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Festivals like MIFF are bringing films that touch upon social concerns, says
Ervell E. Menezes
The Mumbai International Film Festival (MIFF) for Documentary, Short and Animation Films is on at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in South Mumbai. This two-yearly event has weaned an audience of its own, call it opinion-makers, anti-establishment voices or a different view but it surely needs to be heard in a society guided mainly by its marketing and corporate forces. In that light Stalin K’s India Untouched — Stories of People Apart is particularly significant as it travels through eight states and four religions to graphically show that 60 years after Independence we are still a deeply divided and hugely casteist nation. Untouchability is as large as life, at times even larger, and from elder to youngster it is starkly ingrained. The Hindu high-priest makes no bones about it and keeps reiterating how castes were made by god, with the brahmin being the head, the kshatriya the hands, the vaisya the stomach and the sudra the feet. He even wallows over the fact and the camera catches a plethora of anecdotes which would seem to be out of the dark ages but are in fact today’s reality instead of`A0 "India Shining"`A0and other related hype. Youngsters just follow blindly what they have been`A0handed down by generations. "It’s not for us to reason why," is their creed and no wonder they migrate to cities where their identity is hidden. How can this change? May be the child Dalit boy drinking water from a high caste well is a convenient metaphor but like`A0Henrik Ibsen it merely poses the problem. The solutions are for us to find and the best that can be done is raising awareness for the situation and for this very reason it is festivals like MIFF that are so important to blow in the winds of change. While casteism goes on without the blessings of the government, Adela Peeva’s Divorce Albanian Style is the example of the state exerting its authority on the basic human rights and highlights the case of three couples who had to be separated because their wives were non-Albanian. It was during the reign of Enver Hodja, the longest ruling dictator in Europe and prot`E9g`E9 of Soviet strongman Joseph Stalin. He lost favour under Nikita Kruschev, who exposed Stalin’s misdeeds and this resulted in Albania severing ties with the Eastern Bloc. But Hodja unleased a reign of terror by imprisoning non-Albanian partners in a marriage, accusing them of being spies and saboteurs. Volia who had a doctorate in biology is one of them and she loses her husband (who divorces and remarries) because of her being detained. Even her son is forced to disown her. Then there’s Minella and Elena who undergo decades of strife and separation. The mental trauma is graphically brought out by interviews which expose the inhumanness of the prosecutors who went through the motions only in order to curry favour with the authorities. There’s a prosecutor who was a carpenter and knew nothing of law, but it hardly mattered. What’s more he did not feel a twitch of conscience to impose punishments on the couples. It is a soul-searching account of the utter inhumanity shown to the people all in the name of Communism which sadly never received enough exposure because of the lack of communication in the 1960s and it is only films like this that bring us face to face with such atrocities. In 66 minutes director Adela Peeva virtually opens a cupboard of horrors which most of the world was quite oblivious about.
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