This year’s Mumbai Academy Of Movie Images Film Festival or the popularly known MAMI Festival was brief but was lauded as the best till date.
Payal Kapadia’s ‘All We Imagine As Light’ was premiered in the festival and Shabana Azmi was conferred with the Excellence in Cinema Award. The chairperson of the festival, Shivendra Singh Dungarpur has stated that MAMI aims to be the new face of regional and independent films.
He has said, “I have a mission to make MAMI a showcase for the best independent and regional films. It’s essential that we support regional cinema. The best films come from our regional industries – that’s where the true essence of India lies, in our culture.”
While in India, regional films are still getting an unprecedented recognition, independent films are still in the dark. There is no stage for these films to reach the audience and most of the time, Indie filmmakers have to collaborate with producers from the UK or France to fund the film. It is a shocking truth and if festivals like MAMI can bridge that gap and help in building a secure industry for Indie films, nothing can be better than that.
Dungarpur asks people to wait for one more year as he aims to bring more documentaries and international films to screen here in the festival. This is coming as an important opportunity for filmmakers, audiences and producers to communicate their needs to each other. Hopefully MAMI will continue to be that ‘showcase’ for regional and indie films and will promote more films like ‘All We Imagine As Light’ so that they do not miss the public eye if they don’t get a Cannes award.