A Festival

Recently I was sent a link by Withoutabox, the online film festival submission service.

I’d used it to enter my documentary ‘the Karims: A Sporting Dynasty’ in a festival, so I was already linked to website. What caught my eye was that this festival was in New Delhi, the first ever sports film festival in India. Purely on an impulse, I called up the contact given on Withoutabox. He said send the documentary, I had a DVD lying around so I sent it off.

About ten days back a reply came- the documentary has been selected for the festival. My first thought was- so what! See I’m a die hard ‘small’ movie person who awaits to be ‘discovered’ by a prestigious European Film Festival, not this small thing in Delhi.

Anyway I informed Aasif Karim about the festival, and he immediately offered to come for the festival. I advised him against it assuming it was a small festival. I wrote to the festival organiser, who turned out to be a ‘fan’ of Aasif’s, having seen him bowl in the Cricket World Cup of 2003, in Durban- the world record performance. So the festival got excited about having Aasif present, and my advice to Aasif was gladly by -passed.

Slowly, events started unfolding- Aasif Karim’s personal presence made it a ‘big’ festival- which other festival could boast of that- a sportsman coming to show his own documentary. Lets see how the festival shapes up but its already a ‘big’ film festival, media coverage guaranteed.

What was it- the documentary’s destiny? Mutual needs of the sports person and the festival? or simply my old fashioned thinking that needed to be dropped?

Maybe a combination of all of this.