Breathing in Cinema with IFFI Goa
Dr Indranil Bhattacharya
THE COUNTDOWN IS OVER FOR THE 55TH EDITION of the International Film Festival of India, Goa. The festival has begun on a resounding note this week meeting expectations of eagerly awaiting thousands of delegates from across the country as well as the entire world. Delegate registrations reached a historic number this year marking the acceptance of IFFI from all corners. Officials are getting engrossed with busy schedule and the local authorities are becoming vigilant to meet up the expectations.
After all, it is one of the biggest annual film festivals in the world and the stakes are quite high. 
IFFI has chosen Australia as its “Country of Focus” for this edition. Naturally people have started getting engrossed in exploring few good cinematic renditions from the country of Kangaroo already. Moreover reckoning the importance of cultivation of ways to reach and bind new minds, a new award has been instituted this year to recognise the “best debut director of an Indian feature film”. Additionally, programme like Creative Minds Of Tomorrow (CMOT) to encourage new creative talents in the field of cinema has now successfully reached its third year and Best Web Series Award in its second. The growing importance of IFFI underscores the importance of films as perhaps the most significant national soft-power in the globalised world.
Over its seven decades of existence, IFFI has evolved itself continuously and organically, by delving into the expectations from its diverse audience and also by negotiating with both new socio-economic landscapes, as well as radical cultural and technological shifts. Often described as Asia's most influential cultural event, the first edition of IFFI took place way back in the year 1952 with the aim of promoting international cinema and, at the same time, providing a platform for Indian filmmakers to showcase their work before a discerning audience. The festival became an annual event in 1975 and roamed around different metropolitan cities in the following three decades. In 2004, IFFI finally found its permanent address in Goa and was reinvented as IFFI-Goa, to leverage on the state’s developed tourist infrastructure. This was the first edition of the scaled-up version of IFFI co-organised with the Entertainment Society of Goa. The 2004 festival edition of IFFI also introduced a new competitive section for international films, firmly placing IFFI on the catalogue of competitive film festivals across the globe.
My first experience of IFFI was in 1990. I was a University student then studying in Kolkata. I managed to watch dozens of noteworthy films. There were long, snaking queues as always and the theatres were full. Films such as Rouben Mamoulian's elegant Hollywood classic Queen Cristina and Theo Angelopoulos' haunting Landscape in the Mist left there permanent impression on my young mind. It was a veritable feast for a young cinephile groomed on low-quality prints sourced from local archives. Here was the best of world cinema in pristine quality prints, retrospectives of top contemporary filmmakers spread around multiple venues across the city and the latest work of Indian living legends such as Satyajit Ray and G. Aravindan. When I take a journey down the memory lane to re-live those wonderful days which were spent watching, admiring, and dissecting films in IFFI, it becomes more evident to myself that those were the signifying factors that shaped my interest in cinema and may have even prompted me to take a postgraduate course in film production at the famed FTII, Pune.
Now I realised more convincingly how privileged we were to have an opportunity to experience the best of national and international cinemas, so easily and effortlessly despite being born in a developing nation, only because of IFFI. I am also aware of the efforts, the number of days and months of planning, the dedication of the staff of the Ministry of
Information and Broadcasting, and the generous resources that went into organising the festival successfully.
Let’s take a modern day time-lapse for 35 years! While putting together a package of films from FTII in collaboration with officials of the National Film Development Corporation, I witnessed the same energy, persistence and dedication by curatorial teams, who over the years, ensured that IFFI remained influential and culturally relevant. Hundreds of films arriving from across the world require months of correspondence, meticulous planning and zero-error coordination among several agencies and departments within and also with outside of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.
While we no longer need to move large volumes of film cans received from across the globe, the digital era has brought its unique challenges. Films sent digitally over the internet or on hard discs require to be meticulously checked to ascertain if the files are intact and compatible. If encrypted, it has to be ensured that decrypting codes are shared correctly with screening committees and projectionists.
New sections, multiple retrospectives, buzzing venues, daily panel discussions, workshops, and seminars have made the festival even more enticing for the film lovers, the aspiring young filmmakers, film scholars, film buffs and film society activists. The explosion of digital media means that organisers have to plan film festivals in ways that convince the coming generation that film festivals can offer them much more than what one can experience on digital devices.
The mission now is to convince the youth that it is not just watching a film on a large screen, rather it’s a celebration of life and cinema together. The complete package that the state of Goa offers – it’s fascinating history, art and architecture, its easy-going and friendly people, and of course, eight-days of hopping between theatres, a quick bite or a coffee in between films, the camaraderie between cinemagoers, the cool breeze from the sea in the evenings – altogether a feeling that no media especially the newborn social media can make someone feel, they can only capture or portray it.
At the end we must understand that for over a century we have conceived cinema as a collective experience. One can watch a film alone completely in isolation; but to feel and to celebrate a film we have to make it in the company of friends, colleagues, cinemagoers and even complete strangers. It is how cinema helps forge new alliances and new fraternities amidst the divisiveness and strife that marks the contemporary world.
(The writer is the Professor, Screen Studies & Research, FTII, Pune)
November 23, 2024