Last picture show as Bite the Mango festival loses its flavour

Bradford's Bite the Mango, it seems, couldn't fight hard enough.

The film festival, based at the National Media Museum since 1995, has been canned. Started as a celebration of black and Asian cinema, Bite the Mango quickly found itself centred on Bollywood. Since 2006, that emphasis has shifted towards world cinema and the audiences stayed away in droves.

The writing was on the wall last year when, over a weekend in September, only 407 came through the doors to watch 26 screenings – an average attendance of 16. While that size of audience might seem like bliss to some, it was a nightmare for hosts National Media Museum which announced on Friday that Bradford had bitten its last Mango.

Kathryn Blacker, head of public programmes at the Bradford venue, said: "Regrettably, we have taken the decision to suspend all Bite the Mango activity. Despite the best efforts of our film programmers, the activity struggled to attract an audience."

The museum – before Friday – played host to three film festivals annually – the Bradford International Film Festival, the Bradford Animation Festival and Bite the Mango. Screen Yorkshire has historically provided funding of up to 15,000 for each of the events, but had warned that,

with public purse strings tightening, the money might be harder to come by.

Blacker says: "We all know how much pressure there is on public funding, rather than risk two of the festivals which have good audience attendances (BIFF and BAF), we decided not to apply for funding for Bite the Mango and have brought the festival to a close."

In recent years, attendances have dwindled at Bite the Mango, but took a sharp fall when the festival switched its emphasis. In 2005, the last time Bollywood cinema was at its heart, attendance at the five-day event was 3,200. In 2006, the focus shifted and by 2008 it had fallen to 1,640.

To address the falling audiences the museum had a re-think and last year decided to no longer run it from Tuesday to Saturday, as it had since 1995. Instead it was concentrated on a single weekend with a monthly Bite the Mango film strand through the year.

The re-focus had little impact.

Blacker stops short of admitting that rejigging the programming from a one-off five day event to a single weekend and a number of monthly screenings was a failed experiment, but does say that something had to be done about the falling attendances.

Blacker says: "If we weren't committed to the festival, we would have stopped it last year. We felt it was an important part of our programme. Unfortunately, the audiences haven't come and we had to make a decision about how to address that."

The decision may cause some consternation. Although a nationally funded museum with a national remit, the venue sits at the heart of Bradford, one of the country's most culturally diverse cities.

Irfan Ajeeb, the son of the first Asian Lord Mayor of Bradford and the man who ran Bite the Mango from 1997 to 2005, was dismayed at the decision.

He argues that, in a city as diverse as Bradford, the museum has a responsibility to all its audiences.

"It is deeply disappointing that, at the heart of such a multi-cultural city the museum has decided to completely axe this strand of its programming," he says. "Had I known that this was the future of Bite the Mango, I would have never left it.

"It was such a politically important part of the museum, I am staggered at the decision to simply remove it from the programme."

Even the management admit that, with Ajeeb in charge, there was someone on board the Bite the Mango festival that was able to find and attract Bollywood stars – A-listers who attended the festival included Om Puri, East is East star Jimi Mistry, and Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan.

Once he left, the museum struggled to find the similar level of star – and the funding to bring them to Bradford – and the focus shifted away from black and Asian cinema to "world cinema".

Ajeeb argues the writing was on the wall then.

"For eight years, we proved the audience was there for the kind of cinema Bite the Mango brought to Bradford. When it stopped focusing on that, the festival was never going to last."

Blacker insists that, despite the loss of Bite the Mango, the National Media Museum continues to carry out work to get to "hard to reach communities" and world cinema will continue to feature.

It's just that there will be no more biting the Mango.