat Joshi will talk about creating cinema, and Dibakar Banerjee and Kabir Khan will talk about their films.
There are several films and documentaries from and about India across the sections.
We really want the festival to be a gateway for great Indian movies. That has to be our first priority. We have got to be the place where you get to watch superlative Indian programming. We have also organised a tribute to Chetan Anand, where we will be showing Haqeeqat, Neecha Nagar, Taxi Driver and Heer Ranjha. We have renamed the Lifetime Achievement Award to Excellence in Cinema, and it will be given to Amos Gitai and Salim-Javed.
You are probably the only festival director in the world who is also a full-time movie critic. How do you balance these roles?
I quit that life on August 30. There is just no way that I can critique films without thinking them through, and I had to stop. I do plan to go back to that life after the festival because I love it and miss it too much.
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The annual cinema smorgasbord returns this year with a new team and a new outlook. Long-time festival director Srinivasan Narayanan has been replaced by journalist and author Anupama Chopra, and she has a new team of selectors and programmers. The Mumbai Academy of Moving Image, under whose aegis the festival has been held all these years, is now headed by Kiran Rao instead of Shyam Benegal. Even the name of the event is different, in deference to Reliance Jio, the new principal sponsor: it now goes under the awkward banner of Jio MAMI.
The festival will be held in Mumbai from October 29 to November 5, and its line-up of close to 200 films will include close to 40 titles made entirely by Indians or in collaboration with international producers. Apart from the first features that will compete in the Indian and international competition sections, the long list of foreign films includes such festival favourites as Paolo Sorrentino’s Youth, Jia Zhangke’s Mountains May Depart, Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s The Assassin, Hong Sangsoo’s Right Now, Wrong Then, Jafar Panahi’s Taxi, Noah Baumbach’s Mistress America, Nanni Moretti’s Mia Madre and Andrew Haigh’s 45 Years.
The festival opens with Hansal Mehta’s Aligarh, starring Manoj Bajpayee and Rajkummar Rao and based on the persecution of a gay Aligarh Muslim University professor. Among the new sections is Midnight Screenings, which will showcase films from the horror and thriller genres, and a package of children’s films that will open with Nagesh Kukunoor’s Dhanak. There will also be screenings of restored classics, including the Apu trilogy by Satyajit Ray, Pyaasa by Guru Dutt and Komal Gandhar by Ritwik Ghatak.
Anupama Chopra has a long familiarity with popular Hindi cinema – she has been a journalist since the early 1990s and has authored such books as Sholay: The Making of a Modern Classic and King of Bollywood: Shah Rukh Khan and the Seductive World of Indian Cinema. She is, however, a self-confessed greenhorn to the film festival circuit, and readily admits that one of her main goals is to synthesise the aesthetic pleasures of arthouse cinema with the seductive glitz of show business.
Here are excerpts from an interview with her:
From Mumbai Film Festival to Jio MAMI – what’s in a name?
It is the Mumbai Film Festival, but MAMI is the way it has been known all these years because it has been organised by the Mumbai Academy of Moving Image. We also have MIFF [the annual Mumbai International Film Festival of Documentary, Short and Animated Films]. So from this year, its official name is Jio MAMI.
How did you get involved with the festival?
I am ashamed to say that I am not a regular festival goer. It was always easier for me to attend festivals abroad, where I could take off three hours to watch a film. I must have been to MAMI about three times.
How did I get involved? It’s all the fault of Twitter. I had read on Twitter last year that the festival seemed to be shutting down, and while I wasn’t one of those passionate MAMI fans, it seemed insane not to have a film festival in a city that is all about the movies, more than any other city in the world. The first thing you associate with Mumbai is Bollywood. I asked Mr [Srinivasan] Narayanan how I could help. We started calling people and asking them to give us money, tax exemptions and so on.
After the festival, Shyam Benegal [former MAMI chairperperson] and Narayanan told us that they were done. We had a meeting of the board of trustees, where Kiran Rao was named MAMI chairperson and I the festival director. Only in India would you go from being nothing to festival director.
You have attended festivals in foreign countries. What lessons did you pick up from there?
I have been to Cannes, Toronto and Berlin several times. They have perfected the art, but then they have had 60 years to do it. What I see when at those places is a great cocktail of art, commerce and glamour. That is very clear in my head – if you want one word for the MAMI festival, it is ‘inclusive.’ There is something for every taste, whether you are a fan of Hindi movies or arthouse French cinema.
The big thing we have to break down is the notion that a film festival is ‘arty-farty.’ Cannes has red carpet glamour, a market that is buzzing and doing serious dhanda [business] and great cinema. There is no compromise in the programming. To say that cinema is not about beautiful people and glamour is myopic. There is no shame in it.
The Jaipur Literature Festival was one of the inspirations – if they can do it around books, why not around the movies?
Are Indian festivals not striking this balance?
Indian festivals were not doing this – there wasn’t an engagement with the mainstream. I can’t speak with authority about the previous MAMI editions, but there has been a traditional divide between the parallel and the mainstream. That is no longer true. Look at the cinema we are now creating – you cannot even categorise half these films.
To do a festival in Mumbai and not engage with this global brand that is Bollywood is to not leverage what you already have. The festival thrived last year because of the support of the film industry. This year too, we have the support of AR Rahman, who composed the signature tune. Vikramaditya Motwane directed a short film for the festival. They are endorsing Jio MAMI without asking for money. Salman Khan tweeted about the festival too after I approached him. Bollywood doesn’t need a film festival, but the festival needs Bollywood.
Kiran Rao and I have been making these personal visits – we joke that it is like one of our kids is getting married, and we are saying, "Shaadi pe zaroor aana!"
But events such as the government-sponsored International Film Festival of India in Goa have been criticised for being too glamour-struck. Will Jio MAMI maintain a balance?
Glamour and cinema is a tough cocktail. It is not easy, and you are not going to get it exactly right. I love Bollywood cinema, it is a great art form and a great industry, but I would not have Bollywood there for the glamour. To get all the flavours right is tough, and I would never want to make anything vacuous or frivolous, because there is enough of that in the city.
The thing is that people listen when these guys talk. After PVR Cinemas played a call for entries film in their multiplexes across the country, we got close to 250 features for the Indian section. We got 100 films on the last day. In a way that Karan Johar would distribute a film like The Lunchbox, you can see that the muscle and might of the mainstream can be used to distribute alternative content that would not otherwise get a platform.
At Jio MAMI, for instance, we have organised a one-day ‘movie mela’ where we will hold a master class with Rishi Kapoor. Raju Hirani and Abhijat Joshi will talk about creating cinema, and Dibakar Banerjee and Kabir Khan will talk about their films.
There are several films and documentaries from and about India across the sections.
We really want the festival to be a gateway for great Indian movies. That has to be our first priority. We have got to be the place where you get to watch superlative Indian programming. We have also organised a tribute to Chetan Anand, where we will be showing Haqeeqat, Neecha Nagar, Taxi Driver and Heer Ranjha. We have renamed the Lifetime Achievement Award to Excellence in Cinema, and it will be given to Amos Gitai and Salim-Javed.
You are probably the only festival director in the world who is also a full-time movie critic. How do you balance these roles?
I quit that life on August 30. There is just no way that I can critique films without thinking them through, and I had to stop. I do plan to go back to that life after the festival because I love it and miss it too much.