MUMBAI, Jan 19: After delays due to paucity of funds and a clash of schedules, the 8th Mumbai Academy of Moving Images (MAMI) festival will finally be held in March. The fest will showcase retrospectives on Italian director Roberto Rosellini and theatre-film legend Prithviraj Kapoor, whose birth centenaries fall this year.

Stating that the March date sought to avoid an overlap with the Pune Film festival, Govind Swarup, the chief coordinator of the festival, said, “Homage will be paid to Prithviraj Kapoor with a retrospective of his films like Sikander, Kal Aaj Aur Kal and Vidyapathi. However, his Mughal-i-Azam has not been included.

Some of Rosellini’s films likely to be screened are Rome, Open City, Stromboli, Paisan, India and Cartesius.

Known to have had a personal Indian connection, Rosellini had come to India to shoot a TV documentary in 1957 when he met scriptwriter Sonali Das Gupta — his future wife whom he married after separating from his actress wife, Ingrid Bergman.

On paucity of funds, filmmaker Shyam Benegal said, “The state contributes in a small way towards the festival and independent festivals like ours can’t run on small money.”

Speaking about Rosellini and Kapoor, Benegal said while the former was a pioneer in neo-realistic cinema after the Second World War, Kapoor was pioneer of Hindi theatre.—By arrangement with The Times of India