Mumbai Film Festival 2013: No country for old people

Having consistently brought excellent international films to India for the past few years, Mumbai Film Festival (MFF) has become a fantastic event for cinephiles. That doesn’t stop people from thinking they could do better and so, there’s been grumbling this year from the festival’s younger fanbase that the curators have missed some excellent international titles. It’s the sort of observation that makes me want to give the holder of such opinions a tight thwack — you’ve got people like Costa Gavras and Leos Carax in the flesh before you; you’re getting to see some of the most talked-about films of the year, like Blue Is The Warmest Color, so pipe down and enjoy it. And say thank you to a festival that’s cash-strapped and still doing what it can to bring you good films. Right now, you’re choosing between the films of Ken Loach and Jafar Panahi and moaning. Without MFF, you’d be choosing between Boss, Shahid and Dham Dhoom. The other thing that’s been a regular feature at Metro Cinemas, one of the three festival venues, is outrage. I’m not sure if the same is true of Cinemax Versova, the other multiplex venue, but at Metro, every day, there’s at least one occasion when before a screening, there’s screaming, shouting and fisticuffs. This is when you hear war cries like, “You have no right to stand in my way!” (my favourite), “What kind of stupid system is this!”  and “You think everyone has internet?” Alarmed by the stampedes of previous years, when delegates turned into bulls from Pamplona, the MFF has tried a new system this year. With your delegate pass, you get a login ID and password for a ticketing portal. The ticketing microsite is updated every day and you can book tickets for the next two days. Once you’ve picked the films you want to see online, SMS confirmations are sent to you. This way, if a film is house full, then you know well in advance and can try your luck at another screen or venue. It’s a good system in theory. In practice, its most noticeable impact has been to make the ushers in Metro get an earful at least once a day. First, a large number of delegates have no idea that they need tickets in addition to their passes. They find out when they’re in the queue to enter a popular screening and are stopped by an usher who has had a mini heart attack at the sight of the anaconda-esque line. So, in an effort to prevent a stampede, s/he asks to see the SMS confirmation. This is the point at which all those who had no idea about booking seats online create a scene. [caption id=“attachment_1182929” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  The Mumbai Film Festival 2013 poster. Image courtesy: MFF website.[/caption] It didn’t help that the the ticketing portal didn’t go live at the time it was supposed to and till date, it hasn’t managed to open up an updated version of the site at midnight as per the festival organisers’ promises. This means that midnight onwards, you have to sit around and refresh the link again and again until the updated version is online. Wait until a decent hour in the morning, and you’ll probably find the must-watch films are all house full. As a journalist friend put it after Day 1, when the ticketing microsite became active around 12.45am, “Who knew insomnia could actually come handy?” Let’s be fair though. It’s impossible for there to be a perfect system at a festival like MFF. There are too many people with too many demands. But the decision to put up notifications about screenings, events the new ticketing system exclusively on social media and internet — it’s not mentioned in the literature given to delegates — shows a shift in the people the festival is targeting. It’s looking past the old-timers who have been coming to the Mumbai Film Festival from the very beginning, 15 years ago, when it wasn’t anywhere near as cool as it is now. Those Old Folk are used to the standard Indian festival format: you come to a counter, get a delegate pass and with it, you go see movies. This whole business of having to book seats in shows online is partly perplexing but also a hindrance. In two days, I’ve seen eight films, which is a lot of time spent at the cinema. It’s interesting that all those who have been involved in shouting matches because they don’t have tickets but want to see a show were elderly people. Before almost every screening, I’ve had at least one kindly, grandparent-ish person come up to me and ask which film they should watch. When I tell them they need to get a (free) ticket, they look at me with incomprehension. A few did have tickets. One told me she had friends in the jury who walked her through the process. “I clicked on everything so I have options,” she said with a giggle. Another got her secretary to do it. Yet another grinned and told me that his child — currently pursuing a PhD in America and not particularly interested in cinema — is doing the ticket reservations for him. “The difference in time zones is perfect. I couldn’t have done all this, especially at odd hours of the night,” he said. “It’s become a rich festival,” said a gentleman who introduced himself to me as Cherian (this is one of the fun parts of attending a festival. Waiting in line, you make friends with strangers). I told him that’s an odd thing to say about a festival that has been forced to change its venue to Liberty because it reportedly couldn’t afford National Centre for the Performing Arts. “I’m talking about the people who come,” said Cherian. “Look at them in line. All fancy clothes. No jholas, no cracked chappals. All old society ladies and young people with easy money. It was a different thing in the old days. You got a free pass and watched what films you could. These people are paying Rs 1,000 to see films at times when they should be at work.” Obviously, Cherian considers himself one of the proletariat and probably carries copies of The Communist Manifesto in his bag, but within his disdain for those who can afford to attend the festival is an astute observation about how the audience to which the festival caters is changing. He’s right. It is becoming increasingly elite, in mindset if not in terms of bank balances. When I mentioned Cherian’s point to an acquaintance, they said, “But come on. As if regular people would be interested in Blue Is The Warmest Color.” I thought of the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in its hey day, when Delhi’s arena-like Siri Fort Auditorium would be packed to the aisles to watch a Pedro Almodovar film; when people lined up to watch Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette hours before the show; when old films by the likes of Adoor Gopalakrishnan ran to packed theatres. They were regular people who loved cinema, snatched the free passes and lived exultantly in the darkened theatres for the days of the festival. This isn’t to suggest that the new lot that is the core audience of MFF is any less passionate about cinema. It just seems that the festival has chosen to be less open. It has no time for people like the elderly couple who waited 45 minutes to watch Qissa — they were first in the queue — but couldn’t be allowed in because they hadn’t reserved seats using the portal. “We don’t have internet,” said the gentleman repeatedly to the usher. “You must have something that is not online for those of us who are not comfortable with the internet. Everything can’t be internet,” said the lady. All the usher could say as those with tickets streamed into the auditorium, was, “Ma’am, I wish I could help you, but this is the system and it’s a house-full show. I’m so sorry, but I can’t let you in.” The couple pleaded at first and then they argued and then they yelled. But eventually, as the auditorium filled up, I lost sight of them.