Latest news with #MAMI
Indian Express
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
No MAMI in Mumbai: Why seeking scale and corporate money may be bad for culture and soft power
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
Time of India
21-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
'Cruel irony': Hansal Mehta reacts to cancellation of MAMI Mumbai Film Festival 2025
The MAMI Mumbai Film Festival 2025 has been cancelled. The news was confirmed on the festival's official social media handle on Monday. The decision was taken to revamp the festival with a "dynamic vision" and a "new team" to ensure that it will return as a premier showcase for the best of independent, regional, and classic cinema from India and around the world, said festival director Dungarpur in a statement. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now "We are working diligently to reschedule the festival and will announce the new dates for the 2026 edition as soon as possible. Thank you for your understanding and support," he added. The move comes as a major hiccup for the festival that has had a fair run since it was founded in 1997. Reacting to the same, filmmaker , whose 'Aligarh' and 'The Buckingham Murders' were earlier premiered at the festival, voiced his discontent. "It's a cruel irony that Mumbai draped in the glitz of being India's financial and cinematic capital cannot keep alive a film festival of its own," the filmmaker wrote on social media. He went on to call out the "self-appointed gatekeepers of cinema" who left the festival for better stages and safer bets, further adding that only a few "passionate believers" took care of it. "And now that fragile flame has been snuffed out. No ceremony. No outrage. Just a slow, silent forgetting. What should have been a cultural cornerstone has been reduced to a footnote - another casualty of apathy dressed as progress," Mehta concluded. Many took to the comment section and echoed similar sentiments. Filmmaker Onir wrote, "Heartbreaking that the industry that produces the largest number of films ... failed to nurture this one space that celebrated cinema as a form of art ... Tired of too many ads? go ad free now beyond box office and stars ., what a loss for the city and a shame for us as an industry." Organised by the Mumbai Academy of Moving Image (MAMI), the film festival has emerged as a hub for the world to discover emerging South Asian talent and contemporary cinema. Several leading Bollywood celebrities like Priyanka Chopra, Farhan Khan, , and , have been associated with the festival over the years.
New Indian Express
21-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New Indian Express
I helped save MAMI in 2014. Its 2025 death fills me with rage.
Picture a tiny, five-foot-something woman from Assam, battling gravity and loneliness in Mumbai, trudging religiously to the Mumbai Film Festival (affectionately called MAMI) every single year. Her dream? To become a filmmaker. With no other path visible, she endures endless queues and back-breaking theatre seats, absorbing the craft of masters whose visions flickered to life exactly as intended: on a big, forty-foot screen. Years later, her own film premieres on that screen. I was there, capturing her tears as they fell. That woman was Rima Das. That film, born in a remote corner of Northeast India that few outsiders had been to, was Village Rockstars, and it travelled the world. That is the power of MAMI – Mumbai's only global-scale film festival. I tell Rima's story because I witnessed it first-hand, having helped her become the filmmaker she deserved to be. But her story isn't unique. It echoes Nagraj Manjule's story. His debut, the brilliant Fandry, received its first public screening at MAMI. I saw the mist in his eyes too after a thunderous five-minute standing ovation – cut short only by the cruel clock. Even he confessed that MAMI wasn't just a festival for him: it was his film school. Chaitanya Tamhane (Court, The Disciple) and Anand Gandhi (Ship Of Theseus) walked similar dreams born on MAMI screens. Countless others, perhaps less heralded but no less devoted, kept returning. For them, MAMI was Varanasi, Jerusalem, Mecca, Kaaba – a shifting pilgrimage defined by whichever theatre hosted the magic that year. That's why, in 2014, when Shyam Benegal (then festival Chairman and whose office I was working in) and Director Srinivasan Narayanan told me the festival was shutting down – its sponsor vanished, funds zero – I snapped. I unleashed an angry rant on My editor, Sarita Ravindranath, wisely titled it: 'Mumbai's Rs Five Crore Shame: Who will fund a film festival' (The article is now lost behind a server with only a ghost in its original link). The rest, as the cliché screams, is history. Manish Mundra was the first to step in, with what became, along with Anand Mahindra, the most generous cheques of that year. Then came Aamir Khan, Rajkumar Hirani and Vidhu Vinod Chopra. A lot of other filmmakers: I remember Hansal Mehta and Anurag Kashyap, who spread the word. And crucially, hundreds of Mumbaikars donated thousands, even lakhs. My friend Sanika Prabhu's mother donated one lakh rupees, despite knowing she wouldn't even be able to attend. In a rare, beautiful surge of collective will, they saved the institution that would later nurture the likes of Rima Das. Don't mistake this for nostalgia. Or vanity. My clickbait title aside, I claim no credit for "saving" MAMI. I was a messenger; the film fraternity's collective zeal was the saviour. No, I write this now because I am obscenely, incandescently angry. Why? Let me quote my own snarky beginning from that 2014 Sify piece, now scrubbed from the internet: 'It seems like the much-awaited yearly art bonanza, the 16-year-old Mumbai Film Festival (MAMI to most and MFF to some) will not see the light of the projector this year. The reason is as old as civilisation – lack of a few pennies. Ok, a lot of pennies. Obviously, the much-fabled large-heartedness of Mumbai, home to 26 billionaires (ranked 6th in the world) and 2,700 multi-millionaires, where 100 crore films have become a norm of sorts, has failed to find the pennies needed to make up 5 crores (less than 1 million USD) to run the festival.' What's changed in eleven years? Mumbai's billionaire count quadrupled (92 in 2024, surpassing Beijing!). It boasts nearly 60,000 millionaires. ₹100 crore films are passé; ₹1000 crore is the new fantasy, even if Bollywood rarely hits it. Back then, I spared no one: 'As for the Government of Maharashtra (which 'supported' MFF by giving a princely sum of Rs. 10 lakh every year) and Government of India (which believes it can serve one sixth of the world's population by financing a huge total of exactly one film festival every year), the less said the better.' I demanded: 'How do you value it? How do you value art? How do you value that which promotes art and culture? How do you judge its importance in the life of a city, nation and world?' I railed against the custodians of wealth: 'O you custodians of money with brand consciousness and PR skills, your sham CSRs and blind PR activities, your money rotting and stinking in Swiss banks, you who understand the price of everything but the value of nothing, you who equate everything to profit and loss who try to draw the map of the human heart over balance sheets… how can anyone show you what a film festival means to the life and breath of a metropolis you yourself reside in.' Do you see it? Change the dates, update the billionaire count, and this same article could run today. Nothing has fundamentally changed. Festival Director Shivendra Singh Dungarpur calls the 2025 miss '..revamping the festival with a dynamic vision,' – a dishonest euphemism for bankruptcy. But is there hope? I remember Mr. Narayanan's grim warning in 2014: a hiatus is a death knell. Reputation shatters. If you couldn't raise funds this year, what hope is there later? So, this is farewell. And you know what? Good riddance. Not because the festival was bad (though, let's be honest, its management was often terrible – but at least we saw the films properly). I say good riddance because we, Mumbai, we, this nation, do not deserve it. We don't deserve the pregnant hush before a masterpiece. We don't deserve luminous visions exploding across forty-foot screens. We deserve the cheap, disposable dopamine hits of Instagram Reels we endlessly, mindlessly scroll – our sensitivity eroded, our empathy drowned in the algorithmic deluge of dead pixels. In 2014, thousands cared enough to fund it. Today? The people are still here, but their hearts have been calloused by the relentless, AI-curated numbness. Blame will fall on Mukesh Ambani. Whispers cite his displeasure with the last edition for withdrawing funding. Critics will note the cost of Rolexes gifted at his family wedding could fund MAMI for years. But I refuse that bitterness. Let's acknowledge the positive: he funded it generously for a decade. I've heard it's over ₹15 crores annually. That's significant. We should appreciate that. But the burning, desperate question remains: Where did all that money go? The festival's quality didn't soar under the new post-2014 management (who, let's note, abandoned ship the moment the funding stopped). If anything, it frayed. For years, I've watched young volunteers scurry out for cheap dhaba lunches near the theatres – gone were the days when even journalists like me were sometimes fed cheap, plastic-packed lunches at the festival. Mukesh Ambani gave over ₹150 crores in a decade. In the pre-2015 MAMI, this would have funded the festival for three decades. But it could only fund ten now? I have no answers. Only scalding questions. A furnace of anger. A choking desperation. And so, with a bitter symmetry that tastes like ashes, I end with the same words I wrote in 2014, believing it was truly over then:'The world won't come to an end if a film festival in a small corner of the world does not exist anymore. Yet, many things of value will die with it. Mumbai would die just a little bit more with the death of the Mumbai Film Festival. And so will something in the heart of each and every Mumbaikar. And all for the want of a few pennies we couldn't find in our pockets.' Back then, Mumbai did find those hundreds of millions of pennies. It saved MAMI till Mr. Ambani funded it for a decade. Can it rally again in 2025? Eleven years older, eleven years wearier, eleven years number? I no longer have hope. Only rage. And a profound, aching grief for the dreams of another Rima Das, another Nagraj Manjule, who will now never find their screen, their light, their tears captured for eternity.
NDTV
21-07-2025
- Entertainment
- NDTV
MAMI Mumbai Film Festival Cancelled. Hansal Mehta Calls It "Cruel Irony"
The MAMI Mumbai Film Festival, a prominent platform for Indian and international cinema, has been cancelled for 2025. The organisers made the announcement in a post shared on X (formerly Twitter) on Monday. Filmmaker Hansal Mehta expressed his disappointment over the festival's cancellation. Hansal Mehta shared the MAMI organisers' official statement on the matter on Instagram, which read, "This is to inform you that the 2025 edition of MAMI Mumbai Film Festival will not take place as we are in the process of revamping the festival with a dynamic vision and a new team to ensure that the festival returns as a premier showcase for the best of independent, regional and classic cinema from Indian and around the world." It added, "We are working diligently to reschedule the festival and will announce the new dates for the 2026 edition as soon as possible. Thank you for your understanding and support." Hansal Mehta strongly criticised the MAMI Film Festival's cancellation. In the caption, the filmmaker wrote, "It's a cruel irony that Mumbai draped in the glitz of being India's financial and cinematic capital cannot keep alive a film festival of its own. Abandoned by the self-appointed gatekeepers of cinema who chased shinier stages and safer bets it was left in the hands of a few passionate believers to run on pure faith. And now that fragile flame has been snuffed out." He added, "No ceremony. No outrage. Just a slow, silent forgetting. What should have been a cultural cornerstone has been reduced to a footnote - another casualty of apathy dressed as progress." Take a look: View this post on Instagram A post shared by Hansal Mehta (@hansalmehta) Reacting to his post, filmmaker Onir wrote, "Heartbreaking that the industry that produces the largest number of films … failed to nurture this space that celebrated cinema as a form of art … beyond box office and stars. What a loss for the city and a shame for us as an industry." The MAMI Mumbai Film Festival was launched in 1997 by the Mumbai Academy of Moving Image (MAMI), a public trust based in the city. Over the years, stars like Aamir Khan made financial contributions to the festival, while celebrities like Priyanka Chopra and Kiran Rao served as Chairpersons of the event. In 2023, the festival was sponsored by Jio, but they opted out as title sponsor last year. The 2024 edition of the event was substantially smaller than prior editions.
New Indian Express
21-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New Indian Express
MAMI Mumbai Film Festival to skip 2025 edition, to return next year: Shivendra Singh Dungarpur
MUMBAI: The MAMI Mumbai Film Festival, an important event in cinephiles calendar in the city, will not take place in 2025 and instead return the next year with a "dynamic vision and a new team", festival director Shivendra Singh Dungarpur announced on Monday. In a post shared on social media, Dungarpur, who is known for his extensive work on film restoration and preservation, asked fans of the festival for their "understanding and support." This is to inform you that the 2025 edition of MAMI Mumbai Film Festival will not take place as we are in the process of revamping the festival with a dynamic vision and a new team to ensure that the festival returns as a premier showcase for the best of independent, regional and classic cinema from India and around the world. We are working diligently to reschedule the festival and will announce the new dates for the 2026 edition as soon as possible. Thank you for your understanding and support, Dungerpur wrote on Instagram. Filmmaker Tanuja Chandra said it was sad that the festival will not be there this year. "It's a part of the year so many of us have wishes for coming back stronger," she added. The MAMI Mumbai Film Festival is organised by the Mumbai Academy of Moving Image (MAMI). The festival has been known for bringing the best of contemporary world cinema and talent to the city since 1997.
