blog update: Screening @ IDFA

On Nov 28, 2007, Jashn-e-Azadi screened at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (with its ‘international’ title, “How we celebrate freedom”). This was probably the most splendid venue the film will be screened in for a while: Hall 3 of the magnificient Pathe Tuschinski, which is a huge cinema palace located in the Rembrandtplein, in the heart of Amsterdam. “The cinema opened in 1921 and it remains until today with its Art Deco interior one of the most cherished buildings in Amsterdam”, says one guide book and when you walk in, you know just why. The dark wood, its deep maroon carpeting, the under-stated over-the-top aesthetic that spells Grand Europe, such that the multiplexes of today cannot even visualise, leave alone aspire to…

IDFA, as it itself quite nonchalantly admits, is the largest documentary festival in the world: this year, over 10 days, it screened a few hundred films, and sold more than 140,000 tickets! It’s quite simply the biggest, even the brassiest, documentary event that I have ever attended, and a peep into the new world of international documentary cinema. (The short conclusion is: it’s boom time, folks, and as the closing message from Ally Derks, the IDFA director, said, “Move over Harry Potter! Of course many of the films are huge, ambitiously (and expensively) mounted international co-productions (the credits are a treat, just the list of funders usually running into dozens of names!) These are films one of course admires, but from a distance, and to it’s credit IDFA also makes place for the small, the quirky, and even the difficult and the marginal.

But what really makes IDFA are it’s audiences: I don’t think I went to a single screening (and over 5 days I went to 15) that was not nearly full, and most often it was actually over-full. Everyone, including the delegates, were queueing up for the events well before opening time. On one cold, wet, wintery, Amsterdam morning, I was in a queue at just past 9 am, but was rewarded with a ticket to attend a long conversation between the legendary Werner Herzog and the irrepressible Peter Wintonick. It was worth it, if for no other reason, than to hear Herzog rasp out “Accountants!”, his favourite term of derision, his shorthand for all the kinds of people who are inimical to the creative processes of film-making!

In the midst of all this high-voltage excitement, “How we celebrate freedom” was screened at 12.45 in the afternoon, on a working day. But this being IDFA, we had a full house! I was expecting the usual high-ratio of the “South-Asian” audience, but that was another surprise: one brown face, in a auditorium of what I guess were mostly Dutch people! Some were introduced– lawyers, human-rights activists, journaists, but the rest were just walk-ins… impressive. The stunning picture and sound (played from Digi-beta, the first time for us) was a treat, but so was the Q&A that followed, and the conversation with the audience carried on for almost 45 minutes.

As always, the next day Sanjay Kak also did a session with students, this time at the University of Amsterdam, a class on ‘conflict’ in the Political Science department, showing excerpts from the film, and then an animated discussion with a group that by and large knew very little about Kashmir. But it lasted 90 minutes, and the students seemed quite taken aback by the issues that the conflict in Kashmir raises…

[ blog flash 7 - guwahati surreal ]

if the surreal is the criterion, guwahati would be memorable. Bar of Hotel Blue Moon converted into screening chamber. The screen which was showing music videos had Kashmir replace them. But that was it- a surreal location with not much publicity resulting in a small crowd and tepid discussion. It was sad because, guwahati has a very astute political culture and a whole conflict resolution industry in overdrive with peace talks between United Liberation Front of Axom and India going through the usual process of – non talk, army punctuation, mysterious bomb blasts. Sad, real sad this non screening. Guwahati, we will be back.