As part of my film festival peregrinations, I made my way to the Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival, and was fortunate to spend some time with Israeli auteur Amos Gitai. My first question to him was what his next film was going to be, afterRabin, The Last Day (2015). “I very rarely speak about the next one, because I just finished the film about the assassination of (Yitzhak) Rabin and it is such a heavy subject. It is a long film, and a very charged subject; I’m still in it,” said Gitai.
The conversation shifted to India and the festival where Gitai was given the Excellence in Cinema award. “A lot of my friends always spoke to me about the mystical idea of India, but I’m not so much into the mystique. I like encounters with people. I’ve come several times; I was in Kolkata, Delhi, Trivandrum… each time, I’m surprised to see the intellectual quality of people. It doesn’t matter which part of society they come from. It is a great experience.”
Another international master making his presence felt in Mumbai was Australian cinematographer and filmmaker Christopher Doyle, best known for his collaborations with Wong Kar-Wai. Doyle took the packed audience through his cinematic journey, illustrated by a series of clips and short films. Dressed in what can only be described as a skirt and wielding a cricket bat, Doyle’s rambling disquisition was fascinating and baffling in turn. He revealed that after a 60-hour shoot in the desert, Wong Kar-Wai asked him if that’s the best he could do. Doyle also spoke briefly about his association with the person he described as “India’s finest son”, M. Night Shyamalan, referring to him as “Shyamalamadingdong”. Doyle, as you may know, shot Lady in the Water (2006) for Shyamalan.
In general, the festival feels revived and revitalised compared to recent editions, thanks to the indefatigable efforts of the trio of Kiran Rao, Anupama Chopra and Smriti Kiran and their team. Representatives of international film festivals attended in force, including Clare Stewart from the BFI London Film Festival, Cameron Bailey from the Toronto International Film Festival and Dorothee Wenner from the Berlinale, amongst many others.
It was also heartening to see the sheer popularity of world cinema amongst an evidently cine-literate audience, with most shows going full. Sure, like every festival in the world, there were some booking/entry glitches, with some audience members losing their rag, but overall, everybody seemed to be having a great time doing what they do best—watching movies.
Another personal highlight for me was meeting the delightful Hwarng Wern-Ying, who has worked as a production and costume designer for Taiwanese master Hsiao-Hsien Hou for 22 years, including on films like The Assassin (2015), Millennium Mambo (2001) and Three Times (2005). She was a bit surprised with my familiarity with the master’s work, but relaxed when I told her that many film buffs in this country own his box set.
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