NT Network
Cutting the final word to a suggestion from certain quarters of national media that the venue of the International Film Festival of India should be shifted to Mumbai so as to attract maximum Bollywood personalities for the mega film event, well-known producer and filmmaker, Vidhu Vinod Chopra advised organisers of raising the level of IFFI to such a height that the filmmakers like Yash Chopra, who are sceptical about attend this event, would be forced to leave their Juhu residences and rush to Goa.
"We should take IFFI to a point where the world can look at us, and we must not be so mediocre as to think about shifting the IFFI venue for achieving larger glamour quotient," he observed, taking strong objection for any kind of comparison between IFFI and the Cannes Film Festival. "The Cannes Film Festival is a racket, and many of the third class and rotten Hollywood films are premiered at this festival so that stars of such films may walk on the Red Carpet during the fest," he observed.
Vidhu Vinod, who attended the final press conference of the festival along with the IFFI director, Shankar Mohan and the chairman of the IFFI steering committee, Mike Pandey, said that the only reason why Bollywood celebrities attend Filmfare Awards function and stay away from IFFI is money. "They get paid for attending the various awards ceremonies. Furthermore, such events help them increase their networking," the producer of films like 3 Idiots and the Munnabhai… series said, adding that the film awards functions should not be compared to film festivals, which is a serious, yet wonderful event. "You pay lot of money to Bollywood stars and they will attend the IFFI; and why IFFI, they will be more than willing to come to your wedding and dance," he retorted.
The temperamental filmmaker also said that the International Film Festival of India was trotting along, but needed to gallop ahead, and hoped that in a few years the mega film event would be one of the best film festivals in the world.
Speaking further, Vidhu Vinod said that he is all set to release 900 prints of 3 Idiots in Cantonese, in Mainland China; the film being the first Hindi film to be presented in China on such a large scale. "The film has already crossed few million dollar business in Hong Kong, and is equally successful in Taiwan," he revealed, pointing out that the blockbuster having Aamir Khan in the lead is being made into a musical play in Taiwan, and is being remade in Italy, and Hollywood. "The human emotions are real emotions and even a silent film like ‘The Artist’ being screened at the International Film Festival of India, successfully captures the imagination of viewers due to its universal appeal," the popular Bollywood filmmaker maintained.
"I am presently producing a film called Feraari Ki Sawari or Ride in Ferrari, which is an emotional story of a father and son; a father who wants to send his son to Lords to play cricket, come what may, beg, borrow or steal for the purpose," Vidhu Vinod informed. "All my films were original works, except Parineeta, which was based on Sarat Chandra Chatterjee’s novel, and then 3 Idiots," he noted, without mentioning the name of Chetan Bhagat on whose novel ‘Five Point Someone’, the movie 3 Idiots is based.
Turning hostile towards Chetan Bhagat, who had accused Vidhu Vinod of lifting the story of 3 Idiots without giving him due credit, the filmmaker said that 3 Idiots was only inspired by ‘Five Point Someone’, and he further thanked God for it, opining that the book was very mediocre in terms of its content. "But the gentlemen used marketing techniques he had learned at the Indian Institute of Management and tried to garner cheap publicity by stating that his name was not included in the credit titles of the film," he lashed out.
Reacting to the inclusion of 6-month-old films in the Indian Panorama Section of the IFFI, Vidhu Vinod said that he used to make the same complaint while studying at the Film and Television Institute of India. "However, I was told that these films are for foreign delegates, who attend the IFFI, and had no access to such films, which was quite convincing," he concluded.
