The 9th Pune International Film Festival (PIFF) Pick: "You missed it!"

Just like mortality, it is inevitable that you are bound to miss some movies on the film festival schedule. You are also bound to hear others say, "That was the best movie I watched man, too bad you missed it." Unable to come up with a repartee, complete with the description of the ultimate gem your friends had missed in turn, you can only turn sarcastic, wrung your hands and lament, "My life has lost all meaning on missing the film."

Then there is that rare dreadful film, which is best experienced with friends, rather than alone, for who will you make those witticisms to, or put absurd words into the lead actor's dialogues and laugh your head off.
Anyway, at the time of writing, the last film of the festival has been screened, and now the evening of awards and the closing ceremony will arrive. Bring it on please, same time, next year ...  

PIFF 2010: ID cards, schedule and samosas....

The Pune International Film Festival is back again. Hurrah.
So if you love cinema, or believed until now that there were only Hindi and Hollywood movies movies been made, you were wrong. There are films from Hungary, France, Britain, Poland, Slovenia and from other countries all over the world. Countries, whose names you probably couldn't spell but their directors and actors still come together to make movies that they want to make and not what the market demands. Hail freedom. Art is individual and impartial, hence proved...

This time they have a web cam for the photographs, so the 'Delegate ID Card' is made with much less fuss. Rs 500 is cheap if you can camp at the theatres screening the movies over the coming week (The festival ends on January 14), its Rs 300 for those who can prove they are students.
The same bulk of literature is provided along with the ID card - one with the synopsis of every movie to be shown at the festival, a daily newsletter - this one carrying the inauguration pictures, and the schedule, that is sure to change by the first evening of the festival and it does - almost by tradition.

No complaints about the movies though or the experience - soft comfortable seats you can fall asleep in if you want, nice but expensive food (samosas at INOX are grand, even without sauce or chutney; and the volunteers who bluntly recite the movie synopsis (word-to-word from the same literature we carry) before each screening are forgiven that they do so. Another year, same festival.
As long as the movies are engrossing, and they allow cine buffs like us to view it from opening credits to end credits in peace (including uncensored sex scenes and a new vocabulary of swear words), and let us fulfil the inclination of reading the subtitles aloud sometimes, who's saying anything?
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More about the movies watched in subsequent posts....