Introduction: Sridala Swami

For those of us who grew up in the 70s and the 80s, the word ‘documentary’ inevitably conjures up memories of a wasted half-hour before the main feature in cinema theatres. We used this time to go to the bathroom or have a leisurely cup of tea before we entered the theatre laden with extremely yellow popcorn and something to drink. The ‘documentaries’ that were shown were usually about family planning (when young men in the audience would whistle) or the benefits of dams, or about any one of several government schemes that the Films Division thought the people should be aware of. It wasn’t until the 60s, when young people from middle class backgrounds became involved politically, that a different kind of documentary film evolved.

What is our sense of history with regard to the Indian documentary film? Regular world film histories will talk about how cinema, from the very beginning, had the seeds of both the narrative and the documentary; they will cite Méliès as the pioneer in the magical or fantastic aspects of cinema and the Lumières as representing the ‘real’. Indian film histories, while talking about entrepreneurs and pioneers of cinema, rarely have anything to say about what one could call non-narrative, or documentary cinema. Our film histories do not have any Nanooks of the North or even their Night Mails. Until Independence, Indian cinema has no documentary worth mentioning.

After Independence, however, the new government, quick to recognise the power of the visual medium, set up several organisations that would support cinema of all kinds: The National Film Development Corporation, The Film and Television Institute of India, The National Film Archives of India, the Films Division and The Federation of Film Societies India were set up. Broadly, these institutions were meant to support the kinds of cinema that was not being produced by the ‘film industry’ All these organisations were a part of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. For the ‘film industry’, the government had the Indian Cinematograph Act, 1952, which laid down the law with regard to the censorship of films in India.

Documentaries were not, traditionally, included in the Act, because it was assumed that documentaries would not be ‘commercial’; that they would fall in with the nation-building narrative scheme that organisations like the Films Division were set up to produce. There was nothing really ‘independent’ about non-narrative cinema. The films produced by these organisations had, by law, to be screened in film theatres across the country.

Which brings me back to the films we saw as children in film theatres – the ones that we learnt to endure until the main feature began – the average Indian’s exposure to documentaries is limited to these films because we knew no other kind.

Meanwhile, the 60s saw an explosion in the making of documentaries. Films like I Am Twenty and India ’67, took as their subject the twenty year old nation. These films were innovative in their structure and searching in the questions they asked (Satyajit Ray said of India ’67: “I like India ’67 but not for its broad and percussive contrasts of poverty and influence, beauty and squalor, modernity and primitivity – however well shot and cut they might be. I like it for its details – for the black beetle that crawls along the hot sand, for the street dog that pees on the parked bicycle, for the bead of perspiration that dangles on the nose tip of the begrimed musician”.).

These films were made by independent filmmakers who were politically active and, like the government, recognised the power of the medium to bring change. Filmmakers like S.N.S. Shastry and Pramod Pati made experimental short films that were political both in their subject matter and in their opposition to the default government perspective. But who saw these films?

Film societies sprung up all over the country. Colleges, universities, art schools showed these films and discussed them. Filmmakers took their films out to wherever they could be screened. It was a movement that was ‘parallel’ to the mainstream that the government represented.

In the decades after the 60s, independent filmmaking had two templates to follow: the politically engaged film that was programmatic in its own way and the bored, almost indifferent film that did everything it could to formally negate the enthusiasm it was supposed to show for the subject matter. The former you could see only if you had access to a certain kind of education and the latter you tried hard to avoid.

The idea that there might be a way of making documentaries that did not fall into either category but set itself only the task of exploring something in a non-linear way with no agendas was something that had only just begun to occur to younger filmmakers. Their work was supported by short film festivals that showcased films from other countries as well. What filmmakers now had was a space for dialogue and robust interrogation of the formal aspects of their cinema.

It was in 2004 that the Mumbai International Film Festival first demanded that documentary filmmakers produce a censor certificate so that their films could be screened. Filmmakers from other countries were not asked to submit themselves to the censor. Clearly, this was a move to eliminate certain films that were critical of the government. Indian documentary filmmakers, supported by a huge number of people who were not filmmakers, withdrew from the festival and set up another one in protest. Vikalp: Films For Freedom was set up in protest not only against censorship but also to archive documentary films made after 2002.

This is at least a beginning. Though films made in earlier decades exist in The National Film Archives of India, they are lent out only to film festivals or film societies which are registered with the Federation of Film Societies. Vikalp, on the other hand, has a Travelling Vikalp package that can be sent anywhere in the country for a small charge that includes postage. In addition, for the filmmakers who participated in the first Vikalp, there is for the first time, as sense of community. They also allow, for the first time, the idea that there are many films, many ways of making films, and that all of them deserve a viewing.

Technology has had a large part to play in the number of documentary films being made. Cameras are lightweight and very frequently, a filmmaker needs a very small team to make a film. Mini-DV tapes are inexpensive and editing software affordable as is the duplication of films for distribution. Most filmmakers choose to work from home, which often doubles up as studio. All of this makes making films easy. Theoretically, at least, it does.

Cinema, as we know from the mainstream films we watch, requires more than just an ability to string shots together. The best filmmakers – whether of fiction or non-fiction films – are those who think deeply about the medium itself and constantly ask questions about their craft and how to represent their subject.

Unfortunately, there is no conversation about these films that is taking place simultaneously outside of the community that makes them. As Paromita Vohra says in her essay, ‘no one takes documentaries seriously in filmmaking terms – sometimes not even filmmakers’. It is true that while there are reviews of mainstream and ‘multiplex’ cinema, there is very little writing about non-fiction cinema. Though films like Anand Patwardhan’s Father, Son and Holy War or Rakesh Sharma’s Final Solution frequently make the news, they are like banned books that no one has read but everybody has an opinion on.

To rectify this imbalance, we intend to have two short essays in each issue of Pratilipi – for as long as we think there is something new being said – about the Indian Documentary.

This inaugural issue has filmmakers Paromita Vohra and Surabhi Sharma contributing essays. Both essays touch upon the negotiations the filmmaker makes in representing a subject they are learning about as they go. Vohra brings up the importance of talking about the formal aspects documentary cinema as much as the ‘subject matter’ while Sharma discusses the effects of making a documentary in a way she was not used to. Sharma’s essay is more particular, about the making of her film Jahaji Music, a film about the music of the Caribbean and its Bhojpuri elements. Vohra, on the other hand, takes a broader view of the new documentary, which should provide some much-needed perspective for the reader who is interested in the Indian Documentary but knows very little about it.

We hope you will enjoy this series.

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To read “Knowing For Sure Without Knowing For Certain” by Paromita Vohra, click here.

To read “Songs of the Ship” by Surabhi Sharma, click here.