Mira's triumph and the curse of Bollywood

london: much of the west may have gasped to see punjab apparently take over the world's oldest film festival, the venice international, by means of mira nair's monsoon wedding, but the credit is predictably enough going to the wrong people, the so-called big budgetwallas in bollywood. but even as sections of the british media ignorantly hails nair's "bollywood blockbuster (with its) crowd-pleasing, bacchanalian bollywood spirit", a group of independent asian film-makers are renewing their challenge to the stereotype with an alternative london film festival.'filmi fundas', scheduled for later this month "is meant to promote all the cinema that isn't bollywood," says its founder kaizad gustad, who is passionate about the need to publicise the fact that "we did the moulin rouge hoopla long before all this hype" about the hollywood product starring nicole kidman. london-based saeed jaffrey, who gleefully recounts how "i waved goodbye to bollywood in 1998 because all the great people had gone", adds that he "can't stand this name 'bollywood' and that too for mira nair, who has a very definite, distinct style". gustad's alternative festival, which is far removed from bollywood, the west's unintentionally ironic name for the mumbai film industry, is somewhat waspishly aimed at a generation of indians "who no longer oil their hair". it had lobbied hard for monsoon wedding, wanting to get off to a good start with nair's ironic view of punjabi weddings and the great indian family, which entranced the venice festival jury and won the prestigious golden lion award. "we almost got it," gustad regretfully told this paper, "but they chose to go to the london film festival instead, which won't really raise the profile of this film vis-a-vis asians". gustad believes film distributors' rush to take indian cinema to the mainstream may end up marginalising it as "art house" and making it inaccessible to those it is really meant for - asian audiences. it is a view expressed by many independent asian film-makers, who point to the terrorist, santosh sivan's much-praised film that centred around a suicide bomber and is believed to have had just small and patchy asian audiences across the uk. what then of the longed-for 'crossover' to white mainstream audiences, something that was expected but did not really happen with the real bollywood offering, aamir khan's lagaan? "no one sits down to write for this audience or that," says gustad describing nair's "putars and pappus of punjab" as surely alien to those who saw it in venice and yet gave it the prize for "good film-making". industry-watchers say nair's eye-popping win aside, mammoth international film festivals do little for indian cinema. "my film, bombay boys, was at the london film festival," says gustad, "but you're out there with 400 others". not so for nair say the critics, prophesying a fulfilling run at november's london festival.