Entry tags:

brtff, brtff2

bangalore roof top film festival

Bangalore Roof Top Film Festival (BRTFF) enacted their second chapter last Sunday, and since I spent the majority of the day in doing absolutely nothing to help, I thought I might chip in by writing a review for them.

For those of you who don't know as yet - BRTFF is drawn largely along the lines of the BarCamps. The concept is alluring - every participant is also a contributor and vice-versa. That means that there are no 'outsiders' - something that I miraculously managed to be, by being my anti-social self. Even so, this does leave me in unique position: to review the event deprived of a sense of fond attachment - something that should hopefully be closer to the truth.


To be honest, I was quite surprised by how well it ran. The organisation in particular was truly something to cheer (thanks Dhempe, Thejesh, Lavanya, Poonacha, Mutiny, Christina, glsandeep, Pawan, Vatsa!) The projectors were in place, the sound system perfect, the room secluded enough to allow for some thirty yuppies gorge on steamed momos and watch eight movies back-to-back. The geniality was positively infectious - you could not but help be dragged into excited chatter and uncommon camaraderie.


Ice cream cones
It was sad then, that such exemplary settings were to house such ordinary cinema. And that was not because the films screened were almost exclusively made by self-confessed amateurs, some trying their hand at cinema for the very first time. It was because, but for a couple, most films offered nothing - nothing that would have you excuse the technical aspects of film-making or the lack of production. Nothing that you could call Good Cinema.

The only thing that was more disappointing than the movies were the lukewarm discussions that followed. Discussions were demoted to feedback for the movie-makers - ranging from the harmlessly insipid "That was a good concept" to the outright insane "Let me tell you one thing - people like to watch things that are beautiful, and your film didn't show anything beautiful".

At the end of the day, what the screening missed was a professional - a Girish Karnad or a Kasaravalli. Someone who could objectively assess a film and provide understanding to the various aspects involved in watching a movie. A room-full of earnest film-makers projecting their work to a largely uneducated audience leaves everyone with an empty ice cream cone - happy but hollow.

It will be interesting, in such ideological strife, how BRTFF will forge their identity. Unlike the BarCamps of the computer world, from where most of their foundation is borrowed, there are very few in the forum who have the pre-requisite understanding or training in the activity. Will they end up pre-screening their movies and compete with the likes of Collective Chaos, Suchitra and Films for Freedom? Or will they re-draw their current ambitions and carve themselves a niche in screening amateur films?


Such clouds of unanswered questions are of course ignored by genuine smiles of new friendship and a sense of lazy Sunday contentment. In evenings draped in Bangalore's gorgeous dark-gray skies, beckoning the next set of whizzing images projected onto a white wall.