Delhi mein...

Thu, Jul 17 01:05 AM

Ms Short-pink-dress stood behind Mr Long-haired-filmmaker, who was buying tickets for his mother's friends on their way from a kitty party. Mrs 60-year-old-aunty was scolding her driver on the phone for being late ("Ab tum bahaar wait karo, main ek aur show dekhkar hi nikloongi").

Mr Suit-Boot looked anxious: his other suit-boot friends were stuck in traffic and the show would start in 10 minutes, so should he sell the tickets to the rock junkies or the tight-shirts-tighter-jeans dudes, he wondered. And so went evenings at Siri Fort this week as Delhi's biggest film festival, the 10th Osian Cinefan, played out.

What was an event for the jholawaala Kafka-reading types just a decade ago has today become a festival for the entire city. Stereotypes cannot do justice to the crowd in attendance as the most unlikely people sat through all kinds of movies.

Fashionistas from south Delhi were spotted at Chouga, an adaptation of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, while 60-year-old Mrs Singh saw one Israeli film and one from Turkey with her daughter-in-law and a friend. Foreigners in Delhi sat through the screening of short films made by Indian directors.

Well over 2,000 people formally registered for the festival and a lot of shows - My Blueberry Nights, My Beautiful Laundrette, The Whisperers to name a few - had a full house. Talks on screenwriting, art and cinema, books and cinema all saw a mixed audience of young and old.

Hollywood director-scriptwriter Paul Schrader's talks on New Media and Screenwriting saw a packed auditorium. At the launch of the festival, Latika Padgaonkar, one of the founder members of the Cinefan, recalled that when it started, there were only 250-300 enthusiasts.

MNC executive Abhay Das came all the way from Gurgaon to catch My Blueberry Nights. Young filmmaker Manisha Shankar, who came down from Mumbai to check out the festival, was gobsmacked by the crowd composition.

"I'm so blown away by the kind of people here. I expected to see arty-farty sorts, but it's crazy.

There are 17-year-old kids here who look like they stepped out of some ad and there are so many beautiful women. Aren't they supposed to be bimbettes?" she asked.

Neville Tuli, chairman, Osian, spoke at the inauguration about how there would be a day in the near future when even people from Chandni Chowk would be a part of the festival. Given the mixed bag of people in attendance, maybe that day is already here?.

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