MAMI’s Mumbai Film Festival treats media like dirt, and then denies accreditation

ScreenShots from the MAMI website and information about the (now deleted) Registration Google Form, for PRESS Accreditation at the Mumbai Film Festival, October 19-24.

All clicked around 12.45 pm-1.45 pm, on 20 October 2024.

You have to go through more than a dozen stages before your application is even accepted by the Festival authorities. Getting Accreditation is another story altogether.

Read on.

Please ignore the empty faces, which are the result of different formats pasted on a Word page

Press Quota must have been exhausted by now, but after this screen, you were led to a Google form. But they do have my profile on a page entitled MyMAMI, and here it is. It shows that I have been attending MAMI over the years, and that my credentials are therefore stored, to make it easier to fil the form.

6. Next page

7. Since I do not want to Change my Password, I click on the Personal Profile, and this is what I see.
8. A.

8.B.

In the Google form, they ask you your address, your Editor’s name, your publishing platform. How long have you been a film journalist 0-1 years/1-5 years/5-10 years. Incidentally, there is no option of 55 years, which is where I come from.

They also ask you your facebook, X, Instagram and YouTube credentials, your email address, phone number, and three clippings of your writings on cinema in pdf form (many senior journalists, and few junior ones too, do not save their writings in the pdf format, so they have to find their writings on the web and save them as pdf or scan them in pdf format.

The photograph they want is of particular specifications, strictly, in terms of pixels and dpi. It takes ages to upload.

After all this is accepted and submitted, you will get a confirmation of Registration. But you could also get a mail immediately afterwards, saying that your Application has been rejected because it was “incorrect”. It is not mentioned what was incorrect about it and how could that be rectified. And, in any case, what is the next step? Upload the form again?

Taking the best bet, you upload the form again. This time you get a reply that has a Booking Id and a QR Code and are told to collect your Badge during working hours (10 am to 5 pm), from the venue (and it matters least how far you have to travel to reach the venue). You go there, queue up, and when your number comes, you are told that your Application has been rejected. The Booking Id and QR Code add up to nothing. There should be another email, after that, to confirm your accreditation, or deny it. But if you have received neither, there is nothing the BookMyShow staff, which handles registrations at the venue, can do about it.

Undaunted, you go home, and try and attempt a third time. Now, Registrations under the Press category are closed.

A current ‘fiction’

“AND THE AWARD FOR

THE CENTURY’S MOST CALLOUS, CARELESS, MEDIA-UNFRIENDLY, MEDIA HATING, MEDIA BAITING, MEDIA HUMILIATING, COMPULSIVELY LYING, STALLING, HOODWINKING AND THROWING DUST INTO THE EYES OF THE MEDIA’

FILM FESTIVAL,

THE FIRST OF ITS KIND,

GOES TO

            MAMI’S MUMBAI FILM FESTIVAL, 2024

(Cheers….oops, loud BOOS)

Will Mr. Shivendra Singh Dungarpur (Director), Ms. Aditi (Creative Director), Mr. Prathamesh Kulkarni, (Account Director, PR Pundit Havas Red), Mr. Shams (designation unknown) and the un-identified Press team press@mumbaifilmfest.com, all rise to accept their coveted reward, which is in the shape of a GRANITE COFFIN , and carry it to its resting place.”

“Sorry, word has just come in that the team has asked for three COFFINS, but being ‘busy’ with being committed to making continuing grave errors at the two venues of the festivals and the registered office, and therefore, unable to lift a finger, let alone granite COFFINs, they have requested that these be carried over and placed at the following three locations:

1.      Mumbai Academy of Moving Image (MAMI) (their office)

404, VIP Plaza

Veera Industrial Estate, Off Link Road

Andheri West, Mumbai

Maharashtra – 400053

2.      Regal Cinema, Colaba (a festival venue)

3.      PVR-INOX Juhu (the other festival venue)

Their request is under consideration.”