MAMI mia! – notes from a festival
Attending the MAMI film festival can be both tiresome and exhilarating. Careful planning, however, helped this writer catch the best films from across the world
A good film festival is a cinema lover’s Diwali and Christmas combined, and I eagerly looked forward to this edition of the MAMI (Mumbai Academy of the Moving Image) ), that was reappearing after four years. Just like any other festival, this one needs you to prepare. It all starts with getting a season pass that allows access to reserved seats. Reserved seats might not seem like a big deal but remember that booking for a film on a particular day opens at 8am on the previous day and most good films are sold out in minutes. Besides, because of the multiple venues and simultaneous screenings, it takes some serious planning to draw up a schedule and then successfully book your seats during this 8 am online gold rush. It could well happen that you get a confirmed booking for only one of the films on your wishlist and that another has been grabbed by other avid film fans. That would mean that opting for a film at a different venue, which, given Mumbai’s traffic, could take an hour to reach. Of course, you could try your luck in an on-the-spot walk-in queue, but that queue is usually long, and you have to be at the venue at least an hour-and-a-half before the scheduled time to be able to flirt with a serious chance of getting a seat. Phew! All this is why reserved seats allocated to special-access passes are worth their weight in gold. Armed with those, you can simply sail in at the last minute and luxuriate in the movie experience.
The venues spread across the city included some traditional MAMI favourites – Regal in Colaba, PVR Juhu and PVR Icon at Infinity Mall in Andheri. This year, there were five new venues – the BKC Maison at the new Jio World Drive mall, Grand Theatre at the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre (NMACC) at BKC (Bandra Kurla Complex), PVR at Oberoi Mall in Goregaon, the Inoxes at Inorbit Mall in Malad and R-City Mall in Ghatkopar. There are ways to pick films and plan your day accordingly, but the wisest thing to do is to pick a venue for the day and watch all the films at the same place because running around the city is just tedious. With a lot of planning, I eventually did manage to watch some great films. But in a festival spread over nine days and showing over 250 films from 70 countries, it is quite impossible to watch everything you want to. As expected, MAMI turned out to be as much about the films I missed as about the ones I didn’t.
I started with one of the oldest theatres in the city – Regal. Despite having lived in Mumbai all my life, my romance with the “town”, as the older southern part of the city is colloquially known, has never died. There is something beautiful, almost nostalgic, about travelling into town, walking across Oval Maidan, watching films at Regal, eating at an old-world joint, and strolling back to Churchgate station to catch the train home. Strangely, all that’s even more enjoyable when you are alone. And alone I was on the first day of MAMI. The best (and the worst) part about Regal is that the 800-seater cinema hall looks like it hasn’t been renovated since the British left. They still sell two samosas for ₹80 as opposed to ₹200+ at any modern theatre. The seats are not as comfortable as the ones at the new cinema halls in the suburbs but that’s just how Regal is.
My first watch was Millennium Mambo (2001), a Taiwanese film by Hou Hsiao-hsien, about a girl recounting her experience of trying to find herself as she went through romances in her teens and early twenties. Simultaneously sensuous and painful, this coming-of-age story is set in Taipei. By night, the city glitters spectacularly as the girl attempts to tackle her obsessive, drug-addicted boyfriend, juggle another romance, and work at a dance bar to make a living. Told with poise and punctuated by necessary silences, it allowed the viewer to understand the character’s emotional journey. Next up was the much-talked-about Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, a Romanian black comedy which, some insist, was made when the writer-director, Radu Jude, was high. The madness begins from the first scene where someone using an app-filter shoots themself swearing at the world. The plot is thin and revolves around a woman wandering through Bucharest to shoot for a “Safety At Work” video. The viewer is drawn into her personal life in comic-bizarre manner. A commentary on Romania with a strong political undertone, it was quite funny but could have done with a good edit that reduced its 2 hour 45 minute length. Long films make viewers thirsty and afterwards, the audience collectively sprinted towards Mondegar, the iconic South Bombay pub in the adjacent building. I headed to Fountain Sizzlers instead and over an excellent meal, watched South Africa scrape past Pakistan in their World Cup encounter.
The next day turned out to be my best at MAMI this year. It started early in the morning at the NMACC’s Grand Theatre, which can seat 2000. It was my first time there and I was struck by the grandeur of even its five-star washrooms and drinking water fountains. However, the theatre itself is so huge that the viewer feels like the space needs a significantly larger screen. Still, I did enjoy Fallen Leaves, a Finnish film by Aki Kaurismäki. It hit me because of its simplicity. A straightforward film with deadpan humour that keeps you giggling throughout, it didn’t allow me to lose interest for even a minute. Two Finns, both loners doing odd jobs to get by, meet at a bar and share some fabulously funny moments. Afterwards, the man realises he hasn’t asked the woman her name or her number, and his quest to find her begins. However, utterly random things happen to hinder his search. Made with stunning craft and sharp writing, Fallen Leaves makes you root for the characters. It was the perfect start to a long day of watching films – fresh like coffee and light like scrambled eggs.
This year, I had decided not to read anything about the films on offer as I didn’t want to cloud my opinion. So I was doubly surprised when Monster, a film by the modern master of Japanese cinema, Hirokazu Koreeda, blew me away! Richly crafted and with a complex plot, this was undoubtedly the best film at MAMI and is probably the best film I have seen this whole year. A thematic ode to Rashomon, it tells a story from three different perspectives. Great films set expectations midway through and then surpass them. Childhood, harassment, guilt, the innocent getting punished, poor parenting, love, sexuality are all at play in this masterpiece. For a few moments after the end, I stayed glued to my seat, still absorbing what I had watched. The audience gave the film thunderous applause. Later, at Sante, a Mexican restaurant in BKC, despite the distractions presented by their lip smacking Holy Guacamole, all everyone could discuss was Monster.
Next up was the much-talked-about film of the year, Anatomy of a Fall by Justine Triet. How long can you keep France away, anyway, from an event that celebrates cinema? Justine Triet does with Anatomy of a Fall what Krzysztof Kieslowski did with Three Colours: Blue. It’s the story of a woman trying to gather up her life after the sudden demise of her husband. But what Anatomy of a Fall, which is set in a contemporary French village, does differently is that it consistently maintains an element of suspense about whether the woman had anything to do with the death of her husband – he fell from a window. As the lawyers come in and interrogations begin, the viewer learns of the almost-broken marriage and becomes acquainted with the beautifully written character of their son. I loved the film, and had I not seen Monster just a couple of hours before, I would have called this a masterpiece too. MAMI’s second day really was excellent. Never before in my life have I seen three films back to back in a theatre and loved them all: Monster, Anatomy of a Fall and Fallen Leaves – in that order of preference.
By now, the benchmark was set so high that it was going to be difficult for the rest of the seven days to match up. And that’s exactly what happened. Nothing I saw thereafter came anywhere close to these films. However, I quite enjoyed Agra by Kanu Behl that’s about a lower-middle-class family in complete disarray. The protagonist is a sexually repressed young boy who imagines sleeping with many women, one of whom, he later finds out, doesn’t exist. He keeps searching for sex with whoever he finds, on one occasion even forcing himself onto someone in an incestuous scenario. His father lives on the first floor of the dilapidated family home with another woman while the boy and his mother live on the ground floor. The constant bickering makes the place a living hell. A gathering of terribly flawed characters living in an ugly setting fuelled by poverty, Agra is hard-hitting and raw. All India Rank by Varun Grover, which recreates the world of coaching classes and India’s obsession with the IITs, is simple, pleasant and sneaks in a few laughs. However, it’s also predictable and lacks ambition as a film though it’s definitely more sensitively made than most Hindi films. Then there’s the list of films I couldn’t watch: Hesitation Wound by Salman Necar,the Royal Stag Large Short Films, and Anurag Kashyap’s Kennedy starring Sunny Leone and Rahul Bhat. I guess I’ll just have to wait for the last one at least to appear on OTT sometime soon.
In addition to the films, there were talks and masterclasses by famous film folk. I’m sure it was all very interesting. But if I have to make a choice between watching cinema and hearing people talk about it, on most days, I am going to choose the former. And that’s just what I did.
Overall, MAMI was well organised and well curated festival. In a season of festivals, fulfilling cultural events like this remind us that life itself is a grand festival that must be savoured and enjoyed.
Mihir Chitre is the author of two books of poetry, ‘School of Age’ and ‘Hyphenated’. He is the brain behind the advertising campaigns ‘#LaughAtDeath’ and ‘#HarBhashaEqual’ and has made the short film ‘Hello Brick Road’.
A good film festival is a cinema lover’s Diwali and Christmas combined, and I eagerly looked forward to this edition of the MAMI (Mumbai Academy of the Moving Image) ), that was reappearing after four years. Just like any other festival, this one needs you to prepare. It all starts with getting a season pass that allows access to reserved seats. Reserved seats might not seem like a big deal but remember that booking for a film on a particular day opens at 8am on the previous day and most good films are sold out in minutes. Besides, because of the multiple venues and simultaneous screenings, it takes some serious planning to draw up a schedule and then successfully book your seats during this 8 am online gold rush. It could well happen that you get a confirmed booking for only one of the films on your wishlist and that another has been grabbed by other avid film fans. That would mean that opting for a film at a different venue, which, given Mumbai’s traffic, could take an hour to reach. Of course, you could try your luck in an on-the-spot walk-in queue, but that queue is usually long, and you have to be at the venue at least an hour-and-a-half before the scheduled time to be able to flirt with a serious chance of getting a seat. Phew! All this is why reserved seats allocated to special-access passes are worth their weight in gold. Armed with those, you can simply sail in at the last minute and luxuriate in the movie experience.
The venues spread across the city included some traditional MAMI favourites – Regal in Colaba, PVR Juhu and PVR Icon at Infinity Mall in Andheri. This year, there were five new venues – the BKC Maison at the new Jio World Drive mall, Grand Theatre at the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre (NMACC) at BKC (Bandra Kurla Complex), PVR at Oberoi Mall in Goregaon, the Inoxes at Inorbit Mall in Malad and R-City Mall in Ghatkopar. There are ways to pick films and plan your day accordingly, but the wisest thing to do is to pick a venue for the day and watch all the films at the same place because running around the city is just tedious. With a lot of planning, I eventually did manage to watch some great films. But in a festival spread over nine days and showing over 250 films from 70 countries, it is quite impossible to watch everything you want to. As expected, MAMI turned out to be as much about the films I missed as about the ones I didn’t.
{{/usCountry}}The venues spread across the city included some traditional MAMI favourites – Regal in Colaba, PVR Juhu and PVR Icon at Infinity Mall in Andheri. This year, there were five new venues – the BKC Maison at the new Jio World Drive mall, Grand Theatre at the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre (NMACC) at BKC (Bandra Kurla Complex), PVR at Oberoi Mall in Goregaon, the Inoxes at Inorbit Mall in Malad and R-City Mall in Ghatkopar. There are ways to pick films and plan your day accordingly, but the wisest thing to do is to pick a venue for the day and watch all the films at the same place because running around the city is just tedious. With a lot of planning, I eventually did manage to watch some great films. But in a festival spread over nine days and showing over 250 films from 70 countries, it is quite impossible to watch everything you want to. As expected, MAMI turned out to be as much about the films I missed as about the ones I didn’t.
{{/usCountry}}I started with one of the oldest theatres in the city – Regal. Despite having lived in Mumbai all my life, my romance with the “town”, as the older southern part of the city is colloquially known, has never died. There is something beautiful, almost nostalgic, about travelling into town, walking across Oval Maidan, watching films at Regal, eating at an old-world joint, and strolling back to Churchgate station to catch the train home. Strangely, all that’s even more enjoyable when you are alone. And alone I was on the first day of MAMI. The best (and the worst) part about Regal is that the 800-seater cinema hall looks like it hasn’t been renovated since the British left. They still sell two samosas for ₹80 as opposed to ₹200+ at any modern theatre. The seats are not as comfortable as the ones at the new cinema halls in the suburbs but that’s just how Regal is.
My first watch was Millennium Mambo (2001), a Taiwanese film by Hou Hsiao-hsien, about a girl recounting her experience of trying to find herself as she went through romances in her teens and early twenties. Simultaneously sensuous and painful, this coming-of-age story is set in Taipei. By night, the city glitters spectacularly as the girl attempts to tackle her obsessive, drug-addicted boyfriend, juggle another romance, and work at a dance bar to make a living. Told with poise and punctuated by necessary silences, it allowed the viewer to understand the character’s emotional journey. Next up was the much-talked-about Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, a Romanian black comedy which, some insist, was made when the writer-director, Radu Jude, was high. The madness begins from the first scene where someone using an app-filter shoots themself swearing at the world. The plot is thin and revolves around a woman wandering through Bucharest to shoot for a “Safety At Work” video. The viewer is drawn into her personal life in comic-bizarre manner. A commentary on Romania with a strong political undertone, it was quite funny but could have done with a good edit that reduced its 2 hour 45 minute length. Long films make viewers thirsty and afterwards, the audience collectively sprinted towards Mondegar, the iconic South Bombay pub in the adjacent building. I headed to Fountain Sizzlers instead and over an excellent meal, watched South Africa scrape past Pakistan in their World Cup encounter.
The next day turned out to be my best at MAMI this year. It started early in the morning at the NMACC’s Grand Theatre, which can seat 2000. It was my first time there and I was struck by the grandeur of even its five-star washrooms and drinking water fountains. However, the theatre itself is so huge that the viewer feels like the space needs a significantly larger screen. Still, I did enjoy Fallen Leaves, a Finnish film by Aki Kaurismäki. It hit me because of its simplicity. A straightforward film with deadpan humour that keeps you giggling throughout, it didn’t allow me to lose interest for even a minute. Two Finns, both loners doing odd jobs to get by, meet at a bar and share some fabulously funny moments. Afterwards, the man realises he hasn’t asked the woman her name or her number, and his quest to find her begins. However, utterly random things happen to hinder his search. Made with stunning craft and sharp writing, Fallen Leaves makes you root for the characters. It was the perfect start to a long day of watching films – fresh like coffee and light like scrambled eggs.
This year, I had decided not to read anything about the films on offer as I didn’t want to cloud my opinion. So I was doubly surprised when Monster, a film by the modern master of Japanese cinema, Hirokazu Koreeda, blew me away! Richly crafted and with a complex plot, this was undoubtedly the best film at MAMI and is probably the best film I have seen this whole year. A thematic ode to Rashomon, it tells a story from three different perspectives. Great films set expectations midway through and then surpass them. Childhood, harassment, guilt, the innocent getting punished, poor parenting, love, sexuality are all at play in this masterpiece. For a few moments after the end, I stayed glued to my seat, still absorbing what I had watched. The audience gave the film thunderous applause. Later, at Sante, a Mexican restaurant in BKC, despite the distractions presented by their lip smacking Holy Guacamole, all everyone could discuss was Monster.
Next up was the much-talked-about film of the year, Anatomy of a Fall by Justine Triet. How long can you keep France away, anyway, from an event that celebrates cinema? Justine Triet does with Anatomy of a Fall what Krzysztof Kieslowski did with Three Colours: Blue. It’s the story of a woman trying to gather up her life after the sudden demise of her husband. But what Anatomy of a Fall, which is set in a contemporary French village, does differently is that it consistently maintains an element of suspense about whether the woman had anything to do with the death of her husband – he fell from a window. As the lawyers come in and interrogations begin, the viewer learns of the almost-broken marriage and becomes acquainted with the beautifully written character of their son. I loved the film, and had I not seen Monster just a couple of hours before, I would have called this a masterpiece too. MAMI’s second day really was excellent. Never before in my life have I seen three films back to back in a theatre and loved them all: Monster, Anatomy of a Fall and Fallen Leaves – in that order of preference.
By now, the benchmark was set so high that it was going to be difficult for the rest of the seven days to match up. And that’s exactly what happened. Nothing I saw thereafter came anywhere close to these films. However, I quite enjoyed Agra by Kanu Behl that’s about a lower-middle-class family in complete disarray. The protagonist is a sexually repressed young boy who imagines sleeping with many women, one of whom, he later finds out, doesn’t exist. He keeps searching for sex with whoever he finds, on one occasion even forcing himself onto someone in an incestuous scenario. His father lives on the first floor of the dilapidated family home with another woman while the boy and his mother live on the ground floor. The constant bickering makes the place a living hell. A gathering of terribly flawed characters living in an ugly setting fuelled by poverty, Agra is hard-hitting and raw. All India Rank by Varun Grover, which recreates the world of coaching classes and India’s obsession with the IITs, is simple, pleasant and sneaks in a few laughs. However, it’s also predictable and lacks ambition as a film though it’s definitely more sensitively made than most Hindi films. Then there’s the list of films I couldn’t watch: Hesitation Wound by Salman Necar,the Royal Stag Large Short Films, and Anurag Kashyap’s Kennedy starring Sunny Leone and Rahul Bhat. I guess I’ll just have to wait for the last one at least to appear on OTT sometime soon.
In addition to the films, there were talks and masterclasses by famous film folk. I’m sure it was all very interesting. But if I have to make a choice between watching cinema and hearing people talk about it, on most days, I am going to choose the former. And that’s just what I did.
Overall, MAMI was well organised and well curated festival. In a season of festivals, fulfilling cultural events like this remind us that life itself is a grand festival that must be savoured and enjoyed.
Mihir Chitre is the author of two books of poetry, ‘School of Age’ and ‘Hyphenated’. He is the brain behind the advertising campaigns ‘#LaughAtDeath’ and ‘#HarBhashaEqual’ and has made the short film ‘Hello Brick Road’.
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