Gutsy reels, real voices

Independent documentaries are no longer the neglected poor country cousins of
mainstream cinema. Bold unique topics and a group of young filmmakers have
created a dynamic space for this genre, writes Saibal Chatterjee

BEING independent in a business that demands complete adherence to established practice can never be easy. Yet the tribe of intrepid Indian filmmakers who choose to exist outside the system and make documentaries about social and political issues of import has only swelled in both quantity and quality in the recent times. Needless to say, Indian cinema is much the richer for it.

In fact, Indian cinema wins more global accolades these days for the work of its independent documentary filmmakers than for the output of their better known, better publicised counterparts who operate within the mainstream fiction filmmaking space.

Filmmaker, curator and distributor of independent documentaries Gargi Sen says, "Both in terms of form and substance, today’s documentary makers are able to experiment far more than ever before. These are exciting times indeed. What is really heartening is the sharp increase in the number of women filmmakers in this space."

That explains why India is seeing a dramatic proliferation of festivals dedicated exclusively to documentary and short films. Open Frame, organised by the Public Service Broadcasting Trust, has become a regular fixture on New Delhi’s annual cultural calendar. Persistence Resistance, a festival of independent documentaries hosted by Magic Lantern Foundation in the national Capital, has also emerged as a major annual event.

And now apart from the Union Government-mandated biennial Mumbai International Film Festival (MIFF) of Documentary, Short & Animation Films, Kerala has its own event designed to celebrate the variety and power of independent documentaries. The International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala is in its second year and is already showing signs of vibrancy.

Sen, who attended the Second Kerala documentary festival that was held in Thiruvananthapuram from June 19 to 25, says "The queues that I see here for the screenings are absolutely amazing. In Delhi, too, the audience for documentary films is growing steadily." She should know. Sen is the brain behind the Persistence Resistance film festival and Under Construction, a label created for the dissemination of independent Indian documentary films.

"Films that exist outside the established distribution network are always bound to face some difficulties," she admits. But Sen is quick to add that the kind of films that she distributes have begun to "break away from the logic of temporality" that govern the world of regular fiction films. "Much older films like Anwar Jamal’s Call of the Bhagirathi, Madhusree Dutta’s I Live in Behramapada and Reena Mohan’s Kamlabai, made in the 1990s, are still in great demand," she says.

Filmmakers like Jamal and Dutta are still as active as ever, constantly pushing the boundaries of cinematic expression in their own individual ways. Mumbai-based Dutta has since made films like Sundari: An Actor Prepares, inspired by a play about a popular female impersonator on the early 20^th century Gujarati stage; Scribbles on Akka, a film on the life and work of 12^th century saint-poet Mahadevi Akka; Made in India, which is a study of the diverse visual cultures of contemporary India; and Seven Islands and a Metro, which delves into the various faces of Mumbai.

New Delhi-based Jamal recently wound up a film titled Anwar: Dream of a Dark Night, which explores the space between the creative dynamics of a docu-drama and the narrative conventions of fiction through the real-life story of a slumdweller who plans and constructs a small movie hall in his village on the India-Bangladesh border. Jamal follows his protagonist, who also happens to be his namesake, through his daily rag-picking routine in Delhi before joining him on his voyage back to his roots to rediscover himself.

"Straightforward documentaries do not interest me anymore," says the filmmaker, who is currently working on a powerful expose of the worsening agrarian crisis in the cotton belt of Punjab.

While the seasoned players in the independent documentary domain are still going strong, a new breed of young filmmakers has also emerged in the recent years to provide a fillip to the movement. One of the most notable talents among them is Supriyo Sen, whose new film, Wagah, earlier this year won the prestigious Berlin Today Award in the Talent Campus of the last Berlin Film Festival.

The 12-minute film focuses on the ritual closing that takes place every evening on the border gates between India and Pakistan and is watched by cheering spectators on both sides.

Sen’s remarkable film takes a well-documented border event and expands it into an examination of the complex ideas of nationality, identity and borders drawn by man. The renowned German filmmaker Wim Wenders, reading the citation for Wagah, described the film as "a convincing manifesto against any wall that divides people."

Those who have seen Sen’s two-part documentary, Way Back Home, which records a personal and intimate journey undertaken by his ageing parents back to their ancestral home in Barisal, Bangladesh, and Imaginary Homeland, can see in Wagah a clear reflection of his principal humanist concerns as a filmmaker.

Supriyo Sen and many other filmmakers of his ilk are worthy successors of men like Anand Patwardhan, whose powerful 1971 film, Waves of Revolution, which recorded the police repression of the total revolution movement in Bihar, and Prisoners of Conscience, which looked at the plight of political prisoners during the Emergency, laid the foundation of the independent documentary movement in India. The edifice that has come up is quite impressive and sturdy.

Patwardhan has since made no-holds-barred political documentaries that have exposed corruption, debunked the merchants of communal hate and questioned India’s nuclear programme. Many talented filmmakers like Rakesh Sharma have added their weight to the independent documentary movement with films that have laid bare the horrors of the Gujarat riots of 2002.

And it isn’t just political filmmaking that is gathering momentum in India despite the many obstacles that confront them. Many younger directors are increasingly experimenting with new forms and ideas.

At the International Film Festival of Rotterdam two years ago, documentary filmmaker Vipin Vijay’s experimental Video Game bagged the Tiger Award for the best short film.

In a celebrity-obsessed nation, the achievement may have gone largely unnoticed, but what the Rotterdam jury said of the film put things in perspective: "Video Game is yet another illustration that there’s more to the cinema of India than can be contained within the received wisdom which seeks to encompass it by reference to a dualism opposing Satyajit Ray to Bollywood`85"

The young Kerala filmmaker, a direction and screenplay-writing graduate of Kolkata’s Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute (SRFTI), is one of numerous Indian film school products who, free from the shackles of commerce, are pushing the cinematic envelope. The question is: do the men who control the industry’s purse strings possess the ability to detect the innate potential of these filmmakers?

The Rotterdam jury clearly did. They described Video Game as a "new kind of road movie" that "shows a relentless, complex post-modern intelligence as it processes everything within its view, within its memory, within its wide range of cultural references." In the context of the sort of cinema that the media usually propagates in this country, that citation could well be about a film from another planet.

Other student filmmakers have also made their mark in recent years. The only Indian film to make it to the ‘official selection’ of the Cannes Film Festival two years ago was Chinese Whispers, directed by SRFTI product Raka Dutta. Dutta’s film was in the Cinefondation section, set up in 1998 to facilitate a concerted search for fresh global filmmaking talent. The section presents a selection of 15 short and medium-length cinematic essays from film schools.

The Kolkata-based film institute, named after a master who still remains the benchmark against which all Indian filmmakers are assessed, was represented in Cannes in 2002 by Tridip Poddar’s In 2006, another SRFTI graduate, Anirban Dutta, was in Cannes with his diploma film, Tetris.

This year, a completely different bunch of young short-film makers were at the world’s premier film festival — alumni of Subhash Ghai’s Whistling Woods International film institute. Nine films made by students of the institute were showcased in the Cannes Short Film Corner.

Ghai, on his part, seemed as excited as the youngsters who had flown in to unveil their diploma films. "Today’s Indian filmmaker is far more confident and focussed than we were when we went to the Film & Television Institute of India," he told this correspondent. "He has far greater exposure to all kinds of cinema — so by the time he is out of the institute, he knows exactly what kind of cinema he will serve."

This clarity and the emergence of new formats of filmmaking have given independent documentaries a huge boost. As Gargi Sen, whose Under Construction has acquired numerous outstanding films for distribution, puts it, "the space for different forms of cinematic expression has grown dramatically in recent years."

As newer technologies emerge, a fresh approach to moviemaking also takes roots. Democratisation does have a flip side. Not every work that springs forth from this churning is of exceptional quality, but the intense activity that newer, cheaper modes of filmmaking generate throws up exciting prospects. Today, if you make a good enough film on your mobile, chances are you could end up going places with that little piece of work.

Earlier this year, Delhi hosted the second International Film Festival of Cell Phone Cinema and a global jury chose several films for cash awards. ‘Mobile’ filmmaking is fast developing into a legitimate cinematic pursuit. The first prize for video films made on mobiles went to a film that demonstrated what a human being can achieve with his or her hand. A film about rainwater harvesting bagged the second prize.

It’s all happening out there. The only thing that remains is mainstream distribution of independent documentaries a la Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 and Sicko. Madhusree Dutta’s Seven Islands and a Metro did get a multiplex release in Mumbai, the first for an Indian documentary, but that trend is yet to catch on.

Indian independent documentaries have conquered many frontiers over the years. There is no reason why you won’t crack the mainstream distribution code sooner rather than later.

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