Roadblock for Mumbai's film festival

No chief guest, no pomp and pageantry - that is what fest is going to be like.

With Frames, the annual three day entertainment conference, on from March 22 to 24, the Mumbai Academy of Moving Images (MAMI) has hit another minor hurdle.

The opening of the International Film Festival of Mumbai (IFFM) will now clash with the FICCI-organised conference. MAMI's week-long IFFM opens on March 23 and while there is usually a chief guest, lamp lighting and some speeches, this year a simple and quick opening event will be followed by the screening of Les Choristes (The Chorus). No chief guest, no pomp and pageantry. The `show' is being restricted to the closing day when the felicitations will also take place.

Festival director Sudhir Nandgaonkar agrees that FICCI Frames this year has clashed with MAMI, but he described it as a "coincidence". "Yes, we do not have a chief guest and the opening will be a low-key event, but that is because we had very little time to organise the festival," he says.

HT Image