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MIFF 2016 Documentary Film Awards presented

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Mumbai International Film Festival

Manipuri documentary film Phum Shang has won the Golden Conch Award for the “Best Documentary Film” (upto 60 minutes) at the 14th Mumbai International Film Festival for Documentary, Animation & Short Films, MIFF 2016, which ended on 3rd Feb, 2016. Swiss film My Name Is Salt and Indian entry Placebo shared the Gold Conch award for the “Best Feature length” Documentary Film.

52 miniute documentary Phum Shang, directed by Hao Bam Pabankumar an alumnus of the Satyjit Ray Film & Television Institute, Kolkatta, critically examines the serious environmental problems faced at the Loktak lake. The largest fresh water lake in North East India characterised by its unique floating biomass, known as “Phumdi”, is today considered a dying lake due to unchecked human activity. Pabankumar wins the Golden Conch Award and a cash prize of Rs. 3 lakhs.

My name Is Salt directed by Mumbai born, Zurich based Farida Pacha is a film about the journey of thousands of families to the Rann of Kutch to extract whitest salt in the world. Chandigarh based film maker Abhay Kumar’s 96 minutes film Placebo explores the stress & pressure faced by medical students.

My Name Is Salt also won the “Best Cinematographer” award for Lutz Konermann, while Placebo won the Award for “Best Editor”. Placebo was also declared the Most Innovative Film in the competition section.

Debanjan Nandy’s animation film Chhaya bagged the 1st prize in the Animation Category of International Competition.

Mumbai filmmaker Devashish Makhija’s Agli Baar shared the “Best Short Fiction Film” honours with the UK entry Solo Finale by Ingo Putze.

Dadasaheb Phalke Award for the “Best Debut Film” of a Director went to Far From Home by Copenhagen, Denmark based film maker Nitesh Anjan.

List of Awards – International Competition

Golden Conch – “Best
Documentary Film” (upto 60 minutes) Phum Shang
Haobam Paban Kumar
Imphal, Manipur

Golden Conch – “Best Feature length Documentary” My Name Is Salt & Placebo Farida Pacha Zurich, Switzerland
& Abhay Kumar. Chanidgarh, India

“Most Innovative Film” Placebo Abhay Kumar,
Chandigarh, India Dada Saheb Phalke Award for “Best Debut Film” Far From Home Nitesh Anjan, Copenhagen, Denmark

“Best Animation FIlm”
Chhaya Debanjan Nandy
Mumbai, India

“Best Short Fiction Film”
Agli Baar & Solo Finale
Devashish Makhija
Mumbai, India Ingo Putze
London, UK

Key awards in National Competition

“Best Documentary” (upto 60 minutes) Famous In Amdavad
Hardik Mehta Vadodara, Gujarat

“Best Feature Length Documentary” Fire Flies In The Abyss Chandrashekhar Reddy, Bangalore, India

“Best Short Fiction Film” Alice & Last Mango Before The Monsoon Satinder Singh Bedi Chennai, India
Payal Kapadia, Mumbai, India

IDPA Award for “Best Student Film” Going Home;
Niranjankumar Kujur,
Lohardaga, Jharkhand, India

The International Jury for the Festival comprised prominent documentary makers Don Askarian from Germany, Jesper Andersen from Denmark, Mathiue Roy of Canada, Siddharth Kak & Gitanjali Rao.

Mike Pandey, Uma DaCunha, Biju Dhanapalan, Audrius Stonys (Lithuania) & Jane Yu (Taiwan) were the members of the National Jury.

MIFF 2016 showcased over 385 films under International & National competition, MIFF Prism, Indian Premiers, Jury retrospectives, Animation & award winning films, Children’s documentary films, North East package, FD & PSBT (Public Service Broadcasting Trust) films, homages et al.

An interaction with Mukesh Sharma and Jackie Shroff

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shaheen raj

Midway through Mumbai International Film Festival (MIFF – 2016), the festival Director, Mukesh Sharma and the Brand Ambassador, Jackie Shroff met the press on Monday, 1st February, 2016 at the Media Centre in the Films Division Complex.

“I am delighted to see that large numbers of viewers are sitting in our halls and watching documentary, short & animation films from around the world,” began Sharma. “We faced several hurdles in organising MIFF 2016, but the energy that is floating around is highly encouraging. I assure you that the next (15th) MIFF will be an even more pleasurable experience, once the film hub, currently under construction in this very complex, is ready. Instead of multiple venues, currently, we will accommodate 2000 viewers under one roof.”

jackie shroff

Jackie Shroff shared that he was delighted to be among ideators and film makers from all over the world. Having worked in mainstream commercial cinema for 33 years, he said he is entering a new phase in his life. “It made me feel so happy when students who are part of the workshops at MIFF greeted me this morning with ‘Happy Birthday to You’. Yes, it is my birthday today, and guess what new step I took on this day? I attended a workshop on animation screenplay writing (conducted by Luca Raffaeli of Italy and moderated by award winning India animator Dhvani Desai) Animation has always fascinated me, and I hope to make some animation films someday. ”

Confirming his enthusiasm, Sharma said besides performing his duties as brand ambassador, Jackie has been watching films too. To avoid over enthusiastic fans disrupting screenings, he sneaks in when the lights are off, sits right at the back and sneaks out again before the lights come on. Asked whether he has had much interaction with audiences, Jackie replied in the negative. “So many of them want photos, selfies & autographs, that leaves little time to talk.”

Replying to a question about what could be done to improve MIFF, he said, “That is for the administrators to decide. But I would be very happy to see it become an annual event, like every other film festival in the city. A biennial festival is just not the same thing. IFFI (International Film Festival of India) at Goa is exciting too, but to me, Mumbai & Goa are the same. The synergy is the same. Both are island cities, and I love them both. We should make India shine, whatever the venue. Let us become examples of hospitality to all the delegates of the world. Let us sketch success stories of oneness every year. Instead of finding faults, let us support those who work hard to make these events successful.”

Sharma then paid a compliment to Jackie, that, he insisted was richly deserved. “Jackie’s presence has boosted our morale tremendously. He added that ripple that became a wave of energy.” Asked if the festival could be extended by a few days, since there was so much happening, Sharma responded by saying that it was not likely with the present infrastructure, which was really strained to manage the present duration, “but the point is taken”, he assured.

A surprise lay in store for Jackie Shroff, as the MIFF 2016 organisers presented him with birthday cake, which he gladly cut, and even posed for photographs & selfies with media persons. MIFF 2016, began on 28th Jan, 2016 and will end on 03rd Feb, 2016.

Mumbai International Film Festival is a good platform to showcase the skills of a budding director: Shibani Sharma

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Shibani Sharma

Shibani Sharma, the content development head of the Ryan International School, was a special delegate in the currently ongoing 14th Mumbai International Film Festival. On the very 1st day of the 14th Miff, Shibani Sharma had a TV workshop in the Films Division complex. In this session she first had a brief session, as a media initiative, on the importance of the taglines, highlighting the fact as to why they are essential even for the Public service Announcements (PSA).

What are your feelings as a special delegate of the 14th Miff?

I feel good nay I feel great on being a part of the ongoing 14th Miff and moreover I feel proud and humbly honored on being given the opportunity to hold a workshop on behalf of the Ryan International School. I also feel that the Mumbai International Film Festival offers a good platform to budding directors in the arena of documentary and short filmmaking, in this case our own school students too, to showcase their latent directional skills. It offers a perfect opportunity for them but I just came to know before the session that Miff is held only once in two years. I think it should be made an annual event any this is just my suggestion and since I have come to Miff for the 1st time ever I can’t comment anything more about it.

Could you enlighten us about today’s Ryan TV workshop session?

Regarding this session I would like to inform that as a content development head of Ryan International School I help the students to realize their latent talent of their directional skills in the arena of film making like short films catering to Public Service Announcements. This time they have been given the concepts of making short films on “No Smoking” of one minute duration. And in this session I also explained to them and the entire gathering that giving a tagline to such short film of public interest is especially relevant when backed by statistics. Besides I also held a sample tagline creation contest for the audio – visual medium of the Public Service Announcement especially for the benefit of the attending students from Ryan International School including the media and the delegates of the 14th Miff.

And what was the response of this workshop-oriented session?

I would say that in general the response was good enough but it could have been even much better if the media and the delegates were properly informed about this session and about its proper venue in the films division complex.

And what were the highlights of this particular workshop oriented session?

As the topic of this particular workshop oriented session was “NO SMOKING”. The statistics given to them were that research shows that children are now trying their 1st ever smoke at a much younger age than ever before. So no doubt that the students present in this workshop oriented session came up with varied taglines like “Don’t smoke – it’s not a joke”, “Don’t Smoke – Lung Stroke” and so on and so forth.

So who and which tagline was declared a winner?

The winner was of course, one of our own student and the winning tagline was selected by one of the most honored and respected delegate of the 14th Mumbai International Film Festival (Miff) namely Ms. Parvati Menon who is in fact the 1st ever woman to graduate from the Film & TV Institute of India (FTII – Pune) in the Advanced Direction Course. And the winning tagline was “Be smart – don’t start”. Besides the session had ended with a short audio – visual presentation on varied topics created and designed by the students of the Ryan International School.

Mumbai International Film Festival helps you to get prospective clients: G L Bhardwaj

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G L Bhardwaj

A stalwart filmmaker like G. L. Bhardwaj has come to showcase his 10 min documentary film titled Educating Tribal Girls in the special screening category, in the ongoing 14th Mumbai International Film Festival (MIFF) for documentary, shorts and animation. G. L. Bhardwaj, having crossed the 88 summers of his life is still going strong.

Can you give us a brief insight of your illustrious work as a documentary and short filmmaker?

Even at this ripe young age of 88 years I consider myself a self taught and a self made man. In the beginning of my career I had the privilege of working with the Late Raj Kapoor in R. K. Studios as a Stills Cameraman from the year 1951 to the year 1955. But now I am like a one man army solely donning the hat of a producer, director, cinematographer, writer and editor. And I sometimes handle all this designations rolled into one under my own production banner namely Bhardwaj Films. I am a full-fledged documentary and short filmmaker having made scores of films for India’s largest documentary organization namely Films Division, Government of India and even for the small screen arena. Besides I have also made documentary and short films for American Broadcasting Company based in New York, Worldwide Television London and several foreign film productions. I have been invited to many foreign film festivals and I have also served as a Jury Members of many National and International film festivals both in India and across the seven seas.

Can you enlist some of the remarkable documentary and short films that you have made till this date?

Some of my remarkable documentary and short films are Festival Time, Land Of Krishna, Fibre – The Fabric Of Life, Mata Ganga, Yamuna, Destination Bombay, Welcome To India, This Is Not My Story, There Are Others, Drought, Woman Cart Pullers, Woman Labourers, Melody Of Monsoon, Kanak Rele, 50 Years Of Hindi, India Love And Devotion, Udham Singh – Freedom Fighter, Savita Rathi – Sarpanch and many, many more and all of them have bagged awards galore both on the National and International front. And now I have come to MIFF with my latest film Educating Tribal Girls which was screened yesterday in a special screening category.

Tell us something more about Educating Tribal Girls.

The story of Educating Tribal Girls takes place in the year 1974. Purnima Pakvasa started a school under a tree with just 15 tribal girls in the tribal district of Saputara on the border of Gujarat and Maharashtra. The school was called the Vishwa Vidyapeeth Girls High School and it was meant for the Dangi tribal girls. Purnima Pakvasa is now 103 years old and is still active. She also happens to be the mother of the great classical dancer named Sonal Mansingh.

Do you have any regrets whatsoever in your career?

My only regret is that even a stalwart documentary and short filmmaker like me does not get an assigned job from the concerned persons and authorities. I had to wait for at least six years before coming up with my latest film Educating Tribal Girls. My last films were Udham Singh – Freedom Fighter and Savitha Rathi – Sarpanch in the year 2008 and 2010 respectively.

What do you think could be the real reason behind this non – assigning of jobs even for a stalwart filmmaker like you?

Earlier Ii used to get a job, just a phone call away but now I have to pitch my work in front of a lot of concerned people.

What do you think of the currently ongoing MIFF?

I think that the Mumbai International Film Festival held every two years is a great opportunity for documentary and short filmmakers to interact with each other. It also helps in networking with the concerned people in your same work arena. It also helps you to get prospective buyers and clients. But I only lament the fact that it only takes place once in two years. It’s like serving all tasty food all at once. After all how much can you partake at one time so I think MIFF should certainly take place every year.

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