Chaos seems to be IFFI theme this year

Nikhat Kazmi / TNN / Nov 27, 2006, 00:32 IST

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It's almost impossible to see the films of your choice since the auditoria where most of the films are being screened can only seat 500-600 people.

PANAJI: A film festival or a fisticuffs festival? That's the question being asked at every agonising queue of cinegoers, clamouring for entry into four of the auditoria screening films during IFFI 2006.
It's almost impossible to see the films of your choice since the auditoria where most of the important films are being screened can only seat 500-600 people per audi (a total of 1,200 seats in four auditoria), while the passes (for press and delegates) issued totalled almost 5,000-6,000.Sadly, somebody got their math all wrong!
This correspondent was threatened, chased and almost manhandled while trying to gain entry into an auditorium screening a four year old film, No Man's Land. Yes, the film which beat Lagaan to the Oscars.
Earlier, on Saturday, delegates went on a dharna after they had been denied entry to Richard Attenborough's Gandhi and the Rapid Action Force had to be called to instil order in what threatened to blow up into a major fracas between film buffs and organisers.

Later, in the evening, the Iranian film in the competition section, Poet of Wastes, also witnessed ugly scenes as the students of the FTII and several from the press corp were refused entry.
Till date, several people from the press have not been able to catch up with Volver, the inaugural film of the festival, even though it has had two screenings.
So what if they have specially come to cover the festival, and so what if the Pedro Almodovar's feminist fable was this year's Cannes winner.

To counter the chaos, here's what the Entertainment Society of Goa says it has done: "To provide convenient and easy access... the ESG has beefed up security systems at the INOX multiplex."More threats?
The options are very simple, and extremely excruciating: You either queue up for your chosen films almost an hour before the actual screening — which means you miss the earlier screening; or you settle for the film which no one wants to see and naturally doesn't need to be written about.
So will we be able to see Borat, Babel, or even Ardh Satya (in the retrospective section)? Just watch this space.
Ironically, earlier in the day, a group of independent filmmakers got together to air their problems vis-a-vis the juggernaut of mainstream cinema (they call it Hollywood and Bollywood).
The Indian representatives included Chitra Palekar, whose latest film Maati May was arbitrarily pulled out of a multiplex without informing her, Rajat Dholakia whose National Award winning film Parzania is still to find a release.
Filmmakers have also formed an organisation, the Global Indian Independent Filmmaker's Alliance to cater to the needs of independent filmmakers at a global level.
According to Bhuvan Lall, convener, the organisation will provide "greater opportunity for the exhibition, distribution and production of independent films and the development of scripts."

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