IFFI 2024, 15: Accreditation for media-persons, and what they should expect if and when it is granted

IFFI 2024, 15: Accreditation for media-persons, and what they should expect if and when it is granted

Setting-up and Opening MyIFFI (your account at the website), you can register on a form for getting accreditation as a media-person, to attend the International Film Festival of India, which is held regularly in Panaji, Goa (since 2004). If you fill the form correctly, meeting their expectations, some of which are very demanding, you will get a response that your application is registered. This does not grant you accreditation. If you fit their criteria, which they will take a week or two to assess, you could expect another email, saying that you have been accredited. Not every media-person is granted accreditation to IFFI. The categories of accreditation cover film journalists, employees of media organisations, freelancers, photographers, videographers, All India Radio, correspondents, private radio channel correspondents, Doordarshan correspondents, employees of TV channels, and social media-persons.

All are given cards that they have to hang on their necks, to access to their status/area of interest-related events. They are also given a brochure, and a shoulder bag, which has been a C class product in 2024 and earlier festivals too, liable to tear and break at the metal points. Besides getting access to their areas of operation, media-persons can avail of free tea and coffee, from a dispenser, and some biscuits, if they are lucky enough to reach the person operating the dispenser at the time(s) when he has stock of biscuits, which are kept in a small plastic box. Many medical practitioners advise their patients, and the general public, not to drink tea or coffee if they do not have something light go with it, like biscuits, to avoid acidity, but media-persons who are unlucky, get only the beverage, not the biscuits. It is a 'come at a time when the person manning the vending machine opens a packet(s) and queue-up to get first come first served service.'

But that isn’t a constant. You could be given sandwiches, pastry and other savouries, if a different government was in power when the festival under question is held in the coastal state of Goa, or at the Centre, in New Delhi. Not only that, you could be invited to free ferry cruises, cocktails and dinners, breakfast press meets and lunch get-togethers, if you were in luck. That luck has run out a few years ago. For the last few years, either none of what is listed above is happening, or media is being carefully kept away from such events, and media is expected to keep mum since it is given free accreditation, and normal delegates (not invitees), have to pay to register. So, stripping it down to a bare minimum, you could expect only tea, coffee and ‘lucky’ biscuits. The biscuits are of the cheapest variety available, and many do not like to eat them. Perhaps that is why they are chosen, to minimise the biscuits’ bill. That is how it was at IFFI 2024 too.

In return for these favours, the media is expected tom extoll the virtues of the 9-day fest, for, otherwise, they may be denied accreditation the following year. Even at rock bottom, there have to be four cocktail/dinner parties during IFFI: the opening night, usually thrown by the Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, one thrown by the Entertainment Society of Goa (ESG), one by the Press Information Bureau PIB), which is the nodal authorities in managing all media-related affairs of the Government in power), and the closing dinner, the sponsor of which may vary, and includes the Chief Minister of Goa. At best, the press is invited to the PIB gig only. At all other events, the Press, barring a few exalted, members, is boycotted. The Press is also invited to the inaugural and closing ceremonies, which may very well begin about one hour later than the scheduled time, and end several hours later. No arrangements are made to carry the press to these events, which are held up to 25 kms away. Goa is one of the most expensive states in the country, when it comes to transport. Public buses charge reasonable fare, but the auto-rickshaws (tuktuks) and taxies, private taxies, metered taxis and pilots, start their quotes from Rs. 500 to Rs. 1,000, for a one-way trip, and rarely budge from this figure.

A majority of journalists come to IFFI spending their own money. These are freelancers, with a passion for cinema, whom are not sponsored by the editorial departments of various publications, print or web. The travel and stay expenses for them add-up to a sizeable Rs. 30,000, which they cannot really afford. This, in effect, means that they are spending a small fortune to attend IFFI, though none of it goes into the IFFI coffers. The PIB is, and was always, well aware of this fact. Local delegates have their own transport, while invited guests have vehicles allotted to them. If a freelancer wants to attend any cocktail or dinner party, mainly for networking, he/she would have to spend about Rs. 2,000 each time, on transport alone. Liquor is cheap in Goa and a regular dinner costs about Rs. 130. Yet, if they inquire about invitations to parties and events, they are accused of being ‘freeloaders’, and ignored whenever an invitees’ list is prepared by the host. It is pertinent to note that the number of media-persons accredited at IFFI is in the early hundreds while the number of delegates registered is in the early thousands.

A working space, with a table and chair, computer, and printer/copier, and the complimentary tea/coffee, is all they are given by way of facilities. I would not be surprised if these too are withdrawn in the not too far future. Media have a crucial role to play in any society, and film-media must get centre-stage at IFFI. But it isn’t so any more. Keep dreaming, and remembering the times when senior media-persons were asked to conduct press conferences, and invited to all drinks, dinner and dancing parties that went on till late in the night, with the PIB and VIP guests mingling, and even dancing with media-persons. The media, nowadays, are expected to attend up to 10 press conferences in a day, and churn out stories by the dozen, based on PIB’s free-to-use press releases and photo-database, and their own inputs. Watching movies and not attending press conferences are frowned upon. At an international film Festival, they are kept at bay from festivities. This affects those journalists who are basically critics, and come to Panaji, the state capital of Goa, mainly, and, often, exclusively, to watch films. All the authorities do to make them feel important, is to allow them to book up to 4 tickets a day, while the non-mediapersons have their quota restricted to 3.

What any gracious and sensitive organiser would do would be that these media-persons should be given 50% concession in travel expenses (the Indian government owns most public transport), a 50% subsidy in room rent (the government has many guest houses and other accommodation where the journalists could stay). They would be invited to all parties, especially networking parties. Interviews should be arranged with the personalities the journalists want to meet, snacks should accompany the beverages in the Media Centre, to and fro transport should be provided free to the events, and not restricted to the three festival venues (INOX Panaji, INOX Porvorim and Kala Academy). All dinners are held 20-30 kms away from the main festival venue: INOX, Panaji. After all, we are a secular country and a welfare state. Discriminating against media does not behove the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, which is the apex body organising the festival.

Dig a little deeper, and you find that everything that is lacking is blamed on the budget allotted for the relevant festivals. Every year, this budget, or at least the media component of the budget, is cut. The logic behind such cuts is totally fallacious and perverse. On the one side are more films, more registrations year-on-year, and on the other, lesser and lesser facilities for the media, in each successive IFFI. IFFI is an annual, fixed event. Why should the budget be squeezed at all? Firstly, an allowance should be made for inflation, and the budget should then be further increased, to provide better amenities. Axing the privileges of the media should be last thing on the minds of the organisers, but they nevertheless, indulge in this exercise, with unflinching regularity.

Another area that should be looked into is the Film Bazaar, held at the J.W. Marriott hotel, which runs for four days, from the second day of the festival to the fifth. Media is allowed access to look round the stalls and booths, and sit in various lectures and panel discussions, though the Master Classes are held at Kala Academy, and seats have to be booked in advance, within the quota of the four tickets per day that the media is allotted. There is lunch and a networking cocktails session every day at the Bazaar, in the evening. The PRO of this event tries to let at least the senior-most and well-known media-persons gain entry into the lunch facility, but the carry bag and the cocktails networking is strictly a no-no for them.

Media is the fourth pillar of any democracy. India being the largest democracy in the world, the Ministry should grant the media its rightful place, with more and more amenities, and realise the worth they contribute by way of their writings, across all media. I had tried to go farther, by suggesting to them that veteran journalists, who have attended more than 40 IFFIs and are over 60 years of age, should be given a special status. Up to 5 such persons should be treated as invitees and given all attendant facilities, after careful vetting of their credentials. Some of them, if interested and capable, should be put in the Selection Jury, because they have invaluable knowledge about Indian and world cinema, something that most Selection Jury members lack, based on the public information available about their credentials. There should be different set of individuals chosen each year. The senior-most of them should be honoured for their contributions to IFFI, at the closing ceremony, based on their age and the number of IFFIs that they have attended.

The suggestion was welcomed, only to be shot down when I made attempts to follow it up. There was a film journalist called Brij Bhushan Chaturvedi, who had attended the first ever international film festival, held in 1952, as 16-year-old, and missed only one or two festivals since then, was nearing 90 when I proposed his name for the honour. After much dilly-dallying, the proposal was rejected. BBC, as he was known among friends, died two years later. Yet, according to my estimate, there are at least 5 more persons who will qualify when the above criteria are applied. Honouring such individuals would mean a lot to the media community, and would add to the prestige of the festival. I can see no reason for denying media this honour, except ingratitude and penny-pinching.

If the cost is a concern, then it is ill-founded. According to reliable sources. Festivals of the level of IFFI cost Rs. 100 crore to hold. Granting all the privileges listed above, in full, to the media, will cost the festival a mere 0.1% of the total budget of Rs. 100,00,000,00, a tiny sum, Rs. 10 lakh, i.e., Rs 10,00,000. Surely, the budget can include an amount that is 0.1% of the total cost. The goodwill it will earn more than justifies the add-on amount, in real terms. I don’t think the Ministry of I & B thinks along these lines, but I strongly feel it should. Having attended 46 of 55 IFFIs over a period of 58 years, since 1976, is no mean task that I have accomplished. But I do not claim to the first person eligible, based on the criteria I have suggested. But at 72 going on 73, I am in the top ten bracket. If media-persons are indeed granted these facilities, I shall patiently await my turn, based on the assessment, an exercise which the PIB can undertake, because it maintains registers of accredited journalists, year-on-year, for the favours that I have enumerated, by the ‘powers that might be’, may or may not agree to grant.