MUMBAI FILM FESTIVAL (MAMI) COLLABORATES WITH TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (TIFF)

MUMBAI FILM FESTIVAL (MAMI) COLLABORATES WITH TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (TIFF)

Top Team from Toronto Conducts Series of Workshops with MAMI Team in Mumbai This Week

The 17th Mumbai Film Festival will be held from 29th October - 5th November 2015

Mumbai, February 26, 2015 -- It’s get-set-go for the recently appointed Mumbai Film Festival leadership team that is busy gearing up for the 17th Mumbai Film Festival scheduled to be held from 29th October - 5th November 2015.

The MAMI team is happy to announce a collaboration between the Mumbai Academy of Moving Image  (MAMI) and Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) that will include a series of workshops led by Cameron Bailey, Artistic Director, TIFF and Natalie Lue, Vice-President, Production and Visitor Experience, TIFF. They will visit Mumbai this week to share their experience, learnings and insights over the years from TIFF with the MAMI team. TIFF is recognised as one of the most successful Film Festivals around the world. Traditionally, many Best Picture Oscar winners come out of the Toronto Film Festival.

The workshops have been enabled by the generous support of the Canadian General Counsel of Mumbai.  Welcoming the TIFF team to Mumbai, Mr. Richard Bale, Consul General of Canada in Mumbai said, “TIFF is one of the world’s premier film events and the Consulate is very pleased to support the visit of its Artistic Director Cameron Bailey. We look forward to ongoing collaboration between TIFF and MAMI in the coming years. The Consulate’s support is part of our ongoing promotion of the Canada-India Audiovisual Coproduction Treaty, which came into force on July 1, 2014. The Treaty facilitates and provides incentives to Canadian and Indian producers and filmmakers to combine their creative, technical and financial resources to create joint work.”

Cameron Bailey, Artistic Director of the Toronto International Film Festival, said: "Mumbai is one of the world's great film cities and deserves a great film festival. I was impressed by how the city's film community rallied to support MAMI last year.    The Toronto International Film Festival is glad to help our colleagues in Mumbai build a strong, sustainable celebration of cinema”.

Kiran Rao, Chairperson, MAMI, said: “The Toronto International Film Festival is one of the leading festivals of the world, and we're really excited to have the Artistic Director Mr Cameron Bailey here in Mumbai to do a workshop with us as we create a new blueprint for the Mumbai Film Festival. My film "Dhobi Ghat" premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, and as a filmmaker I couldn't have asked for a better platform as it is truly one of the most well attended, audience-friendly festivals in the world. We are really grateful that he is taking the time out to do this with us and we look forward to gaining many insights from his experience.”

The recently appointed MAMI team members who will put together their expertise and experience to bring Mumbai and India a bigger, better and even more exciting 17th edition of the Mumbai Film Festival that include Chairperson, Kiran Rao and Festival Director, Anupama Chopra. The members of the new Board of Trustees are Filmmakers Anurag Kashyap, Farhan Akhtar, Karan Johar, Vikramaditya Motwane, Actor Riteish Deshmukh, Actress Deepika Padukone, Mr. Anand Mahindra, Chairman & MD, Mahindra Group, Mr. Ajay Bijli, Chairman and MD, PVR Pvt. and Mr. Siddharth Roy Kapur, MD, Disney. 

ABOUT MAMI

Mumbai - the financial capital of India is also the epicentre of the Indian film industry. The city plays such a major role in production and dissemination of Indian films and television programmes that it is widely known by its acronym 'Bollywood'.  In 1997, a group of film industry stalwarts headed by late Hrishikesh Mukherjee founded the Mumbai Academy of Moving Image (MAMI) as a not-for-profit Trust. Their main objective was to organise an annual International Film Festival which the film industry and the country could be proud of.  MAMI has been organising the festival for the last 17 years and aims to foster a climate of good cinema. MAMI engages people from all walks of life across the city and country who enjoy and love good cinema. It is Mumbai’s only film festival that is entirely created and run by film professionals and a group of members from corporate India. Appreciation of good cinema, stripped off all the limiting labels of art and commercial, can only come about through exposure to the best of films the world has to offer. The Festival is the first step in that direction. 

In their Mission Statement in 1997, the MAMI Board of Trustees, "We feel it is the need of the hour to disseminate and inculcate good cinema among Indian audiences. The only way to achieve this is to celebrate cinema by hosting an International Film Festival in Mumbai (birth place of Indian Cinema), India 's film and entertainment capital. MAMI (Mumbai Academy of Moving Image) is committed to start Mumbai's first independent international film festival organized by practicing film makers." 

For more information on MAMI and the upcoming 17th Mumbai Film Festival scheduled to be held from 29th October- 5th November 2015, visit the website: