Sunday, April 21, 2002		Article

Dedicated to documentaries
Ervell E. Menezes

"NO, you don’t need a script, your subject has to dictate to you ... you don’t pre-determine reality." The speaker is 47-year-old Canadian documentary filmmaker Peter Wintonick and he was talking about his genre of films. Who should know better?

"Facts are important but it is the creative interpretation of facts that makes the film interesting...it is creative consciousness and this should be given a chance," goes on the chubby, burly filmmaker who has been associated with the Mumbai (then Bombay) documentary film festival since 1994 when his film Manufacturing Consent about political analyst Noam Chomsky really made waves and, very likely, introduced Chomsky to India.

"Journalism works against the film...everything becomes reportage," he adds immersed in a subject that has become second nature to him — even his life blood. He runs a four-person company called "Necessary Illusions" and he globe-trots for, after all, isn"all the world’s a stage?"

Speaking about Noam Chomsky, Peter says after September 11, his film Manufacturing Consent is in much greater demand. "There’s a guy who’s bought 150 cassettes of the film to give to his friends and wants to make a DVD. The sad thing is that it is still relevant," he quips obviously implying that things should have changed. One realises that is why the documentary must work as an instrument of change.

Wintonick was in Mumbai with Frank Cole’s Life Without Death, an intense, personal account of a filmmaker crossing the Sahara. Though it was made by his company "Necessary Illusions," he did not like it too much. "Extreme art is not an extreme sport," he says about Cole’s film. "One can have a passion for cinema but it shouldn’t degenerate into madness," he says and explains how Cole wanted to make another film on the subject but was waylaid and murdered in the process. "He had a deathwish and he got it...no I’ve got a lifewish," he emphasises.

Ask Wintonick about his company and he tells you it’s four-strong. With him is Francis Misquit and Katerina Cizek, both co-directors and Anna-Lee Wineberg, a researcher. Actually, he and Katerina Cizek have directed Seeing is Believing which explores the political and social uses of handicams or a portable movie camera used for documenting police brutality or exposing scandals. He has interviewed the Japanese inventor and has shot 120 hours of footage. Then he has 120 hours of research footage. Now he plans to edit 240 hours into one single hour. "I believe that films can be either very long like Anand Patwardhan’s War and Peace and my Manufacturing Consent or else just 55 minutes long. I believe in the Bunuclian theory. Sadly, folks get so involved in the subject that they try to use more footage than is really required. They must learn to just discard footage," he goes on expertly. Wintonick speaks of the handicam in glowing terms. "It is the 21st Century tool, analogous to the spinning wheel," he says and cites examples of 3000 people gathering in a Square in an Asian country— all by cell-phone messaging. "One must put modern technology to good use," he says talking about the cell-phone as an instrument of proper non-violent democratic change.

While in Mumbai, Wintonick shot at Mani Bhavan. It is part of a film he is making, called Utopia which deals with seven kinds of utopia. "There are small scale economic problems," he says. One is about co-oops in Spain, then there is the digitopia in Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India. There’s another in the Australian desert where old women perform some acrylic paintings. Then there’s something spiritual and historical in Southern France connected with the painter Vincent Van Gogh. "Why should documentaries always highlight problems?...there should also be happy films, films which bring out joy and hope," he says, probably a wee bit tired of issue-based films.

From his Colaba hotel, near Regai, one can see the skyline taking in the Bombay Stock Exchange. It is evening and Wintonick has had a long day, even though it is a Sunday. He stretches his arms tiredly. You ask him as to how long is his average day and he smiles benignly. "I feel sorry for my wife and daughter, I spend very little time with them," he confesses. Not lacking in humour, Wintonick says his wife has given him a book to read about workaholicism but he just hasn’t found the time to read it.

He says he would like to defend the Films Division, despite the adverse publicity it has rightfully earned. He sincerely feels that privatisation is not a way out.

Wintonick cites the examples of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and the National Film Board of Canada (NFBC) and explains now there were moves to take them over. Then, he explains how to get the approval for a film one had to go through seven different departments for funding. "It was like the different levels of Dante’s hell," he goes on. But the right-wing political parties trying to move in was no better, he says. "Accountants would be making decisions on aesthetics of a film, how are they qualified to do so? If the profit motive is the only consideration then that’s bad," he emphasises.

The way out is the injection of new blood in the same format and a fusion of the public and private sector format. The NFBC, like the Films Division, had been lulled into making a certain brand of films that the public were tired of. "Now we have a younger group of professionals and they are changing the format." And they are commissioning films by outside filmmakers. "They make a pitch for a project," he says and if it seems good and that is purely on a professional basis it is okayed. No, privatisation is not a way out," he reiterates.

May be we can learn from the experience of others and few can doubt Wintonick’s dedication to the cause of the documentary.