Film festivals have always attracted me over the years but somehow it has never worked out to be present all through any festival. This once it seemed possible and as such I was determined to witness the entire MFF this year. However I was under the impression that the festival begins on the 7th of November. It was only a day prior to its actual opening (29th Oct) that I realized I had one day to arrange for the pass and plan my week ahead!!
The same was immediately done and I was ready for an entire week of movie watching from all over the world.
Fun Republic, the multiplex in the Mumbai suburb of Andheri was my chosen camping ground for the week, Metro Cinema and R City mall also being the venues where the fest was going to be held. However Fun was much closer in terms of traveling and fortunately was also the main center with 5 films being screened everyday in each of its 4 screens which meant at least 20 films per day and for 7 days!! Make the maths- its mind boggling!
On going through the schedule the fair seemed impressive with approximately 140 diverse films to choose from which had a mix of world cinema- fiction along with nonfiction docu dramas, first time directors and retrospectives of legends.
There was confusion on the first night over whether the film to be screened was open for all or invitees only!! However I reached with my calculation that since the film was going to be screened in all 4 screens it would be silly to keep the general film hungry crowd away as there weren’t that many celebs/ invitees. But silly was the theme they chose to take and that’s precisely what happened. The film ran to deserted screens as some celebs just made an appearance and left whereas the ordinary film lover was left stranded. Never mind… it was too early to judge anything and too unpleasant to spoil one’s mood right at the start.
Keeping with the tradition of sketchy organization the catalogues were not available even on the opening night so my choices were dependent on my vague knowledge of world cinema and some expertise of a few learned people. I however was hungry for anything as long as I watched at least 3-4 films a day.
Some obvious must watches were circled even without synopsis like Costa Gavras’s Eden is West and the Iranian films that I so dearly love. I was also looking forward to French cinema and had decided to avoid the films from UK, US and the films by any Gurinder Chada clones!
It would thus be fair to say that my festival began on the 30th October’ 2009 wherein I had circled the first film to watch as- Petition- a Chinese docudrama!
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