14th Mumbai International Film Festival for Documentary, Short and Animation Films

Mumbai is notoriously known as a colorful and vibrant city. And this reputation, I must say, of the local film festival, MIFF, was fully lived up to. The program at MIFF 2012 was diverse and rather chaotic. The festival offered animation, documentaries and short films, which means you can go, for instance, from the deeply touching Nargis — When Time Stopped Breathing into a more lightweight and almost infantile cartoon like The Drifting Love. It’s an  odd way of programming, and takes some getting used to. Competition films are divided into an Indian and an nternational program. In the international competition, we got to see well-known festival films like Pink Saris, but also a number of more unknown and mostly Indian works such as Dreaming Taj Mahal and Miyar House. The Indian competition included such fiction films as Visible Bra Straps, a film portraying a cultural encounter in cyberspace between an Italian and an Indian girl. Aside from the competition films MIFF also showcased a number of regional films from Kashmir and Jammu amongst others. Finally, the festival also organized daily workshops and seminars covering topics such as copyright, filming with DSLR cameras, and the challenge of shooting in covert or even hostile environments. The discussions at the seminars and workshops were often very lively and seemed to act as proof that contemporary Indian documentary is really something to keep an observant eye on. MIFF 2012 is the 12th edition of the festival, which takes place every second year. This year the festival also offered a very informative exhibition on the last 110 years of Indian documentary. (Steffen Moestrup)

Mumbai International Film Festival for Documentary, Short and Animation Films:
www.miff.in