Mumbai Film Festival: How to handle 200 films in eight days

The 12th Mumbai Film Festival presented by the Mumbai Academy of the Moving Image (MAMI) is pregnant with promise. From October 21 to 28, 200 films from 60 countries will be screened.

Switch off your cellphones, that's 200 movies in eight days.

Big numbers always turn people on, but the criteria by which film lovers judge film festivals is always the quality of the buffet -- broad and eclectic is best and MAMI delivers that in spades this year. 

There's Sofia Coppola's "Somewhere," Amir Bashir's "Harud," festival opener David Fincher's "The Social Network," Mike Leigh's "Another Year," Innaritu's "Biutiful," Hang Sang-Soo's "Hahaha."

Juliette Binoche in Kiarostami's "Certified Copy" is one I can't wait to see. 

Not bigger than Pusan Film Festival, but closer

An all-women jury, headed by New Zealand director Jane Campion, includes Iranian filmaker Samira Makhmalbaf, British producer Tanya Seghatchian, South Korean star actor Yoon Jeong-hee and Indian actor Suhasini Maniratnam, who will judge 14 films in the competition section.

The US$150,000 Golden Gateway prize is the highest awarded by any festival in India. Director Oliver Stone will be present to receive a lifetime achievement award.

Festival director Srinavasa Narayanan says this should soon become one of the most exciting international film festivals in Asia.

To better manage the nearly 10-fold increase in participants and audiences the Mumbai Film Festival has moved to a new venue. Narayanan says he is "delighted to have Chandan Cinema with 1,100 seats, plus the five screens at PVR Juhu next door." But be warned, carry something warm for the multiplexes or the AC will freeze you over by your third movie of the day.

R-city Big Cinema in Ghatkopar is the other suburban venue, while for South Mumbai it remains the same two screens at Metro Big Cinema. The main action, though, will be in Juhu.

The official MAMI website calls it a "modest first step," but the second leap Narayanan's team has made is to create some room, quite literally, for business. 

The city's first festival Film Business Centre addresses the lack of market interaction between filmmakers, producers and distributors that all film festivals in India face.

"A humble start to establish a buzz between foreign and domestic distributors," says Narayanan, and if he succeeds a larger diversity of Indian films will reach out to a world audience and more world cinema will be brought in. Studio Canal, Memento and Pathe are foreign distributors, among many others, who have confirmed their participation.  

Future greats: Young, fresh and competitive

Meanwhile 32 Mumbai college students selected for the Mumbai Young Critics programme have been trained in "cradle workshops" by film professionals. Their reviews will appear in the festival bulletin. Narayanan is hoping to create more, and much needed, trained critical voices in cinema, for the future.

Not that young filmmakers are left out. "Dimensions Mumbai," a short film competition (five minutes or under), is open to young local filmmakers.

"Mumbai has a 100 films waiting to be made as you step out of your front door," Narayanan says. "The number of submissions doubled from last year's 75 to 150 this year."

We also got talking to Rashid Irani, member of the selection panel this year for the international competition section aimed at honoring new talents in the field of direction. He tells us 150 entries were whittled down to 14 in the First Feature competition, and 14 in Above the Cut (category for high commendation films).

Irani is particularly enthused with the Celebration of Japanese Cinema section that features 43 films, all pristine 35mm prints, spanning eight decades, plus a special screening of Akira Kurosawa's "Ran" presented by Kurosawa's chief assistant director Takashi Koizumi.

The more obscure films of famous Japanese directors will be screened for the first time in India -- including films by Yasujiro Ozu, Yoji Yamada, Shuji Terayama and Takashi Miike, alongside a seminar on Japanese cinema for hardcore festival junkies.

Tips from a seasoned MAMI festival goer

The delegates will be staying at Juhu's Sun 'n' Sand hotel and all workshops will be held there. Anu Rangachar, a programmer for the festival, points out the convenience, as most of the screening venues are 10 minutes away. 

I remember a time when the festival was exclusively in South Mumbai. As I got a DVD of "Mephisto" autographed by director Istvan Szabo, he grumbled about the traffic he had to encounter coming all the way from a hotel in the suburbs. Now as the audience has shifted to North Mumbai, so has the main hub of the festival.

In between the manic film watching try and get a hold of artist Chintan Upadhyay's hip festival poster.

Fill out the form marking your favorite movie of the day, that's what clinches the audience award.

Grab some film gyan with your coffee at the ever-lovely Prithvi cafe or a chai at Juhu Market.

If time permits the JW Mariott or Sun 'n' Sand hotel should be ideal for a quick glimpse of someone famous on pretext of yet another cup of coffee.

Director's choice: Dev Benegal's 13 films to watch (out for)

Thirteen films you may not know to watch, but should, recommended by Mumbai-based writer-editor-director-twitterer Dev Benegal, also chair for jury of the 'Dimension's Mumbai' segment.

1. "Harud" (Dir: Aamir Bashir) (India) A family comes to terms with the disappearance of their son, a photographer amid the troubled military insurgency in Kashmir.
2. "Outrage" (Dir: Takeshi Kitano) (Japan) Kitano's return to the yakuza genre; a violent taste of the Japanese underworld.
3. "The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu" (Dir: Andrei Ujica) (Romania) Previously unknown official footage from the Romanian National TV & Film Archives paints an image of the former dictator.
4. "Honey" (Dir: Semih Kaplanoglu) (Turkey-Germany) Berlin Golden Bear award winner, this Turkish drama the last of a trilogy portrays a young boy in search of his beekeeper father.
5. "We Are Half of Iran’s Population" (Dir: Rakshan Banii-Eternad) (Iran) A coalition of women forms prior to  the 2009 Presidential elections in order to make their demands heard.
6. "Crows Zero" (Dir: Takashi Miike) (Japan) Drawing on the manga Crows by Hiroshi Takahashi it's a film set in Suzuran, a high school and it's violent young characters.
7. "The Strange Case of Angelica" (Dir: Manoel de Oliveira) (Portugal) Drama set in the 1950s, a photographer takes portraits of a hotel owner's deceased daughter.
8. "Puzzle" (Dir: Natalia Smirnoff) (Argentina-France) Julie Walters plays a middle aged housewife who has just discovered her skills at jigsaw puzzles.
9. "Buried Land" (Dir: Steven Eastwood and Geoffrey Alan Rhodes) (U.K.-U.S.A.-Bosnia) In a small town in Bosnia, ancient pyramids are believed to lie buried under three hills.
10. "October" (Dir: Daniel Vega & Diego Vega) (Peru-Venezuela-Spain) A reticent pawnbroker is left with a newborn baby to look after and discovers new emotions.
11. "Lola" (Dir: Brillante Mendoza) (France- Phillipines) Two grandmothers, resilient in poverty, face the consequences of a crime involving their grandsons.
12. "The Invisible Eye" (Dir: Diego Lerman) (Argentina-France-Spain) Based on Martin Kohan's novel "Moral Sciences" the film is set in Argentina's top secondary school where future leaders are under surveillance amid a failing military dictatorship in 1982 Buenos Aires.
13. "If I Want to Whistle I Whistle" (Dir: Florin Serban) (Romania-Sweden) A young prisoner learns of the unwanted return of his mother a few days prior to release and plots a kidnap of a young research student at the penitentiary.

The complete list of 200 films, the screening schedule and the official website for the 12th Mumbai Film Festival. What's left? Just to register yourself.