Hey MAMI

Khalid Mohamed   | Cinema Ray, Exclusive | October 19, 2009 at 8:50 am

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No cracks please. Just don’t say MAMA, or even think of your long-lost uncle, because this year’s MAMI promises to be a film gourmand’s banquet come true.

That’s the Mumbai International Film Festival presented by the Mumbai Academy of Moving Images, acronymed as MAMI.

Funded by munifience of Anil Ambani, the eleventh version of MAMI  unspools  from October 29 to November 5. Cool, cool, the fest is especially needed at a point when we the audience, as beggars for quality, can become choosers. Now we can say grace and sup on repast of cinema running into strong three figures.

Swine flu blues

Naturally the final show is being finessed, prints are arriving and some are no-show like  Whip It, which marks actress Drew Barrymore’s debut as director. Earlier Robert De Niro was expected to arrive in person, if the swine flu scare oinked over. It did but he isn’t coming.

A sidebar package of Navketan Films was planned but Dev Anand withdrew participation because he felt sidelined. Newspaper reports  had glowed with neon-light force over the fact that the Lifetime Achievement Award this year will go to Shashi Kapoor, a rare event since our Shakespearewalla has always thumbed down awards.

Dev saab has been presented the same award by er..MAMI..but what can be said? Dev saab can be very very stubborn like he suavely slipped out, once, of presenting the Filmfare Lifetime Achievement trophy to Waheeda Rehman. She had warned me, “He’ll never do it.” So many afsanas lying untold in the Bollywood files. Sigh.

Chief factor

Okay, personalities are personalities. Who’s perfect? To return to (sorry can’t help..the..er) MAMI is in more than safe hands with its new chief S Narayanan, a feisty film lover, who has gone through several tests of fire during his postings at the NFDC and the I and B Ministry’s Directorate of Film Festivals. Over the decades,he has sought to expose the Indian audience to cinema of substance like Lemming, and can go in a trance while discussing Murnau or Guru Dutt.

On the eve of the festival, the Competition section looks especially strong in content. Sure this is a mega-wild guess but the top three contenders are likely to be Mahmut Fazil Coskun’s Wrong Rosary (Turkey),  Shahran Alidi’s Whisper with the Wind (Iraq) and from India, the Konkani film Man Across the Bridge directed by Laxmikant Shetgaonkar.

For the Best Actress Award, Thea Barfoed as an actress coming out of alcoholism in Applaus , from Denmark,  seems a sure cinch for the trophy. Close on her heels though there’s another tough-knuckled performance by  Andrea Gavriliu in Katalin Varga as a woman in Rumania who won’t take male dominance anymore.

Heat and debate

In the world cinema section, three films are the sort that you have your fingers and toes crossed for. Will they arrive? Will they be screened? Leading the trio, there’s Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist, which had whipped up a storm in Cannes. It was booed by a section, it was applauded by another, while many just quit the auditorium.

Lars Von Trier’s film follows a couple who have lost their child. They move to a desolate forest, where they hope to come to terms with their psychological injuries. Follows shock, terror and..cinema at its most Euro-extreme. Von Trier’s films have never been easy stylistically or contentwise, be it the laceratingly brutal Dancer in the Dark or the abstruse Dogville. Talk is that the director could only devote a fraction of his heart and mind to Antichrist because he was coming out of a mental crisis himself. Not surprisingly, the lead player Willem Dafoe said, “I felt I was playing the role of Trier himself.”

For some mysterious reason Michael Traven’s Daniel and Anna (Mexico) didn’t make it to the competition section. Perhaps the screening committee didn’t think it was up to the mark or it got the heebie jeebies about its sexual content. The film is, in fact, deeply disturbing and say, as daring as Ingmar Bergman’s Silence was once considered to be. A young woman, on the eve of her marriage, is kidnapped with her brother by a gang of porn filmmakers. They are forced to make love. The film while depicting the horrifying consequences of that one hour, also points out that such kidnappings have become as commonplace in Mexico as sombreros.

Another festival’s discussion point could well be the Filipino film Kinatay directed by Brilliante Mendonca. The no-aargh-bared violence is sparked by a murder pact; a hit-man must kill or be killed as is the custom in slasher flicks. Only here, there is absolute no mercy, the camera resting on the blood spilling. It’s an example of where Asian cinema is has gone.So what’s the point of being queasy? Not like this fest film, don’t see.

Opening scene

Dear Drew Barrymore’s Whip It is not about what you might think. It’s about finding solace in roller skating! It was expected to be the fest’s opening film. Since it’s not arriving, the option could well be Steve Soderbergh’s The Informant in which Matt Damon takes off on a comic corporate ride. See what cinema is capable of? So, here’s looking at you..er..MAMI.

Tags: 11 Mumbai Film Festival, Antichrist, Applause, Daniel and Anna, film festival, Kinatay, MAMI 2009, The Informant!, World Cinema

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