No MAMI in Mumbai: Why seeking scale and corporate money may be bad for culture and soft power

Indian Express

2 days ago

Though the formal announcement came only earlier this month, the signs that Mumbai may not have its favourite film festival this year were writ large on the significantly scaled-down and visibly short-on-resources MAMI Film Festival 2024. With the title sponsor gone, the festival was austere. It was limited to just two venues and devoid of all the bells and whistles of the grand 2023 edition, which was spread over eight screening locations with the spiffy Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre as its mothership.
But despite the budgetary constraints last year, the programme was good, and the logistics were mostly frictionless. The film bros were less angry, and the audience's general level of entitled behaviour was palpably more muted than usual. The MAMI team managed the expectations of the city's media cognoscenti through their social media channels even before the registrations for the much-awaited festival opened. The lobbies were overcrowded, but it was a delight to witness the young volunteers deal with the odd irate millennial or boomer cinephile frustrated with the complex matrix of festival rules and regulations, with quintessential Gen Z vibes. One was able to catch most of the films planned for, despite the fastest-fingers-first online booking platform, queuing outside the venue, followed by more queuing inside the venue.
The refrain one picked up at the screening venues, on the sidelines, and social media was that MAMI is among Mumbai's most loved festivals. And, one gathered, through the six days of the festival, that the festival loved the city, too, because it showed up like an old friend. Everyone wondered if the festival would be able to survive the funding crisis. For a city of its size and economic heft, it is a travesty for a popular international film festival to find itself struggling for survival. It should not be an unreasonable public expectation in a creative industry powerhouse like Mumbai to have a decent international film festival. Though the city expresses its desire to be world-class by building all kinds of urban infrastructure, it often forgets to pay attention to its already world-class intangible cultural heritage. This may soon lead to a situation where there are too many roads with fewer places to go.
The MAMI film festival, even a decade ago, was small but well organised until well-meaning folks decided it needed scaling up. From a couple of venues and involved participation by the independent and international film community, it became a jamboree that received more financial support and media glare than it could organically sustain in the long run. It would not be out of place to recall how the excellent Cinefan Festival of Asian and Arab Cinema in Delhi grew and grew before it unfortunately folded up as the art fund behind the reckless growth went bankrupt. For cultural institutions, joining hands with large corporate sponsors with changing values or expectations may not always be a good idea.
Bell Canada, for instance, stopped funding the Toronto Film Festival after supporting it for 28 years. State support for cultural institutions, including film festivals, is also declining worldwide. Last year, Korea slashed its support for the Busan film festival by 50 per cent. The paucity of support for film festivals like MAMI indicates a limited understanding of culture's role in growing the overall market and shaping the country's soft power — a concept often invoked in the abstract but rarely backed with the support needed. Going through the programme, watching films, and tuning into the lobby conversations, it was clear that several countries spanning South, Southeast, and West Asia are taking cinema and film culture seriously and trying to catch up with the established hubs like India, China, Japan, Iran, Egypt, etc, by making substantial investments.
Between watching films and watching people watching films, one discussed issues related to ailing film festivals like the MAMI with fellow queue mates. Many people said that instead of a big-ticket sponsor, a pool of resources should be created to secure the long-term prospects of the festival. It was felt that Mumbai's film and film-adjacent creative sectors should seriously consider supporting the festival financially. In a city where success is often measured and celebrated in box-office collection numbers, it cannot be very difficult to put together a few crores to host filmmakers and audiences from India and abroad.
In an ideal world, corporate sponsorship and state support can make culture more accessible. Still, to remain primarily responsive to public needs and aspirations, the audiences must pay for the culture to the extent possible. Today, more than ever, independent media and cultural institutions are in dire need of public support. A paid membership programme or regular crowdfunding rounds would also help the MAMI leadership gauge how elastic or price-sensitive the demand for the festival is among the audiences. Each such vote and gesture of support works as a tetrapod protecting the festival and other such events and institutions against the unruly ebb and flow of resources.
One would like to think that the choice of tetrapods, or wave-breakers, as the 2024 festival's visual identity was not a happenstance. Used to reduce the intensity of approaching waves on seafronts and harbours, and a common sight along the Mumbai shoreline, the tetrapods, in this case, were perhaps emblematic of the measures the festival organisers had to put in place against the receding waves of sponsorship and support.
The writer is a Mumbai-based media professional working across linear and streaming platforms