MAMI's MFF: The 25 obstacles you have to cross before you DO NOT get a Press badge
To get a Press badge from the Mumbai Film Festival, an offer they make on their website and not something the press demands or coerces them to do, is a multiple stage process. And this happens only at MFF. Here are the 25 stages I had to go through, from 10 October 2024 to 6.32 October 2024, and I still do not have a Badge. This is how it begins 1. You either read about Registrations being open or get an email to that effect.
2. You click on three different pages for registrations as a Press Person. Why three pages? God knows.
3. You get a Google Form that indicates specifications of its demands. These include a picture of specified pixel and dpi size, links to previous articles in pdf format only, your facebook, X, YouTube and Instagram credentials, etc.
4. Once you submit this form, you get a message on the screen that you will be informed on your registered email address about further developments. You do not get to retain a copy of what you have submitted, so there is no proof that you did, and no proof about the date and time when you did.
5. Then, you may or may not get an email saying that your Application has been successfully registered.
6. You may or may not get a message from BookMyShow that you can collect your Badge from the venues, 15 October onwards. (I had crossed all of the above mountains).
7. When you go to the venue, between 10 am and 5 pm, strictly, which is even less than local government and banking hours, you travel to the venue and queue up.
8. When your turn comes, the BookMyShow Supervisor on duty may or may not tell you that your Application has been approved and your Badge is ready. (In my case she said neither was my Badge ready nor did my name figure in any of the lists she had, either under my first name, my surname, my email id or the name of the publication I was going to write for).
I took a printout at 1.03 pm, on 17th October, and carried the document to PVR INOX. As it turned out, the document I was carrying was worth Zilch. Zero. Nothing. Trash.
9. You apply a second time, going through the grind. This time there is a Booking Id on the return email, with a QR Code. Bingo. You think the worst is over.
10. You go to the venue again, on the 19th, queue up, and when your turn comes, your printout of the Booking Id and QR, plus your Aadhaar Card are passed from booking clerk to booking clerk. Finally, the same Supervisor lady, who had attended to me on the 15th, comes and tells you that your Application has not been approved.
11. She also adds that in such cases, MAMI sends out emails saying that the Accreditation has been denied, but she has no idea why it was not sent to me.
12. I tell her that the Booking Id and QR Code have been generated by BookMyShow, so it is now responsible to give me my Badge. She shrugs her shoulders and says that after all these proceedings, there is still another email that confirms your Approval, or informs you about denial of approval, which is missing in my case.
13. You ask her whether any MAMI official is present, to whom this issue can be addressed. She says they are there at the entrance, near the stairs.
14. You go there and ask around. One young man, in his early 20s tries, to be very helpful, and says that there are several others who have come to him with the same problem, but he is a junior volunteer, and his boss, a lady, a MAMI senior official, who could address this issue has gone for lunch.
15. You wait for a few minutes and then ask him