The awards system in India started around 65 years ago obviously copied from the US but without realizing it was genuine there and award winners got more work and could ask for a bigger pay cheque because awards carried some value. In India awards meant nothing as the industy knew the opinions of the award givers did not matter and to get awards you had to have good relations with the award givers or be in that circle. The start of the decade saw a change as satellite television came and awards went commercial where the presence of stars was a must for television so it meant giving everyone an award who comes. Some actors are not interested in awards so they get the money to perform and have a presence there which is good enough for the organizers and for the actor as its good money. The good thing now is most actors who have value actually say its all fake unlike earlier it was pretended its actually genuine with the media while the industry knew the truth.

That is the awards and just when its out in the open how the awards work another circus has come up with MAMI - Mumbai Film Festival with the things going on here make awards look genuine. Film festivals happen across the world and the object of them is to show films which struggle to find buyers in the main markets of the country but this one seems to be doing nothing like that as when our local films struggle to find buyers the ones shown in the festival have no chance.

There has been the Mumbai International Film Festival happening for many years but that was conducted like a festival so this circus type festival may be different. Obviously it seems for the digital world as its from videos featuring stars you notice it is happening. The organizers seemed to have found sponsors but have been probably been told by the sponsors that stars are a must as only then it finds eyeballs which lead to awareness of the brand of the sponsors. Just like awards need stars to command a price on television. 

When its awards time you have a Bajirao Mastani taking awards despite a film like Bajrangi Bhaijaan being there and here they are celebrating a 24 year old film Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander and calling it a classic which is still loved when its far from the truth. One of the presenters even said the film had everything but its sad very few either saw it then or see it that way now, it was even said the film has emotions but every film has emotions but the ones which live have characters that are relatable allowing the emotions to connect but there was no such thing in this film. The film fared poorly when released in 1992 though a tax exemption in Maharashtra after its initial run helped it to respectable business in Mumbai city which hardly matters in the larger picture. The less said about other areas the better as exhibhitors saw crowds walking out across the Hindi belt leaving Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander out of cinemas faster than it came. Bad content will remain bad content and a handful of people can never change that. The film is a disaster on satellite meaning again no one watching but a few so called critics having their usual orgasms on bad content.

The box office fate in 1992 is probably not important as these presenters were talking how its lived on today but its had a some showings on television and it ratings are worse than its box office fate so the simple fact is its not lived on. The team of the film comes to the festival and while some of them will know these presenters are talking rubbish but play along, others will not know much and believe the film is still a craze. Its just all about twisting the truth which is basically what the awards do and presenting opinions of people who have probably have no knowledge whatsoever about Hindi cinema as facts. These people probably are similar to the group which said Sholay is bad, in twenty five years time a similar group may claim that Broken Horses and Bombay Velvet are classics. 

The present poor state of the industry which the world knows about is a lot to with believing opinions that don't matter, rather than facts. A large section of the industry does not go by facts as if you do you can't go wrong this much. In this case at a festival you have an audience and youngsters who possibly want to work in films so the least you can do is give correct information to help them learn. There was another section when a senior actress was pointing out that how the audiences related with older films which is possibly true but then she named some new films that are relatable to the audience today and then it became a joke which is not funny. From this you get the gist of this festival, at awards they fake the winners, here they fake the truth.

The festival was held pre Diwali so if its same time next year it will be interesting to see what level of fakeness is reached next year.