Thera kya hoga, Kim Ki Duk? You can't enter your favourite IFFK, because you can't speak English.



— N.S. Madhavan (@NSMlive) November 13, 2014

The International Film Festival of Kerala is one of the best curated cinematic events in the country. It’s also the most manic. Last year, the number of delegates surged to a nearly unmanageable 12,000. Apart from industry representatives, members of the state’s numerous film societies, and journalists, it is attended by students, professors, nuns, public-sector employees, visitors from neighbouring states, a man without feet who crawls in on his knees, and another with one leg missing.There is almost always at least one alcoholic, who totters into the darkened auditorium clutching his sling bag and the folds of his lungi, manages to find a seat, hurls a few endearments at the screen, and then goes to sleep.No other film festival has a more bewildering variety of fanatics, who take time off from work, travel from the interiors of the state, shack up in hotels and boarding houses, watch five films in a day, make time for a post-screening drink, and then show up at the first screening on time the next morning.The post-movie tipple might now be history, thanks to the Kerala government’s new-found zeal for prohibition. The giddy madness and infectious passion that characterise the IFFK may just follow suit. Eminent filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan, who heads a 12-member advisory committee overseeing this year’s edition, has declared that delegate passes will be given only to those who can speak English since foreign films come with English subtitles.There’s more. Delegates need to pass an examination of sorts to get a card. They must answer questions about their favourite three films and directors, and the number of times they have attended the festival in the past. First-timers will be actively discouraged, said Gopalakrishnan, who is, ironically, one of the driving forces behind the IFFK.The decorated director also headed a five-member committee that studied the problems plaguing the festival in recent editions and recommended several changes. Austerity has emerged as a big theme: there will be fewer films, delegates and venues, and less money spent on arguably yawn-inducing opening and closing ceremonies.The IFFK’s desire to restrict the festival to the so-called cineaste crowd, which allegedly comprises people from the film industry, the arts and the media, smacks of old-world elitism, but this being Kerala, there’s more than meets the eye. Earlier this year, the IFFK has lost its formidable artistic director, Bina Paul Venugopal, and several members of her team, who had run the festival for 12 years. Paul's team had been hired by the Chalachitra Academy, the branch of the state culture department that promotes film.With the blessings of veterans such as Gopalakrishnan and former National Film Archive of India chairperson PK Nair, this team put the festival on the map through bold and imaginative programming. By opening the IFFK to people who love films but are not directly affiliated with the movie business, the academy greatly boosted its popularity. But this also opened up the annual event to greater scrutiny.Malayalam filmmakers, for instance, have been complaining about being neglected in favour of foreign filmmakers. Allegations of favouritism in the selection of jury members and the award-winning films have also been a standard sidelight to the festival, as is the case anywhere in the world.When Venugopal left her post this year, the Chalachitra Academy was reconstituted. Gopalakrishnan’s measures seem to be a part of efforts by the new academy members to reclaim lost ground and put their stamp on the way things are to be run. But many questions remain unanswered. Who does a film festival belong to, especially one that is organised by a state government? If the previous Chalachitra Academy was accused of discriminating against a section of the Malayalam film industry, isn’t the current drive to weed out undesirables also another aspect of the same problem?Also, how does the emphasis on promoting domestically produced cinema at an international festival square with an insistence on speaking English? Malayalam filmmakers have complained to anyone with hearing abilities that their films are not programmed in the competitive sections at the IFFK, which is why they lose out on awards and recognition. But how many of these films travel outside Kerala to other festivals? How many of them award-worthy?The most important question for the new IFFK mandarins is the one contained in its expanded delegate registration form: “Why do you wish to become a delegate of the IFFK?”The IFFK has received its answers to this unwittingly profound question from the media and social networking sites. Writer NS Madhavan has been putting out a series of savagely funny tweets against Gopalakrishnan, including this one referencing a South Korean director.Kim Ki-Duk has a following in Kerala that perhaps surpasses his popularity in his own country. Books have been written in Malayalam about his taboo-busting and heavily sexual cinema. When he attended the festival in 2013, he nearly caused riots wherever he went, with adoring fans lining up to click photographs of and with him. One fan even offered him a ride on his motorcycle, which the filmmaker accepted. The exchange happened through sign language – proof if anybody needed it that cinema has no language boundaries whatsoever.