It wasn't the seven-year itch at Piff this year

Thefestival may have entered its seventh year, but this year's Pune InternationalFilm Festival (Piff), which concluded on Tuesday, definitely did not suffer fromthe seven-year itch syndrome. The festival was presented by thegovernment of Maharashtra this year and there has been talks about declaringPiff as a state festival. "Making it a state festival will make a lot ofdifference. It may aid in getting more funds," says Ashwin Deshpande, a secondyear BCom student. "However, what's more important is the quality of the filmsshown. It should be good and consistent."So, how were the films?Ashwin shrugs, "I'm not sure. I think last year's line-up was much better. Istill remember a few films from the last year.""The over-allselection of the movies was not bad," says Kalyani Makhija, a post-graduatestudent. "But there were very few recent movies, apart from The Class' andPersopolis'. And, I think, the organisers should avoid movies which are easilyavailable on DVDs, like The Edge of Heaven' or Padre Nuestro'." But Makhija isnot that sad. "I got to see Jean-Paul Belmondo as a flamboyant conman in AlainResnais's Stavisky', and I cannot ask for more."Anotherpost-graduate student Amol Joshi rues that the schedule did not work for him."The movies I wanted to see were all in the morning, which I could not catch asI had to attend classes. But, I guess, this is not the fault of theorganisers."For John Lau, an Austrian citizen, getting a pass itselfwas the issue. "Last year, I could not even get a pass. Finally, this year, Imanaged to get one. In the West, for an event like this, the web is an importantsource. However, I had a hard time finding the Piff site on the net. And when Ifinally found it, there was hardly any information." However, he was very upbeatabout the event. We have a film festival in Vienna. But Piff is a biggerfestival than the one in Vienna. And it is spread over different venues. So, ifyou miss a movie in one venue, you can always catch it in the next.Avinash Pawar, who has been visiting the festival since itsinception, says, "thought this year's was not big in terms of glamour there werehardly any star visitors it was certainly well-managed. We got the schedule wellin time and there were only few changes in the schedule."And therewere a number of Marathi films that caught the fancy of the delegates like ShahRukh from Iran. "This is the only time I can get to catch the local filmsbecause they are with subtitles. I saw quite a few Marathi films and they weremarvellous."