Me & MAMI (Part 1)

October 14, 2019

Me & MAMI (Part 1)

MAMI (Mumbai Academy of Moving Images), One of India’s biggest film festivals is around the corner (17th October 2019 to 24th October 2019). Here are my thoughts and experiences I shared with it over time (especially last year).

* * *

MAMI! Not that Chacha-Chachi or Mama-Mami vala Mami, it is MAMI in uppercase letters. MAMI as in Mumbai Academy of Moving Images. I admire and look forward to this organization so much. I adore the team and the work they do. Alright, let me first introduce you with what they are and what they do and then I will continue with experiences of some of their activities and events and what I love about them (Used the word ‘them’ because I have affection for the team members too).

MAMI is primarily known for organizing one of the most look-after film festivals of India, i.e. Jio MAMI Mumbai film festival. They organise it every year around October and November. Kiran Rao (Film producer and director) and Anupama Chopra (Film Critic) are festival directors and Smriti Kiran is the creative director for MAMI (Deepika Padukone has been appointed as a chairperson this year). Every year they select plenty of films from across the globe and showcases in a span of 7 to 8 days long festival. Every year you would see the passionate cine-buffs roaming around, sitting on the floor in the queue outside the Audi to see world cinema in some selected theatres of Mumbai. Cinema literally doesn’t let you feel hunger and if you feel, it doesn’t let you have the time to satiate it as you have to complete the target of 5 films a day. Yes, you heard it right, 5 films a day. The writer himself did it more than one time but not 5 films, let’s say 4 films reasonably. One film less because unlike others I had to write film reviews as well. Okay, okay will let you know the reason behind writing film reviews, but little later. Let’s first complete what MAMI and the festival really is.

Me, Mike McCahill and Baradwaj Rangan

So, you would see your favourite filmmakers, actors, producers, etc. from all over the world jamming together and watching the same movie along with you in the theatres (Well, it depends on you to have a conversation or at least a selfie). You can have amazing question-answer session post the film screening with the director and his/her team. The film festival starts with a tremendously glittering and exciting opening ceremony and ends with an integral award ceremony for distributing the awards to the worthy entries. The film festival is something you can’t just feel enough of it. You come out of the screening discussing the film with the fellow cinephiles who are equally interesting in having a conversation about what you just saw. The top-notch management lets you feel on par. The festival started 21 years back by some well known Hindi film industry names like Jaya Bachchan, Ramesh Sippy, etc. Since then it only has grown to the grandness and authenticity it has now.

I can go on and on about what MAMI and the festival are even in the introduction part but now let’s stop it here and start what I started this writing for. Let me talk everything about MAMI does or has with me and my feel-good encounters with it.

YCL Gang!

So, it all started when I shifted to Mumbai a few years ago. I came to know about MAMI and the Mumbai Film Festival they organize. But the festival is yearly so they must have thought what about throughout the year. So, they came up with an idea of having activities regarding films for the whole year. One of them is ‘MAMI Year Round Programme’. They organize premiere screenings of the movies under this programme. I have joined it and attended so many screenings and really grateful to them for that. Those who are following me on social media must have seen my posts regarding these screenings. From Sonchiriya or Bhavesh Joshi to Thor: Ragnarok or Baby Driver, I’ve watched all of them and more there before the official release.

Last year, I got to know about one more programme of theirs, called ‘Young Critics Lab’. This is a pretty cool workshop rounds program for the aspiring film critics. This is the most exciting thing I and MAMI share to date. Around June or July 2018 I got to know about it. The program was about workshop lab by some well-known film critics of India for the selected candidates from across the country. The writing test competed for several entries and only 120 got selected from all over India. Well, obviously I was one of them. There were three rounds of the lab across August to October months. The first round took place in the month of August. I was amazed by the whole set up for us. First of all the lab round took place at JW Mariott Hotel, Juhu which is one of the most sought after hotel chains around the world. Secondly, the hospitality and management by both the hotel and MAMI representatives were supremely awesome.

One name I would like to highlight is Suchin Mehrotra. He was our go-to guy for the whole Young Critics Lab arrangement. He was so organized, calm, friendly, dedicated and smiling. We all liked him so much. He still is in contact and I remember I gave him a lot of trouble throughout especially for sharing the pictures we all were having by the time.

We have met and learnt so much about film reviewing (don’t misunderstand with films alone) from the topmost film critics the country is having. Our main mentor for all the rounds was Baradwaj Rangan. Well, for those who love reading film reviews he is the name doesn’t need an introduction. We had guest lectures from Anupama Chopra, Rahul Desai, Uday Bhatia and Sucharita Tyagi for the very first round.

You must be wondering that what we all could have possibly discussed and talked about the film reviewing in the 2 long days. I was wondering about the same thing in my head when I walked in for the first day of the workshop but at the end of the second day, I told Baradwaj Rangan out of amusement that we all managed to do this for whole 2 days and that’s an unbelievable achievement.

I made two amazing friends too. Prashant Pandey and Rudra Dave. Prashant wasn’t there from the round 2 but he joined again in the festival. Throughout the YCL rounds and fest. We all three had so much fun. We clicked so many pictures. We discussed food, films, mentors, fellow candidates and laugh over a little and silly things.

Over a period of three months, we underwent three rounds of YCL. After the first round based on the amazing film Lolita (1962)’s review, the 30 finalists got selected. I am glad that I was one of them. We saw a lot of movies and had plenty of question-answer discussion on various aspects of film reviewing with Baradwaj Rangan.

In round 2 and 3 we met more amazing people like Vikramaditya Motwane and Mike McCahill (Film critic, The Guardian). The reflection of innocence in Mike’s behaviour was so feel-good. We had so much fun with him as he was child-like and very supportive.

(Part 2: https://divyakant-pandya.blogspot.com/2019/10/me-mami-part-2.html)

Some of the memories in the photographs: