There were arrivals and departures, followed by sheer incompetence. It was frustration and pleasure in small yet brilliant doses! Standing in the queue from 9 a.m. onwards to see a film at noon made many of the estimated 7,000 delegates vent their annoyance and anger. A gentleman even ripped up a chair in one of the four INOX auditoriums and when caught red-handed, he raved and ranted about local residents unable to organise a film festival! It was a sad start to a prestigious 37-year-old event, which has so far been travelling around the country since 1952. It's true that most international film festivals are identified with a place (Cannes, Toronto, Berlin, Venice) but India's roaming fiesta is the only one of its kind.

The country's premiere cine extravaganza, the International Film Festival of India (IFFI), has been looking for a new home - a permanent venue - in recent years to put it on par with the other famous film festivals of the world. So has it come home to sunny, holiday destination Goa for good now? Nobody knows and nobody cares! At the inaugural function itself, actor, Salman Khan, refused to perform till the rough edges of the rigged up stage were rectified…so there they were painting the stage right before the 5,000 odd audience of VVIPs, VIPS, delegates and media from India and abroad. Everybody waited for as much as an hour for the show to start.

Marvelled Abhijit Chatterjee, a veteran film journalist from Kolkata, "Nowhere else in the world - perhaps not even in Kolkata - would the bold and beautiful put up with this kind of shoddy organisation…. Look at the line-up of chairs back to back. I can't even move my leg! By now at least a quarter of the audience should have walked out with good reason...." But Goa's glitterati wanted to see the stars.

The long drawn out inaugural show had Bipasha Basu twisting and turning, Esha Deol being driven up to the stage on a motorbike, Southern heart-throb Prabhu Deva cavorting like only he can and there were Priyanka Chopra, Riya Sen, Shreyas Talpade, Amrita Arora, Diya Mirza, Ritiesh Deshmukh, Bappi Lahiri, Manoj Tiwari (Bhojpuri film industry's superstar), Sachin and Supriya Pilgaonkar of Marathi cinema, Punjabi singer Harbhajan Mann…as many stayed as those who walked out before the show ended. Only to find that there was no public transport out on the Campal promenades because the road was closed for security reasons!

After the first three days, things settled down somewhat because the real stars at any film festival are the movies, particularly those from Cinema of the World (COW). Red carpets were rolled out with a floral décor of orchids and carnations at the Kala Academy and the three-year-old INOX complex, where the films were screened. But few walked down the carpet, barring some stars who came, attended press conferences, maybe caught a film or two and departed. However, movie watching queues grew longer day by day and house full boards made those left out return home or to their hotels dejected. It was a ratio of 2,200 seats for 7,000 viewers between five auditoriums (four at INOX and one at the Kala Academy) and bound to make way for frayed tempers and disasters. Panaji is clearly a wannabe Cannes when it comes to being a permanent home for IFFI.

As the word spread that there was nudity in plenty in the COW films, more delegates joined the queues to try their luck! In fact, only these movies and the retrospective of Australian film-maker Rolf de Heer's seven films saved the IFFI from being reduced to a cheap matinee for the crowds (each of whom paid Rs 200 for a delegate pass). Everybody wanted to see the films from Europe and Latin America for many of these offered nudity uncensored…a few timid Goan viewers cried, "It's pornography, such movies should not be shown!" Perhaps they were joking! For one thing which comes across loud and clear is that foreign cinema reflects the ease with which the West views, feels and expresses nudity.

The Entertainment Society of Goa which organised the festival jointly with the Directorate of Film Festivals (New Delhi), in its wisdom, had also lined up mega concerts, beach screenings of blockbusters, street-side funfairs. IFFI turned into a jamboree of a film festival with so much superfluous 'baggage' that ultimately it was the one which bore the brunt of outrage. Expressed in no uncertain terms by many serious cinema lovers who had come to see the world's best movies…and not just the splendid bosom of Spanish actor Penelope Cruz in the festival's inaugural film, Volver.

The festival concluded shortly and sweetly with the graceful and erudite actor-director Aparna Sen praising the varied cinema of India and congratulating the award-winning directors. Incidentally, the theme song written by Javed Akhtar is catchy and hummable....