13th Mumbai Film Festival opens with MONEYBALL with 'no frills' opening ceremony
Friday, October 14, 2011 11:22:25 AM (IST)
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Rajesh Kumar Singh, Bollywood Trade Editorial
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YASH CHOPRA, DIA MIRZA and RAMESH SIPPY at 13TH MUMBAI FILM FESTIVAL
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The 13th MFF opened at Cinemax, Mumbai, in the presence of the stalwarts of the Indian film industry (Yash Chopra, Ramesh Sippy, and Amit Khanna), the members of the International Competition Jury Hugh Hudson (Jury President), Jerzy Skolimowski, Na Hong- Jin, Roger Spottiswoode and Sarika, and the Dimensions Mumbai jury headed by Kiran Rao. The ceremonial lamp was lit by Yash Chopra and Dia Mirza, followed immediately by the screening of the opener the Brad Pitt starrer MONEYBALL directed by Bennett Miller.
The ‘no frills’ ceremony seems to indicate that the 13th MFF will be more about content than form this year. The cineastes of the city like it this way. The opening film did not let them down. It is one of those Brad Pitt films that adeptly straddle the twin territories of the popular and the art-house cinema. The film got the thumbs up from the festival delegates, the press, the celebrities, and the invited guests who stayed on till the end of the film to applaud it. None seemed to be in a big hurry to rush to the elaborate presentation and party that was to follow at Sun n Sand hotel.
More than 200 films will be screened during the festival in its various sections that include a special package of French films under and the best of the Cannes Critics Week (Semaine de la Critique du Festival de Cannes) films of the last fifty years. It is the 50th year of the Critics Week that has been known for having discovered great filmmakers like Jacques Rozier, Denys Arcand, Bernardo Bertolucci, Wong Kar-Wai, Miranda July, and almost every other celebrated film director in the history of art-house cinema.
The festival selection is a judicious mix of pure art House films like Bela Tarr’s TURIN HORSE, that won the Berlinale Grand Prix, and popular feel good films like THE ARTIST by Michel Hazanavicius that has been wowing the cinephile and the critics alike and its male lead Jean Dujardin, who won the Best Actor award at Cannes, has become a big hit with female audiences. It also has a fair share of films with strong political content like EVEN THE RAIN by Icíar Bollaín starring Gael García Bernal (Berlin Audience Choice Award), and sexually explicit films like the Cannes favorite THE SLUT by Hagar Ben-Asher and SLEEPING BEAUTY by Julia Leigh.
The list of starry artistically inclined Hollywood films is also long, led by the opener MONEYBALL, and the closing - film Morgan Freeman, and Ashley Judd starrer - DOLPHIN TALE by Charles Martin Smith, and the Venice opener IDES OF MARCH by George Clooney starring Ryan Gosling and him. The Golden Lion winner of Venice, FAUST, a film by Russian helmer Aleksander Sokurov is joined by GEORGE HARRISON: LIVING IN THE MATERIAL WORLD the latest Martin Scorsese documentary on one of the more enigmatic Beatles. It is a more than three-hour long film and appropriately scheduled in the late evening slot.
The festival runs through 13-20 October 2011.
(Rajesh Kumar Singh is Editorial Consultant for Festivals and Markets for BollywoodTrade.com. He is a filmmaker, critic and market analyst)
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Tags : Yash Chopra, Ramesh Sippy, Amit Khanna, Dia Mirza, Kiran Rao, Brad Pitt, MONEYBALL, Bennett Miller, Bela Tarr, TURIN HORSE
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