Small frames big issues

During the recently held Mumbai International Film Festival of India, the focus was on documentaries, writes Ervell E. Menezes

international competition indian competition

THE documentary film is a great way to bring to light some amazing happenings. It digs deep to unravel little-known facts that do not find their way into newspapers or TV for a variety of reasons. Whether it is a tough woman fighting the plight of her ilk in Uttar Pradesh or the student who went to Bhopal to see the gas disaster and stayed on to work wonders a filmmaker who shows us that Anand in Gujarat is not only known for the milk miracle but is also the commercial hub of surrogacy in the world.

The documentary section of the Mumbai International Film Festival of India (MIFF) focused on various documentary, short and animation films. In its 12th year, the festival is held every alternate year, beginning in 1990. Handsome prizes are awarded, and it also attracting a wide body of filmmakers. 

Umesh Agarwal’s Brokering News at MIFF 2012 is a scathing attack on the Press, which also accounts for the poor coverage for this festival. This 60-minute effort covers vast ground and shows how the role of the media has been vitiated by the emergence, nay even domination, of commercialism of “paid news” that passes for news, and hence, three different newspapers carry the same article on page 1 with three different bylines.

Strangely, leading newspapers now resort to this and treat a newspaper as a “product.” Agarwal also cites the example of Rakesh Sharma, who worked for one such paper but later went on to expose these malpractices. In the electronic media, he refers to Barkha Dutt and Vir Sanghvi breaking the code. So we know how Dutt blundered in the coverage of 26/11 and got away with it. Ironically, some think of her as an icon!

Rajendra Kondapalli’s Womb of the World is a revealing story of how childless couples all over the world come to this one-stop-shop in Anand. Dr Nayana Patel and her husband run a surrogacy centre in this milk town where wombs are on hire. It looks like whoring sans intercourse. Kondapalli projects both sides of the issue and also shows Dr Imrana Kabir’s abject opposition to it, even calling it “sick” because some of the prospective parents even choose the colour of the womb on hire. 

Kondapalli shot this film over a period of three years. Juan and Helen come from Canada because surrogacy is illegal there and Vandana is the womb on rent. She does it because she can have a better life for her children with the sizeable money she earns from it. For nine months, she will be in a clinic and the Canadian couple, in their late forties, receive information via e-mail. Brian from Australia and Raphael from Europe are others in the market. But Brian has to return empty-handed.

However, most of the surrogate mothers say they would never do it again because of the psychological trauma involved. The film does not, in any way, promote the surrogacy clinic and Kondapalli’s neutrality must be commended.

Luigi Acquisto’s Trafficked: The Reckoning is a sequel to Trafficked, which exposed the slave trade racket in which 13-year-old Thai girl Ning was lured to Sydney. The cop Chris Payne was not allowed to go further with the investigation. But after retirement, Payne, who has also co-written the script, along with Ning and the help of a NGO, continue to search for the brothel-keeper, who has aliases and moves from place to place. It is a long arduous search, which takes years and moves back and forth between Thailand and Australia but in the end the brother-keeper is finally nabbed.

Mukesh Sharma’s Sathyu — A Bhopali Activist is the story of the deep commitment of Satinath Sarangi, better known as Sathyu, who came to Bhopal to help the victims of the worst tragedy in history (December 2, 1984) as a Ph.D student of metallurgy. And stayed on to dedicate his life to the cause of these helpless victims.

Trafficked: The Reckoning is the story of a young Thai girl Ning who was lured to Sydney in a slave trade racket

It is now history that Union Carbide chief Anderson was allowed to escape and is now living unpunished in New York. The company was later taken over by Dow Chemicals. But even today, the victims are fighting for life, suffering from cancer and related illnesses.

Sharma compresses a mine of information in just 26 minutes, skimming through the well-documented details and shots of that “night of horror” in which Union Carbide, in collusion with the powers that be, threw dust into the eyes of the public. Sathyu was helped by his family, who also came to Bhopal, but he never completed his studies. Perhaps he felt that in this way he would be more useful to the oppressed. He is truly an unsung hero, whose contributions only documentaries like this can unearth.

Then there was Ashok Rane’s Anthony Gonsalves: The Music Legend, who was the backbone of the Bollywood film industry for four decades and more than 100 films. “I learnt from the musicians (Pt Ravi Shankar among others), not from music directors. The music directors learnt from me,” Gonsalves says candidly in the film while sitting in his ancestral home in Goa. Known for his indelible melody, he was also able to fuse Western and Indian classical music. A rare achievement indeed. The film is a virtual trip down Bollywood memory lane and has stars like Raj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar, Nargis, Nalini Jaiwant and Suraiyya to name just a few.

Khalid Mohamed’s The Last Irani Chai touches on a now dying institution. But the 46-minute documentary dwells too much on interviews rather than capturing the flavour of those places. It is also unduly padded out and better editing could have been cut by a third and made it more compact.

Emre Koca’s Seppi & Hias is a cute story of two young pals, one German and the other Turk. Their shared passion is soccer and Bayern Munich their favourite, with Schwiensteiger their hero. But there was only one jersey for sale. Who will get it? This 32-minute film is concise with dashes of humour but a pertinent point is that Seppi’s actual name is Yusuf and as a Turk he is a second-class citizen.

But the overall selection of competition films, especially the international competition, was good and it was reflected by the fact that there was no trickle out of the theatres. But the national films’ selection was not as good and the management could have been better.

Director Luigi Acquisto, whose Trafficked: The Reckoning, is a sequel to Trafficked