Indulekha Aravind reports on a film festival which has no jury, no award and no selection criteria.
The jury may still be out on how “successful” it has been, but even in its eighth edition, the Bring Your Own Film Festival, or BYOFF, promises to live up to its original premise — a film festival on the beach without juries, awards or selection criteria.
It all began in 2004 with a group of filmmakers deciding to create a space unlike others on the festival circuit, one which would let anyone screen one’s films. They just had to turn up with it. A beach in Puri was to be the venue. “That first year, we emailed people and thought a few would land up. Except that the few turned out to be 300, the single screen became three and we had to stretch the festival from one day to five,” says Gurpal Singh, a documentary filmmaker and one of the organisers, a term he accepts reluctantly, in keeping with the no-hierarchy spirit of BYOFF. Seeing this response, it would have been natural to scale up and plan a bigger successive edition. But then, this is not your usual festival. “The next year, we consciously didn’t publicise it. We just weren’t prepared to handle something on a large scale. And we reduced it to one screen,” says Singh.
The latest edition, set to begin as usual on February 21 and go on for five days, is likely to see 300 to 350 people land up on the beach in front of Pink House, Puri. “We are expecting 70 to 90 films. These films could be two-minute documentaries or two-hour feature films, and we have back-up arrangements for simultaneous screenings in case there are spillovers,” says Bhubaneswar-based filmmaker Susant Misra, associated with the festival since its inception, echoing a protective sentiment others seem to share. “We want to keep it like it is — very informal and chilled out, with people turning up in shorts and chappals,” adds Singh. Since the festival is not a large affair conducted in theatres, films not cleared by the Censor Board are also screened.
The format is pretty much what it was eight years ago, except for minor changes. You arrive with your film, register and then roll up your sleeves and get to work because at BYOFF, everyone who attends is also a volunteer, expected to help in whatever way one can. Bhubaneswar-based film society Inscreen pitches in with the organising. The registration fee (Rs 1,000 ) entitles you to dinner on all five days, though travel and accommodation will be from your own pocket, with volunteers ready to help with suggestions. And instead of a celebrity declaring the festival open, BYOFF’s inauguration, like everything else about it, is impromptu—one year the honours were done by a woman selling bananas on the beach, another year by a lifeguard and a third, by the five-year-old daughter of a Spanish couple on vacation in Puri.
The festival is open to other kinds of performance as well, by singers and dancers, and exhibitions by photographers and artists. “There was a baul who sang the first year. And nobody minded when I decided to join him,” says Mumbai-based cinematographer Viraj Singh who has attended BYOFF twice and plans to go this year too with a music video he’s just wrapping up. Films, which arrive from all parts of the country and some from abroad, are mostly in the DVD format and screenings now happen on the beach in the evening and continue through the night, instead of in tents during the day, which tended to get stuffy.
The kind of festival that it is, BYOFF does not attract many sponsors. “There’s a registration fee and screening fee, depending on the length of the film. But most of the contributions come from like-minded people. It’s a festival without a budget actually... but it still happens,” says Kapilas Bhuyan, a journalist, filmmaker, and member of Inscreen. Singh adds that they are open to sponsorship but not if it comes with any kind of rider.
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What sets BYOFF apart from other festivals is its democratic platform, but that itself has attracted criticism. “The concept is brilliant and I made a lot of friends at BYOFF, but the kind of films I saw weren’t that great... they seemed amateurish. It was a pity to travel so far and not end up watching good cinema. A first-time filmmaker could learn more at the Goa film festival,” says Amit Tiwari, an engineer based in Mumbai, who had gone to Puri in 2005 and 2009. Tiwari had taken a year’s sabbatical to study filmmaking and chose BYOFF to screen his first film, Wandering Souls, which by his own admission was quite bad.
Others disagree. “The quality of the films fluctuates, because that’s the whole point. BYOFF cracks open the film industry’s elitist lockdown, making it possible for first-time film-makers to know where they stand. Invariably, gems are also screened,” says independent filmmaker Qaushiq Mukherjee, better known as Q, currently at the Berlin film festival where his film Gandu is being screened in the panorama section. From Berlin, Q and his film are heading straight to BYOFF.
For now, the format stays true to its spirit, though there is talk of taking the festival to Jaipur and Puducherry. And whatever the criticisms, Q’s description of BYOFF is beguiling. “The festival format is democratic in a bizarre and beautiful way, much like the space where the festival takes place… The open air of the beach, the sound of the sea, with the aid of your favourite intoxicant, makes it impossible to not love the vibe.”
