IFFI venue was once dilapidated hospital

Not too long ago patients hobbled around here, plastered and in bandages, and sick children shed many a tear. Today the International Film Festival of India's (IFFI) dreams are being nurtured in the very same place. The 38th edition of IFFI, being held in Goa for the fourth successive year, got off to a colourful start Friday and its venue - on a riverside promenade on the western side of Goa's capital Panaji - was a hospital a few years ago.

The 'Old GMC (Goa Medical College) complex', as it is still referred to, was built on the main road along the Mandovi river in 1927.Today, the building has got a costly re-do. To restore two more old buildings -which also house the media centre - the Goa government spent an estimated Rs.140 million this year. Being restored just prior to this IFFI was a place now called the Maquinez Palace. This complex was built as a countryside resort by the Portuguese noble family of the Count of Maquinez, on the banks of the Mandovi river.

Entertainment Society of Goa's press spokesperson Ethel da Costa, told IANS that there was a total shortage of historical information about this place. The Maquinez Palace was spacious and had a chapel of its own, still visible and sitting incongruously alongside the film festival that celebrates beauty, sex, glamour and politics. Built in 1720, the chapel is devoted to Our Lady of Sorrows. The palace functioned till Pangim (as the city was then known) grew through the early 1800s. It was taken over by the Portuguese government to house the Escola Medico, one of the early medical schools in South Asia, in 1842.

Over time, this building came to be in a state of disrepair, and was 'devoid of any specific function', as the government itself concedes in an official press note. Currently, the 18th century palace has been restored with lightening, sanitary and drainage facilities, and even a shivery-cold air-conditioning system.