Third Eye, 2022, 19, 03: Asian Film Foundation awards Sudhir Nandgaonkar the Satyajit Ray prize Sudhir Nandgaonkar worked tirelessly, all his life, for the cultural heritage of cinema. He reached out far and wide, propagating this culture, and played a key role in getting the local Marathi-speaking cinegoers of Mumbai and its suburbs to watch and appreciate world cinema, and discuss and debate it too. Towards this end, his Prabhat Chitra Mandal Film Society served the cause extremely well, by...

MFF 21, 2019: Fernando Meirelles’ Masterclass Brazilian filmmaker Fernando Meirelles took a master class on the fifth day of MAMI’s 21st Mumbai Film Festival. Best known for his globally acclaimed and award-winning films such as The Constant Gardener, City of God and Blindness, the director was speaking after the screening of his 2019 biographical comedy-drama titled The Two Popes, starring Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce. Festival Director Anupama Chopra presented the Excell...

Deepika Padukone in MFF 21 Movie Mela: Pre-festival feast of conversations with stars, directors For the last few years, Mumbai Academy of Moving Image (MAMI) has been holding Movie Mela as a forerunner to the Mumbai Film Festival (MFF). They skipped it last year because some of the likely male panellists were facing groping and molestation charges, but it came back this year with renewed vigour. Mela is Hindi/Urdu for feast/carnival. It is held in the shape of interviews/interactions between...

MIFF 2018, XI: 400 years of the Negro That is what it took for the black people in America to get civil rights. And almost prophetically, the then Attorney-General and brother of the President, Robert Kennedy predicted that America would have a black President in 40 years. But not before thousands had been brutalised, beaten and even killed, including leaders like Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., none of whom lived to be 40.   Oscar nominated documentary on the...

Mumbai Film Festival: Pot luck and glam game MFF, run by Mumbai Academy of Moving Image (MAMI), is among four Indian film festivals recognised by FIAPF ((Fédération Internationale des Associations de Producteurs de Films/International Federation of Film Producers Associations), which is based in Paris and has its Secretariat in Brussels. International Film Festival of India (IFFI, Goa) is the only one recognised as certified for International Competition. Kolkata and Thiruvanant...

Félicité, Review by Siraj Syed: Cinema réalité Challenging forms and formats, genres and categories, Félicité agitates your mind by showing too much of some things and too little of other elements. It begins as an indictment of the colonial legacy in Congo but ends up becoming a slave to its repetitive shot-taking and sombre imagery. Too much is promised and just about much is delivered. Nevertheless, Félicité is going to be talked about...

Siraj Syed interviews young film-maker Pratik Rajen Kothari *How many films have you made since your student days and what/who made it possible to make them? I have made three short films plus co-directed one before Hell O Hello. I also made some music videos. Almost all of these are zero/extremely low budget. At the start, people who are instrumental in making it possible are your like-minded friends. I have a very co-operative core team, without whom, I just wouldn't have had the coura...

FICCI FLO Film Festival, Report, I: FLO Mo Known for organising India’s biggest three-day Media and Entertainment conclave in March every year, FRAMES, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) held its first film festival in the city of Mumbai, during February 18-20, a fortnight after the Mumbai International Film Festival (MIFF) and six weeks before FRAMES. It was organised by the FICCI Ladies Organisation, FLO. Unfortunately, due to a host of reasons, FICCI F...

    MAMI’s MFF Diary, Part II: 7th IFFM, Jan. 6-13, 2005, Mumbai, India IFFM was into its 7th year when I returned from Singapore for good, and made got the first opportunity to attend the festival. Covering it for the academic publication, Kinema, I wrote: MAMI, the acronym for the body that organises the International Film Festival of Mumbai (IFFM), stands for Mumbai Academy of Moving Image. That’s a curiously old-fashioned name for a body that was set up only about ei...

Back in the mid 90s, a group of Mumbai-based film-enthusiasts felt that it was time the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) stopped alternating every year between New Delhi and other metro cities like Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Thiruvananthapuram and Mumbai, and settled down in Mumbai for good. Some of the strong factors in favour were: 1. Mumbai is the birth place of Indian cinema and the film capital of India, although films are made aplenty in other cities as well. 2....