AT the concise opening ceremony of the 16th Mumbai Film Festival earlier this week, the names of Akshay Kumar, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Aamir Khan were mentioned in the same breath as Niraj Bajaj and Anand Mahindra. In the past one month, both the actors and the business barons had been working on a single mission?to save a shipwrecked film festival from sinking. The trigger was the huge vacuum in terms of funds left behind by the withdrawal of Anil Ambani?s Reliance Entertainment, the main sponsor, from the 2014 edition of the iconic festival.
In the capital of commerce and cinema, this is an uncanny romance that is brewing between two unlikely partners. Veteran filmmaker Shyam Benegal likes to call it ?crowdfunding?. ?We are encouraged by the response from the people to call for funds for this year?s festival,? said Benegal, who is also the chairman of the board of trustees of the Mumbai Academy of Moving Image (MAMI), which organises the Mumbai Film Festival. ?We are sure that crowdfunding is going to be a major element in our festival in the years to come,? he added.
?We are all working without demanding any payment,? declared Kalki Koechlin, speaking for herself as the host of the opening ceremony, and also for fellow actors who enacted their own roles in the marquee event, which is in its 16th year. While Bajaj and Mahindra have contributed financially to the festival, it was the mention of the word ?crowdfunding? by Benegal that stood out for its novelty, and as many believe, naivety.
As per festival director Srinivasan Narayanan, the support of Reliance, which invested more than R20 crore in the festival in the last five years, helped the event become a ?world-class festival?. ?Ambani?s wife Tina Ambani was fond of our festival and took personal care to raise it to international standards,? said Narayanan, the only festival chief from the country to scout for films in big-league events like the Cannes and Berlin film festivals every year.
MAMI?s mission to save this year?s edition began in late August at the house of actor Aamir Khan when his wife and director Kiran Rao invited the festival team to plan its firefighting exercise. ?We later had a meeting in Anand Mahindra?s office and the team headed by Anupama Chopra (film critic-author and wife of director Vidhu Vinod Chopra) and Rao gathered the support from both the film industry and the business leaders,? said Narayanan.
The team raised R3.5 core in less than a month, about R50 lakh coming from crowdfunding itself. ?Even students came out to support us with their money,? said Narayanan. ?Crowdfunding helped raise awareness about the importance of a film festival in Mumbai and establish an emotional connect among the people,? he added.
Besides Niraj Bajaj and wife Minal?s Bajaj Foundation, Mahindra, HDFC?s Deepak Parekh and realty boss Sandeep Raheja, Aankhon Dekhi producer Manish Mundra and publisher Navin Berry joined the efforts to keep alive the festival, founded in 1997 by master director Hrishikesh Mukherjee. Even Benegal and his wife contributed to the crowdfunding drive. ?The Mumbai festival is an annual pilgrimage for me. It was the place where, like many young filmmakers, I understood what is cinema,? said Manjeet Singh, whose first film Mumbaicha Raja was selected for the Toronoto International Film Festival in 2012.
Industry veteran Ramesh Sippy?s son and director-producer Rohan Sippy finds the idea of crowdfunding ideal for a film festival. ?It is the best way to go. Some of the biggest football clubs in the world like Real Madrid and Barcelona are owned by the fans,? said Sippy.
The Mumbai festival team, however, believes, to return the festival to its full potential in the next year, it will need to find sponsors. ?The success of crowdfunding shows how much interested the people are in the festivals, but the fact is that film festivals are expensive,? said Anupama Chopra, who took over as the creative director of the festival this year. Agreed Dhaka International Film Festival director Ahmed Muztaba Zamal. ?We too initially toyed with the idea of crowdfunding, but it doesn’t give you the big money needed for organising big festivals,? he said.
Accredited to the Intenational Federation of Film Producers? Associations, which regulates film festivals globally, the Mumbai Film Festival, one of the biggest in the world, spent a little over R6 crore last year when French master Costa Gavras came to the city to receive the event?s Lifetime Achievement Award. Narayanan said: ?Crowdfunding will certainly be a model in the future. But the idea is to broaden the support from the film industry in Mumbai so that studios come and contribute along with big artistes and become a part of the festival.
If we can achieve that,
the Mumbai Film Festival will be anchored here
permanently.?
By Faizal Khan
Faizal Khan is a freelancer
