QUALITY, NOT CONTENT

Inaugural film festival in Chandigarh provided springboard for fresh cinematic ideas

RETURNING EARLIER THIS week from the first edition of the Cinévesture International Film Festival ( CIFF) held in Chandigarh, I began thinking of that thorny query that crops up around such events: What exactly is the point of a film festival where filmmakers, invited delegates, and the aam janta rub shoulders over a designated period, watching, chatting, debating, in an era where everything, or almost everything, is available on streaming platforms? Why start a fullfledged film festival at a time when the entire ecosystem which creates, distributes and exhibits “content” is under attack from the enormous convenience of watch parties at your own time and pace?

The answers were, of course, wrapped in my question. Yes, you can crack open your phone, laptop, or TV set and choose from a bewildering array of “content” — yes, that problematic word again. You can start and stop and pause, answer a doorbell, check your phone, and return to whatever you were watching. Or not. But, and this is where everything is at, the sense of community built at a film festival, in a city hungry for a taste of an eclectic slate consisting of buzzy international titles and sharp Indian independent voices, is irreplaceable.

And that’s what I found at CIFF, the brainchild of Nina Lath Gupta, who runs Cinévesture, an online market for cinema. One of the advantages of a startup, and this festival feels exactly like one, is the freedom to create the team that will help shape and run it: Festival director V S Kundu who turned around Films Division; artistic director Bina Paul who has had multiple editions of the International Film Festival of Kerala under her belt; market projects curator Namrata Joshi, seasoned film critic and programmer; children’s film curator Monica Wahi, well regarded in this field; as well as Gupta herself with her years of experience as the head of the National Film Development Corporation’s ( NFDC) Film Bazaar, were all part of it.

I could be there only for the last two days, but that was enough time to see that the event was well- organised and thoughtfully curated. There were panels with prominent film personalities, with a strong focus on producers, a CIFF USP. The most popular sessions, naturally, were the ones toplined by Karan Johar, Boman Irani, Suvinder Vicky and Abhay Deol, but so were the ones with Richa Chadha and Ali Fazal, Swanand Kirkire and Hussain Haidry, Rasika Dugal and Rajshri Deshpande, Jaideep Ahlawat, and Roshan Mathew. For me, the most instructive one was on the state of Punjabi cinema, with Anurag Singh, Gurvinder Singh, Smeep Kang and Jagdeep Sidhu as animated discussants — the session, in Punjabi, a perfect match for the place and event, spilled well over time for all the right reasons.

The films on offer included Aki Kaurismaki’s Fallen Leaves ( 2023), Hirokazu Kore- eda’s Monster ( 2023), Jonathan Glazer’s Zone Of Interest ( 2023), Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale ( 2022), Anh Hung Tran’s The Taste Of Things ( 2023), Ken Loach’s The Old Oak ( 2023), Steffi Niederzoll’s Seven Winters In Tehran ( 2023), as well as Rima Das’s Tora’s Husband ( 2022), Jayant Somalkar’s Sthal ( 2023), Prasanna Vithanage’s Paradise ( 2023), Gurvinder Singh’s Adh Chanani Raat ( 2022), and the South Korean horror smash- hit Exhuma as the closing film. There was also a Classics section, featuring Guru Dutt’s Kaagaz Ke Phool ( 1959) and Kundan Shah’s Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro ( 1983).

The selection reminded me of the time when the International Film Festival of India ( IFFI), in its old avatar, was a place where we could find the cream of films from around the world, and India. That pre- internet era, considered prehistoric by even those who have faint memories of it, cemented the importance of sound choices: If the films were good, so was your experience. And that really brings me to an event like this, which shows that it wants to use its power to curate wisely and well to elevate good cinema, not to blunt or bend it towards reigning dispensations.

Clearly, CIFF has begun as it means to go, to provide a springboard for fresh cinematic ideas which may flower from connecting with like- minded investors, especially those from outside the industry. What also struck me as a good thing is the catch-’ em- young workshops with school children and college students — if you want newer audiences which will gravitate towards meaningful cinema, this is one way to go. This is the kind of matchmaking that should, hopefully, save cinema from going down the sinkhole of profit- at- any- cost, story- telling- be- damned projects that keep threatening to swamp us. A viewer that can tell the difference between soul- killing generic “content” and a film/ web show/ TV series? Yes, please.

The selection reminded me of the time when the International Film Festival of India ( IFFI), in its old avatar, was a place where we could find the cream of films from around the world, and India. That pre- internet era, considered prehistoric by even those who have faint memories of it , cemented the importance of sound choices: If the films were good, so was your experience.