The Film Festival was a huge success. Almost people attended the Festival to watch showings of original short films submitted from around the world. The festivities extended to the lobby, with a silent auction, raffle, sponsor and rescue organization tables, face painting, while rescue videos played on the big screen. Please excuse the oversight and treat this as IV. Austerity is the name of the game, mismanagement is the characteristic and continuing hostility towards media, and, in some cases, delegates too, are factors that dominate IFFI Goa A circus called the Film Bazaar, organised by the National Film Development Corporation, in association with the India Tourism Development Corporation, continues to try and exploit the main event, in a crass, buying of favours manner, while the three bodies that really run the festival: Directorate of Film Festivals, Entertainment Society of Goa and Press information Bureau—seem to have learnt nothing from decades of holding IFFI.
Here is a look at the five films I managed to catch on the first day. Little-known British director Brown spent 10 years on this project, a bio-pic based oin a book about mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan Dev Patel , focussing on his years at Trinity College, Cambridge, in the company of prodigies like Bertrand Russell and under the tutelage of G. H Hardy Jeremy Irons. All Indians play Madrasis, never mind their real roots. Brown talks liberties with age as well, by casting Jeremy Irons.
Coming from the man who made the Ian Fleming bio-pic, this is good stuff. Mina is walking tall at IFFI. Made in extremely difficult circumstances by an Afghan who grew up in Canada, the film scores remarkably high on performances, especially Farzana Nawabi as the 12 year-old lead actress.
The film does what acclaimed Indian Kabir Khan has been doing earlier in his ancestral Afghanistan—break stereo-types about life in post-Taliban Afghanistan.
Your heart will surely go out to brave-heart Mina, whose mother is killed by the Taliban, father a junkie and homosexual and grand-father senile. Yes, the constantly jerky hand-held camera, the single camera shots and the natural light shooting make it a bit tough on the eyes and neck.
