Gujarat paves new way for filmmakers

MUMBAI: “The violence in Gujarat seems to be a turning point for filmmakers,’’ says Nicole Wolf, a German film academic. “A number of documentary filmmakers are asking themselves what their fundamental role is.Whether they should just make films in response to Gujarat, or whether activism would be more effective for the time being. In this sense, it is different from the reaction to the Mumbai riots of 1992-93, when four women spontaneously made documentaries.Regarding Gujarat, there has also been greater shock.’’ The Berlin-based Ms Wolf, who was recently in the city, is working on a Ph.D on Indian women’s documentaries in the ‘90s. After studies in social anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, she worked for the Berlin International Film Festival, as well as the House of World Cultures in Berlin. It was during her second visit to India in 1996 that she met the filmmaker Vasudha Joshi. Conversations with Joshi provoked her present thesis, at the Viadrina European University at Frankfurt-Oder. A key difference in the concerns of Indian and European women filmmakers is that gender and identity are big issues in Europe, she says. “They deal with themselves, their families, their sexuality,’’ Ms Wolf. “Indian docu filmmakers tend to focus more on NGO issues.’’ Ms Wolf also explores the impact of external funding on the work of Indian filmmakers. “With easy international funding for films on women’s issues in the ‘90s, some directors were forced to see themselves as women filmmakers and had to decide whether they would accept the funding or not,’’ she says. “There was also some degree of self-censorship in content as well as form, for instance in some of the Public Service Broadcasting Trust’s films shown on Doordarshan.’’ Negotiating with the funding agency has not always resulted in elbow room for creativity. Ms Wolf describes how a woman filmmaker has been struggling, both with the agenda of the funding NGO, as well as its dogmatism about the documentary form. “The NGO wants straight non-fiction, and will not permit the director to use a partly fictionalised narrative,’’ she says. “Another director making a film on a courageous woman was refused NGO funding because it insisted she emphasise her struggle, so she got money from the Amsterdam film festival to make an indie film with her own vision instead,’’ she adds. However, the filmmakers’ experiences with producers vary widely, Ms Wolf emphasises. “Anjali Punjabi, who made ‘Mirabai’ for Films Division, was not allowed to bring out the subversive aspects of her personality. On the other hand, Sameera Jain’s ‘Portraits of Belonging’ made for Doordarshan, is political without ever being overt about minorities,’’ she observes. Many of the Indian women filmmakers, including Deepa Dhanraj and Meera Dewan, started out around the ‘80s, making films connected with the women’s movement—on dowry, sati and communalism. “Filmmakers have evolved more rapidly in the 90s,’’ Ms Wolf says. “With cheaper digital equipment, many filmmakers have their own cameras and start filming without even raising the full budget. Their own agendas take their work beyond the received brief. Filmmakers like Paromita Vohra, Surabhi Sharma, Soudhamini and Madhusree Dutta are finding ways to cross borders in the fiction/ non-fiction, mainstream/independent for mats.’’ She cites many examples, including “Vohra’s ‘A Short Film About Time’, a tragicomic video made in a week, featuring the filmmaker and her friends. Sharma’s ‘Jari Mari: Of Cloth and Other Stories’ sees women’s issues in broader, global context. Soudhamini’s ‘It rested’, an ‘80s 16mm film, uses technical lapses to generate a certain rhythm. Dutta’s ‘Scribbles on Akka’ incorporates elements like songs from mainstream cinema, in trying to reach younger audience.’’ Among Ms Wolf favourites is ‘Manjuben Truck Driver’, Delhi-based Sherna Bastu’s short film on a woman truck driver from Ahmedabad. “It’s a kind of road movie, in which you see how the men she interacts with have accepted her. does not give you information as such, yet it tells you lot. I like it because both the driver and filmmaker treat her womanhood as such non-issue,’’ she says. In the ‘80s, women were more closely connected to the larger politics and ideology. “Today, some filmmakers feel there is no alternative culture of dissent,’’ she says. “But, post-Gujarat, an initiative of Delhi filmmakers called Aaj ke Naam, is planning workshops in schools to address communalism. Media Storm, a collective of six filmmakers, is similarly working to combat communalism.’’