Glitches turn Day 2 of Mumbai film fest into a 'disaster'

While watching the French film, My Little Princess, at Cinemax, Versova, on Friday, the images projected on the screen turned upside-down at regular intervals and the sound died out minutes into the screening.

For scriptwriter Abhijeet Deshpande, the second day of the 13th Mumbai International Film Festival was a "cinematic disaster".

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While watching the French film, My Little Princess, at Cinemax, Versova, on Friday, the images projected on the screen turned upside-down at regular intervals and the sound died out minutes into the screening.

There were glitches even during the screening of the Hungarian drama, The Turin Horse and the Polish film Walkover. "Movie watching is an experience and constant disruptions during the screening affected the tempo," rued Deshpande.

Vishal Golani, a Dadar resident, had similar complaints. "If the organisers could appoint a jury to carefully pick and choose the films, why couldn't they check the prints prior to the screening?" asked Golani, who will demand a refund if the technical glitches persist on Saturday. "Foreigners seated in the audience passed comments on the organisational skills of Indians," he added.

The festival organisers blamed the producers of the films. "During the screen testing, we had made a list of films that had poor print and sound quality," said Srinivasan Narayanan, director, MAMI. "We had also written to the producers of the films demanding a new prints, but by then the film listings were completed. We had to go ahead with the available prints," he added.

Even last year, the organisers had received poor prints of Japanese films from the producers.

"We noticed glitches during testing. But we managed to use the print without any complaints from viewers,"

The organisers have decided to arrange alternative screenings of the films, with better quality prints.