Documentary Today #7 by Documentary Today

DOCUMENTARY TODAY

From The Editor’s Desk

One fine morning I was surprised to see a glaring headline A dinosaur wakes up in one of the leading newspaper of India (reproduced in this issue on page 62-63). It was heartening to know that the author described Films Division as a dinosaur. For a moment I did not know how to react to this feature article but after a deep thought I realised that the author of the article Mr. Derek Bose was serious about calling Films Division “a dinosaur”. For me, it was a soothing experience since the Films Division as an organization, in the 60 years of its existence, had rarely got such rave reviews and reactions. Well! At least not in the past 25 years or so. There was always an element of negativity when people talked about the Films Division. This negativity in and outside organization had damaged the credibility of Films Division, in spite of it having done a marvelous job in the production and promotion of documentary cinema in the country. Films Division was almost written off by everyone from filmmakers to the government without realising that it was not the Films Division they were damaging but the visual history of independent India which the Films Division had recorded and preserved for posterity. In fact they were trying to destroy the celluloid heritage of the country. Some vested interests had started equating documentary films with entertainment and deducing that the former were not as interesting as the latter – which is a completely wrong equation with no substance at all. The purpose of these genres of cinema is totally different. Like a text book, documentaries inform and educate the millions of illiterate people of this country using the most potent visual medium, other genre only entertains them. But this apathy had also grown in the minds of the film makers, exhibitors and the general public. Therefore the dinosaur of Films Division was attacked, injured and almost killed by one and all within and out. This bleeding dinosaur was made to suffer in pain, in agony, in disrespect. But it was forgotten that a dinosaur cannot

be defeated. It has lot of inbuilt strength, courage and will to survive. Therefore, when this dinosaur got up with a roar and compelled the people to realise that it was still capable of changing the tides and was ready to take the world in its strides, it became front page news. In short, Films Division had spread its tentacles in so many directions which people never thought it could ever do. It has digitalized its film heritage, established an international digital archive for short, animation and documentary films and an international Research and Reference Centre for students, scholars and researchers. Films Division is on its way to pioneer a cinema museum in and around its heritage building Gulshan Mahal. To reach out to the wider masses, Films Division has been organising film festivals in every nook and corner of the country in collaboration with State Governments, Educational Institutions, Universities, NGOs, Film Clubs and Societies. If the dinosaur has woken up, it is not only the hard work of the people in Films Division, in the ministry but it is also the result of the whole-hearted support given by documentary film makers and, above all, the media which has smoothened the ruffled feathers of Films Division for the last few years. In fact I am personally thankful to every one and especially to my friends in the media who have given unstinted support to all my ventures and endeavors. I am sure this affection and support from all to Films Division and to me will continue to grow further.

Kuldeep Sinha Editor Kuldeep Sinha Executive Editor Sanjit Narwekar Production Co-ordinator Anil Kumar N. Photographer S. S. Chavan Printed at Work Center Offset Printers (I) Pvt Ltd. A2/32, Shah & Nahar Industrial Estate, S. J. Marg, Lower Parel, Mumbai 400013 Tel.: 24943227 / 24929261 Published by Films Division, 24, Dr.Gopalrao Deshmukh Marg, Mumbai 400026 Tel.: 23510461 / 23521421 DOCUMENTARY TODAY

27 How Copyright Laws Inhibit Documentary Filmmakers Copyright Laws which were enacted to protect the creator’s creativity have now begun to hamper documentarians from making films on current affairs. Is current affairs material subject to the laws of copyright? Or should it lie in the public domain? Or is a middle path available?

The Cover

Knights in Shining Armour The things that winners do with their Oscars! French tightrope artist and juggler balances the Oscar on his chin watched by director James Marsh (left) and producer Simon Chinn. Below Megan Mylan postures with the Oscar after winning it for her film Smile Pinki.

32 10 Greatest Documentary Moments TOM ROSTON explores the ten moments in documentary films which are closest to his heart.

34 The Man Who Conquered the English Channel

19 Cinematic Rigour AMRIT GANGAR explores the philosophy and convictions of four experimental filmmakers whose cinematic work has made India proud: Amit Dutta, Vipin Vijay, Ashish Avikunthak and Kabir Mohanty. 4

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Who remembers the late Mihir Sen whose swimming conquests of the English Channel and the Palk Straits were once the talk of India. Former newsreel cameraman H.S.ADVANI recalls the day he “shot” Mihir Sen with his camera.

PLUS Films Division’s Diamond Jubilee Finale in Pictures

Knights in Shining Armour

The most recognized trophy in the world, the Oscar statuette has stood on the mantels of the greatest filmmakers in history since 1929. When the Academy was formed the MGM art director Cedric Gibbons was asked to design a suitable trophy and it is he who designed a statuette of a knight standing on a reel of film gripping a crusader’s sword. Los Angeles sculptor George Stanley was asked to realize the design in three dimensions – and the world-renowned statuette was born. The Oscar stands 13½ inches tall and weighs in at a robust 8½ pounds. The film reel features five spokes, signifying the five original branches of the Academy: actors, directors, producers, technicians and writers. Although the statuette remains true to its original design, the size of the base varied until 1945, when the current standard was adopted. This year the Oscar Statuette was given to three documentary films: Man on Wire (for Best Documentary Feature), Smile Pinki (for Best Short Documentary) and Waltz with Bashir (for, ironically, Best Foreign Film). DOCUMENTARY TODAY

On August 7, 1974 French tightrope walker and juggler Philippe Petit secretly set up a high wire between the tops of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center which were then still under construction. He spent a couple of hours walking back and forth on that wire 1,350 feet above the streets of New York City. Many described the walk as “the artistic crime of the century” and the amazing tale has been told many times: in newspapers around the world, in the children’s book The Man Who Walked Between the Towers and in Petit’s own inimitable prose with his memoir To Reach for the Clouds. Man on Wire is a documentary about that feat. British-born director James Marsh couldn’t believe his luck when Petit agreed that he should be the man to bring the story to the screen. Marsh was able to enrich the narrative by including interviews with those who took the risk of assisting Petit at the time, most of whom became estranged from Petit after he achieved his goal. The documentary also includes footage from Petit’s previous daredevil walks at Notre Dame in Paris and Sydney Harbour’s steel arch bridge in addition to scenes of the tightrope gang practicing and scheming in France. Read on ...

The walk across the Towers 6

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You spent 8 months in New York, scoping out the World Trade Center and getting ready. Where did you get the money to do this? Petit: Where did I get the money? Actually the answer is the truth, and it’s beautiful: I financed, so to speak, although not much money was involved but surely too much for me, I financed le coup, as I like to recall it, by passing my hat as a street juggler in the streets of New York, like I did earlier in France. How long were you up there? Petit: Forty-five minutes, according to my friends who saw me from the first step. They told me I did eight crossings. I started on the south tower and ended up on the south tower. Frankly, I did not even know what kind of performance I would be able to do. I wanted to perform, I didn’t want to just walk across and brag, “I did it, I did it.” I wanted to make one crossing against the sky and do some kind of performance up there. Was there a moment when you were on the wire between the two buildings where you felt perfectly balanced? What’s going through your mind? Petit: When I was on that wire, when I embarked on those eight crossings, I felt perfectly balanced on each step. If not, I probably wouldn’t be here to answer the question! But is that the key - to always feel balanced? Petit: It isn’t a matter of feeling. You have to be composed, to construct, to leap through this solid balance or else you evaporate in thin air. And once you are at that height, the void is stronger than the human being. It was clear to me that everything you did was with meticulous preparation, but there was no way you could prepare for what it would actually feel like to be on that wire at that height. When you first stepped off onto that wire was it not what you imagined, or was it exactly what you thought it would be?

Petit: When I first stepped on that wire, it wasn’t a surprise, my presence on that wire. It was a dream, it was a nightmare, it was some of both. It was months and months of dreaming and preparations thus there was no surprise. There was maybe an impatience there; I had certainly thought I had prepared as much as I could, and that was my safety net.

already there. It’s the classic story of a hero going on an impossible quest with all the setbacks and impediments along the way and trying to pull off a plan that is clearly impossible. Philippe had written his personal memoir, so we took that and then added all the other people intimately involved in the adventure. They don’t always agree though and there’s a lot of conflict between them

How did Man on Wire come about? Petit: I was approached by a film producer in England when my book was being transformed into a play, but nothing happened. Then, after several years, another producer came and said, “Would you like to do a film about your walk?” Marsh: I knew about the story, but I think more than anything Philippe felt it was time to tell his story. But we had to see if it worked out, if Philippe and I were comfortable with each other. We spent a lot of time together and talked about films we like. That was part of our dialog. And what kind of music we liked. It was a very human way into it.

What were your first meetings like? Marsh: They were very interesting. I knew it was Philippe’s story but I also knew it was important that there was a collaboration. He had lived through the story, it was his story, and he was an enormous asset to the storytelling, to know that the protagonist could give his comprehensive, detailed and often witty and energetic account of what happened. We talked a lot across the whole of a summer about how the film was going to unfold. But we also got to know each other, to trust each other. I was given a gift, I was given a responsibility to tell the story well. It felt to me that the responsibility included embracing the person whose story it was.

Did you two collaborate on the actual making? Petit: Certainly I did not collaborate on the technical side. James asked me questions based on the book. Marsh: Philippe set the tone of the film, the way the story played out. There were certain ideas that were Philippe’s, like toward the end, when we are on the roof and the security guard comes up, while Philippe is hiding behind the curtain. It works beautifully. That’s the level of collaboration, without a lot of dialog. The tone and the playfulness and the magic of the story comes from real life. Philippe is a great storyteller on camera. He wanted to tell his story in this way. So I said, Okay, I’ll do it. I was liberated by having a subject act things out. That frees the camera and allows the subject to tell the story his way. I wanted to embrace that. What attracted you to the story? Marsh: It was a real gift as a story. Your job is just to do it as well as you can, given that you have this great narrative

This film is structured like a heist movie, and walking out of it I felt that it would make a great dramatic film. You’ve done dramatic films before, but what made you want to do this as a documentary? Marsh: I would argue this is a dramatic film even though it is a documentary, and hopefully it transcends that label. As you said, it’s structured like a heist film, like a thriller, and that’s what it was. In Philippe’s book it was laid out that way, the story was implicitly that. It was an easy choice and a defining choice to structure the film as a genre film, where you have the timeline unfolding and the conspiracy comes to its fruition on its day but then you flash back and see all the obstacles that were in the way of this impossible quest. Hopefully it’s a dramatic film in itself and the documentary label is irrelevant. Maybe there is another film to be made out of this as a pure drama, but I’ve done my film with these real DOCUMENTARY TODAY

Phillipe Petit about to begin his run across the two World Trade Center buildings.

elements, with the real people, the real protagonists of the story. I’m happy and comfortable having made a film that has these documentary elements in place but transcends its format to become a big screen experience. Like your other films, this film is multi-layered. It has different levels beside the surface story. Marsh: Just by its very nature, yes. There is a kind of love story that is playing out as well. Through Philippe you see the woman who is in love with him. I think the film operates on a number of different levels. It is a fairy tale on one level; an impossible dream that is realized by force of will and passion. It is also a kind of thriller since a heist is being carried out. There are also elements of human drama and comedy. Of course there is the whole subtext of the tragedy of the towers that is lurking as well. I think you can also enjoy the film as a narrative for its own sake. Hopefully it is going to satisfy on that level. But yes, there are other ideas about the nature of art, performance, and beautiful for its own sake. There are those kinds of issues in the film that can make one pause and think, if one chooses to do so. A lot of filmmakers who may have approached this subject would have made it strictly a first person story, from Philippe’s point of view. What was your reason for bringing other people to the story, and making it a story that is told from different points of view? 8

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Marsh: There is human drama in this story. It is a group of young fearless people who don’t know the rules. Philippe is foremost amongst them. It seemed to me that there was a very interesting set of relationships that was important to the execution of this event. It felt like a good idea to explore the other people involved, and to involve, for example, Philippe’s girlfriend at the time. It is wonderful to get five or six different versions of parallel, dissenting, and overlapping accounts, and to understand the wonderful and surprising set of personalities involved. They don’t really belong together. The first group of people is comprised of an American and an Australian while the rest are French. The final team is some dissolute, feckless Americans, who don’t believe in the team as much as the French team. It becomes this great human drama, and a comedy of errors fraught with tension and antagonism. It felt like the film opened up much more by having multiple perspectives on the events as opposed to just one single focus. I think it creates the comedy in the film, this unlikely blend of personalities. A number of documentaries are using re-creations, as you do, even though not everyone in the documentary scene finds them acceptable. Marsh: I think that debate is one that will be ongoing. I felt that having the resources of cinema at one’s disposal, you should use them. I think that re-

creations were the best way of telling the story. I don’t think one should be overly puritanical about how you tell a story. The Thin Blue Line has very baroque, very artful reconstructions, but the truth was that someone got out of jail because of Errol Morris’ work. You can’t argue with this deeper truth. I think Philippe has always approached Werner Herzog‘s “ecstatic truth,” which touches my heart, too. In fact, Philippe and Werner are friends. Petit: I wanted the book upon which this film is based to be in a style that would be a homage to Werner. Granted this is from re-creations, but when you and your “accomplices” are setting up your equipment in one of the World Trade towers, it seems like most of the others are nervous, but you have confidence. Did you? Petit: As far as planning and bringing in equipment without getting caught, and staying up there all night, I was full of doubt. But regarding the walk itself, I had certitude from the very beginning. Having learned by myself so many arts, and having fought in my own way to express myself as an artist, I acquired this certitude even in the midst of doubt. Maybe in the midst of doubt I feel I’m really going to make it happen. Philippe, what are you afraid of? And James, has hanging around with Phillipe brought out any daredevil instincts in you? Petit: I am often asked what am I afraid of and although I am clearly an alien, I don’t belong to this century and this Earth, I am very much a human as well. And as a human being I have many fears, like you, like others, but in the sky I do not have such fears. In the sky I cannot have such fears. I have to reduce the unknown to nothing so that the outcome will be a victorious one. Marsh: To answer your question of have I been inspired to do daring things: No. I’m a coward. But I think there’s an important moral in Philippe’s story, which I think the film offers up, which is that nothing is impossible. If you want to do something badly and

passionately, you go about it with passion and meticulous preparation, one step at a time. You can do things that can surprise yourself. That’s something I think we can all understand and be inspired by. Are there any more daredevils around, would you say? Petit: Well I cannot talk about something very foreign to me. I am not a daredevil. The way I started was seeing theater in the high wire, I was not born in that world and not profiting from their tradition, so I am probably the opposite of a daredevil, I am a poet who has chosen to venture on a very thin stage. But in a way there are many wire walkers and they are all confined under the circus tent. They all perform in a certain tradition of making the

audience afraid and boasting technical marvels, but I do the opposite. I want to inspire you, and I travel in a world of beauty and simplicity. I walk on the wire, I don’t do pyramids or somersaults - I used to do that when I first started. But what interests me is the beauty of the wire and the ability to inspire audiences. The sex scene in the film was interesting. Marsh: In Philippe’s book it’s there, and as a filmmaker you look for those moments of surprise and drama and in this case a rather sweet encounter. On a personal level, speaking for me, I was surprised that anyone would have the energy. Philippe hadn’t slept in two nights and after the wire performance itself he had been in jail and in a mental

hospital. This felt like a very sweet and actually innocent kind of episode. I dramatized it in a way that I think is sweet and innocent and not in any way vulgar. And it’s a vague homage to A Clockwork Orange if you like. But nonetheless, it’s a surprising coda to this magnificent adventure. It’s like that whole business with Bill Clinton and the blowjob, you feel like there are certain rewards you earn in life. One of the main characters in this film, the Twin Towers, came to a tragic end. I’m interested in why you left that out, especially as the buildings meant so much to Philippe. Marsh: I almost want to turn the question around. It was very clear to me going into the project the absence of those towers and the end that they

Midway across the towers … Petit did this run eight times.

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a police report. Marsh: The police report itself is hilarious. It’s an official, bureacratic account that reduces it to official, bureacratic language, yet there’s still bits - you see the policeman who is interviewed in the film who has just witnessed the walk, and he’s given to flights of lyricism on the back of what he just witnessed. It’s this wonderful moment where you realize that here’s a cop who sees lots of ugly and unpleasant things every day and now he’s seen something surprising and miraculous. His language reflects that, but the report itself is what I would call copper language, police language. It says ‘Man on wire,’ and it’s both wrong and right at the same time. It’s spectacularly wrong as it goes nowhere near where what actually happened, but it also serves the film in a way. and it’s interesting because we’re using this official description.

James Marsh who directed Man on Wire.

met. But it was even more clear that we shouldn’t burden Philippe’s story with what came later. This is almost the opposite of that, it’s a celebration of a wonderful adventure that these buildings were a part of. They are characters in the film, and that’s how Philippe views them. He knows them, he sees how they breathe and live in a subjective way. I wanted the audience to come in and discover those buildings through Philippe’s point of view, the way he goes up the back stairs and goes on the roof when it’s very windy. It was never a question or an issue for me. I felt we could trust the audience to complete the film in that way. Every single person in the world knows what happened to those buildings, there’s no mystery to that. I think it’s funny that as a filmmaker you want to trust and allow the audience to make that completion and bring whatever subtext they like to that. What do you even do? Do you show them coming down? Wouldn’t that just be horrible and disgusting, to blaspheme Philippe’s adventure with this horrible, unrelated tragedy? Philippe in his book does tangentially engage with those feelings, and that’s 10

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the book, but I think the movie is too literal for that. The images are too literal. I don’t want to see those images again, personally. I saw what happened with my own eyes, so it was never a question to me that we should include a superficial or crass interpretation of those events in light of Philippe’s adventure. Was there anyone who refused to be interviewed for this project? Marsh: No. We had a hard time finding everyone, and we talked about the propriety of intervieiwing the less reliable, feckless members of the team who came very late, the Americans, who were an untrustworthy, unreliable bunch as you see in the film. To their credit they didn’t shy away from owning up to that. So no, it was hard to find one or two of the people, but everyone I think saw this as an opportunity to talk about and remember something that was so important to them. The title of the film is so great because it reflects so much of the film itself. Phillipe finds beauty in every day places and you find this poetic title in

Philippe, when you see the poster what runs through your mind? Petit: Disbelief. That I would love to meet this guy because I think it’s amazing. Then I realize, ‘Oh, I’m the guy!’ It’s a shock almost. When I say disbelief it’s not a little pirouette for an interview, it’s what goes through my mind. After my walk, as we see in the film, I was offered a VIP pass to come with friends as often as I wanted to come to the top [of the World Trade Center], and I did often, by myself, to daydream, to recall the beautiful walk. It was very hard because I could not believe what I did I did. It took an effort of imagination to say ‘Yes I did it.’ Philippe, how important was it to you that you do these walks on your own, without going through official channels, without being bankrolled, without making a big deal in advance? Petit: I never chose in my life to do things without permission, but it became obvious I shouldn’t spend my budding talent and relentless energy on getting on my knees and begging people who obviously never say yes to grant me the permission to do

something beautiful. Artists shouldn’t ask permission, they should just go and do it. Yes, sometimes you have brushes with the authorities but it never dawned on me to ask permission. Why do you choose to live in New York State? Petit: I never chose, actually. I didn’t take a list of places and decide where to live. I stayed as a welcome folk hero after my walk in 1974. I stayed ten days, ten months, ten years, now I look back and it’s thirty four years. I am a New Yorker. Even though I live upstate I am still an artist in residence at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City. I stayed because I have no choice. Watching the film it’s impossible not to wonder what you do when you’ve reached your dream. There’s no higher wire to walk than that one. Petit: When I am asked that question that after I conquer the dream of the World Trade Center could I have other dreams, I say yes. First you have to have a capacity to dream a lot. Secondly since I don’t have a career as a wire walker, since I am a free spirit devouring life with no idea what tomorrow will be about, I had no problem and today I have no problem after the World Trade Center to imagine other amazing places. They don’t have to be bigger and higher - they could be smaller and more intimate. To me they will be as important as the one that is seen in Man on Wire.

you have to follow your dream in an almost ‘I have no choice way.’ There are a million beautiful things to do. As for Marsh you’ve moved from New York, you’re working on a new film, can you talk about what’s happening now in your life, besides what appears will be a full slate of award shows in the next few months? Marsh: I left New York because I thought I could be more productive as a filmmaker in Europe. I’ve only ever had one paying job from a US company as a filmmaker, even though I lived in the US for 14 years. It felt perverse to struggle on in New York when I had offers and opportunities to work in the UK. But it was really tough to leave and part of me is heartbroken about it. I left the same week that Man on Wire opened in New York and I hope it doesn’t sound maudlin to say that it’s become my personal love letter to the city.

On the work front I just finished a narrative feature here in the UK. I’m very lucky that I’ve been able to move between documentaries and fiction but I try to use the same collaborators on all my films so we all learn together and cross fertilize the work we do. The film is a paranoid thriller with a big cast of actors and a strong factual background - it’s based around a notorious serial killer called the Yorkshire ripper who was at large in the north of England in the late ‘70’s. Now I want to make another feature documentary and I’m working on absolutely crazy idea based on a dream diary. Basically, an old Jewish guy in Toronto wrote down all the dreams he ever had about a woman he was in love with who died tragically and young. The film is a kind of doomed love story based on his dream narratives. It could be an absolutely unwatchable disaster and I have no idea how I am going to make it. Hence it has to be done.

Phillipe Petit and James Marsh.

There’s something about your era, Philippe, that makes people of other generations feel like everything worth doing has been done. Petit: When I hear there is nothing more that can be done or said, this is a very wrong view of the universe. You have to dig a tunnel and die. Life is on the surface of creativity and the beauty is that whatever you do, whatever they do, there is always something else to do. It isn’t about comparison - if you stop to compare you stop creating. You have to forget what the others do and DOCUMENTARY TODAY

The Oscar Smiles at Pinki Smile Pinki which bagged the Oscar 2009 for the Best Documentary (Short Subject), follows two rural kids from India — the title character, a little girl named Pinki, as well as a boy called Ghutaru — both of whom have cleft lips. In completely straight-ahead fashion, the film moves along, first via the recruiting people announcing the availability of the free operations and ferreting out likely candidates (including Pinki and Ghutaru) from the hinterlands and explaining the situation to their families, after which we all make the trip to the hospital, get ready for the operations — and see their results. Within this fairly standard format, Mylan packs in a lot of interesting detail, from the way in which the recruiters work to the look and feel of rural family life, the hospital procedures, and especially the feelings of the children themselves about this operation and what it might mean to them. Told in a vibrant, vérité style, rich with nuance and complexity, this real-world fairy tale follows its wide-eyed protagonist on a journey from isolation to embrace. In the following interview producer-director Megan Mylan talks about the film and her own career. Little Pinki at the Oscars.

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How did you get started in documentary filmmaking? I was 24, living in Rio de Janeiro and working as a fund-raiser for Ashoka, a nonprofit network of social entrepreneurs. I guided tours of highdollar contributors visiting our Brazilian projects. I loved traveling around Brazil and sharing the work of amazing people changing the world in all sorts of creative ways, but I hated fundraising. One day, I had an “a-ha” moment and realized that I could still travel, meet incredible people, share their stories and make a social impact while making movies. I started volunteering with a Brazilian documentary production company; went to Berkeley for masters in journalism and Latin American Studies; and got my first job as an assistant-tothe-assistant editor for Jon Else, etc., etc. I feel so lucky to have happened upon this career where I get to learn so much and wear so many different hats. Of course, I still do loads of fundraising, but it’s worth it. What inspired you to make Smile Pinki? As a filmmaker who focuses on social issue documentaries, it’s rare that I get into a film knowing we’re likely to have a happy ending. I was excited to tell the story of this beautiful hospital and a team of doctors and social workers treating their patients with such compassion and quality care and making a positive impact. I continue to be inspired by the simple idea that the better we know each other, the better this world is, and I hope people come away from my documentaries feeling like they better understand the life of someone living a very different reality. Is a cleft palate pretty common? This kind of problem — and the surgery for it — used to be much more common in our country, but we do not see it as much of it anymore and when children are born with a cleft they receive surgery as a baby. Clefts are a very common birth defect, the exact cause is not known, but it is much more common in poor countries and most

Pinki looks at herself in the mirror before the operation.

likely tied to the prenatal nutritional health of the mother. In India, as in most countries, the wealthier the mother is, the healthier she’s likely to be. You can almost chart this via income level. Once parents and their kids arrive at the hospital, after being recruited, do they always get served? Eventually? Yes. No one is turned away. As long as the child is healthy enough for surgery, the operation will go forward. Four times during the year, the hospital schedules what it calls the registration day. Everybody focuses their energy on getting the word out about these operations. They hand out flyers, go to far-off villages, do radio announcements, and so on. Each quarter they will net maybe some 600 children (and their accompanying families) How do they families live while waiting for operation? One group is scheduled right away: the older children. It is more important for these to have the operation as soon as possible because, most often, the

younger you are, the easy the operation and the better the results. Next come those who have traveled the farthest; they are scheduled right away, too. And while the hospital staff is wonderful, really, it is the family members who are the basic caretakers — which you can see from the movie. The hospital itself is a very interesting place, as well. The work that this hospital does is as much social work and humanitarian work as it is medicine. The hospital we spent time was a very nurturing place, with a unique gentle energy to it, very different from my experience in U.S. hospitals. What were some of the challenges and obstacles in making this film, and how did you overcome them? The biggest challenge for me was communicating and finding common ground with the patients and families in the film. I have done films in languages I don’t speak before, but with this film, communication was even more difficult because Pinki’s family speaks a particular dialect of Hindi and DOCUMENTARY TODAY

Lining up for the registration.

there are not many people who speaks both their dialect. So translations can be very difficult. Nandini Rajwade, our field producer, along with the social worker Pankaj Kumar, really helped out so much with this! It is always so important that the subject of your documentary understands why you want them to tell the story of their life.

What part of your particular filmmaking process do you enjoy most? I think it has to be the closeness you begin to feel with your subjects. I feel like I know Pinki’s family now, even though I have never spoken a word to them with out a translator, a lot is communicated even without words

I feel like I know Pinki’s family now, even though I have never spoken a word to them with out a translator, a lot is communicated even without words when you spend intense time with someone. Pinki’s mother could not understand even the idea of a foreigner — that anyone could come from anywhere different. She had never been outside her village, there is no television, and all that sort of thing. I think it was at the moment that this became clear to me — then I realized the really immense cultural chasm I had to leap in order to have the kind of “partnership” I wanted to have with the family. I sort of had to trust in our mutual humanity — mine, theirs, our crew, everyone. 14

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when you spend intense time with someone. I feel like the film captures the essence of the family relationship, especially Pinki’s relationship with her father. Also that special feeling in the hospital that was so warm and nurturing. If I had not been able to convey these things, I would have felt like we had failed. How did your vision for the film change over the course of the preproduction, production and post-

production processes? In many ways the film is very much how I envisioned it. I knew I wanted to make a vérité film with the young patients as the central characters. From my first research conversations, I felt that the story had a magical fairy tale quality to it even though it dealt with social ostracism and crushing poverty. But I was still surprised by how much a story that on the surface is about surgery, is really not at all a medical story. The work of the hospital is as much social work and counseling as it is medicine, and I was happy that that came through so clearly in the footage. While the children remain the main characters, I was thrilled that the wonderful humanity of the hospital team and the special environment they’ve created came through. How have audiences reacted to the film? What has been most surprising or unexpected about their reactions? I always love with vérité how much each viewer sees and discovers something different. I hadn’t anticipated how powerfully audiences

would connect to Pinki’s father and the other parents in the film. Audiences— especially people with children of their own-comment frequently that they can relate to and are overwhelmed by the parents’ tremendous feeling of responsibility and hopelessness and that they feel a huge sense of relief when the children are freed from the burden of their clefts. Where were you when you first heard about your Academy Award nomination? How do you anticipate this award will impact your career as a filmmaker? When I found out about the nomination, I was exactly where I usually am in the morning—at home in front of my computer with a cup of coffee, hoping the day ahead would be an interesting one. It was! Honestly, I don’t imagine this changing things all that much. I already feel very lucky to make a living doing something I absolutely love. Of course the nomination is a wonderful bonus, and I’m thrilled that this recognition will mean a lot more people will see Pinki’s story.

How far along are you with the project? We’re nearly finished with filming and are now doing post-production. The final product will be a feature-length film that follows three characters, one of whom is currently the country’s only black senator. Another is a pop star turned entrepreneur who has launched a TV station for black Brazilians. And the third character we follow is a woman who is a granddaughter of slaves who lives in “maroon” society — called Quilombos.

inspirations for you? One of the best things about being a documentary filmmaker is all of the incredible people I get to work with or call my peers. The folks below inspire me with their sense of pride in our craft and their ability to make films with emotional honesty, complexity, humor and impact: Spencer Nakasako, Jon Else, Debbie Hoffmann, Frances Reid, Les Blank, Heddy Honigmann. (Based on separate interviews taken by Thomas White and James van Maanen)

What documentaries or documentary filmmakers have served as Megan Mylan … a triumphant smile.

What about your newest project — the film on racial equality in Brazil? Brazil has been so famous for being a country of racial harmony and being so racially inclusive. Many Brazilians think they already have racial harmony. “We have no race problem,” they say. But this is just not true. I lived there in the early 90s, so I have some hand-on experience in the country. They have a different history of race, and there are issues of not just race — but class to explore. Fifty percent of the population is black, but only two percent of university students are black. The subject has intrigued me for a long time, and I’ve wanted to make a film but always wondered how. But I’ve keeping my radar up for a way in. And in the last two years this issue has come to the forefront. Things like affirmative actions and racial quotas for schools are being put into effect but it isn’t going all that easily. The changes are being heatedly debated. DOCUMENTARY TODAY

Pushing the Boundaries of Documentary Filmmaking

Ari Forman … reel and real self.

Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman’s innovative animated documentary, Waltz With Bashir, bagged the Oscar for the Best Foreign Film, and not for the Best Documentary. Folman is the documentary‘s director and lead character. Waltz With Bashir follows Folman’s personal quest to discover the meaning of disturbing hallucinations he has had from his days as an Israeli soldier fighting in Lebanon. The film, produced entirely in animation which gives it a disturbingly surrealistic and dreamlike quality, pushes the boundaries of documentary filmmaking, making it a profoundly compelling and creative representation of the horrors of war and their long-lasting effects on the human psyche. Folman’s decision to animate the atrocities of war with the vibrant, angular drawings of graphic artist David Polonsky never trivialises its harsh subject. He chose to make an animated film because it afforded him more artistic freedom. Waltz With Bashir’s captivating meditative quality comes from Folman’s—and his production team’s—complete control of cinematic elements. Their exquisite and always appropriate use of composition and color, of dark and light, of camera movement and positioning, as well as the quality of the dialog (with Folman and his fellow soldiers actually voicing their animated selves), background sound and music—in other words, all the filmmaker’s tools—creates an extraordinary work of art that commands you to watch it more than once, and reveals itself anew each time you see it. In the following interview by Steve Ericsson of Film & Video he answers questions about the genesis of the film. 16

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Was it a difficult film to make? Yeah, it was a very tough sell. If I was to do it now, I’d never declare it as an “animated documentary”. I think it’s really cool to be the first animated documentary ever done as a feature film, but the film establishment is really narrow minded in many ways. For example, documentary funds have 10 times less money than feature funds. They say, “Yes, but if it’s animated, it can’t be documentary”. Then you go to the feature funds and they say, “It’s documentary, so go there.” So it gave me a lot of problems really, raising the budget. I would have done it anyhow, it’s just the declaration was a mistake. Without using the term “documentary” we could have finished years ago. You’ve established a new genre now and you’ve done it so successfully... I don’t know. I’m not really sure about it because it’s really a huge contradiction to the main philosophy of being a documentary filmmaker, which is a very intimate way of making films. Nothing is spontaneous in animation. Every movement takes ages and it’s expensive, and it’s a lab kind of thing, you know? What do you think the animation does for the subject matter? I think the only way to do this kind of film is to animate it. In my imagination the characters didn’t have any other existences. Animation is just a free zone. It gives you freedom to do whatever you like. To go from real stories to hallucinations, to dreams, to the subconscious, to drugs, to anything, without finding excuses for how to do it. You just draw it. It’s not that it helped or assisted the story: this is the way to do it. It’s the only way it could have been done. Why do you think there are more animated films now that can deal with serious subjects than a few years ago? I think that the superheroes turned into graphic novels and the graphic novels became a modern art way of expressing journalism. Art Spiegelman’s Maus and then Joe Sacco’s works and the pretty

amazing stuff done about Bosnia and the siege in Sarajevo – Fax from Sarajevo by Joe Kubert – and it’s very trendy. It’s like a must have in every cultural house. I never understood why animation for adults didn’t exist as a genre. For me, I think it’s the future. Maybe it’s the cost and the fact that it’s time consuming and so complicated to do that if it’s done, you aim to go for a family film. Persepolis, although it has a few similarities, is a family movie. It’s not like Bashir. No doubt the production of graphic novels will lead to more adult animation films. Had you ever worked with animation before making Waltz With Bashir? Yeah, I made a documentary series called The Material That Love is Made Of. It was a 5-hour series, with 5 episodes. Each episode opened with 5 minutes of animated documentary, with scientists talking about scientific aspects behind love. Was all the animation in Waltz With Bashir hand-drawn? Of course! More than 3,000 frames were drawn. Then they were moved with cutout animation, 3-D animation and a little bit of classic, frame-by-frame animation.

next project. I have to figure out how to do the animation for my next film. It’s going to be an adaptation of Stanilslas Lem’s novel The Futurological Congress. I don’t know exactly what kind of techniques we’re going to use. It depends o the budget. Everything’s open, right now. Has Waltz With Bashir been shown in Lebanon? We were really hoping it would happen. The Belgian distributor has pretty good connections in Lebanon. Her husband is Lebanese. It seems really complicated with Hezbollah now. We might just spread around screener DVDs. What led you to decide to make an animated documentary about your memories? I thought that animation is the only way to tell this story, with memories, lost memories, dreams and the subconscious. If you want to feel any freedom as a filmmaker to go from one dimension to another, I thought the best way to do it was animation. Were you inspired by any other films about war? I was inspired mainly by books that I

Would you ever work with computer graphics? In the future, yes. I might use it on my

Ari Forman ‘s triumphant wave at the Oscars. DOCUMENTARY TODAY

read in my twenties and earlier. They were all written by people who participated in war, then grew up and took a step backwards and looked it in a funny, ironic way. Of course, Catch22 and Slaughterhouse Five. The Adventures of Wesley Jackson by William Saroyan. It’s not a book, of course, but M*A*S*H. All these things show war without any glory, bravery or brotherhood of men. In my opinion, those qualities get focused on for the wrong reasons.

Was it always your intent to end the film with that video footage? Yes. I didn’t want anyone to leave the theater thinking “This is a very cool animated movie with great drawings and music.” I wanted people to understand this really happened. Thousands of people died that weekend. Most of them were kids, unprotected women and old people. It puts the whole film into proportion and perspective. I felt I had to do it. It seems longer than it is. It’s only 50 seconds.

Several of your interview subjects say they got through war by acting like they were watching a movie. Did that influence your approach?

Did your work for TV, including the original version of the HBO show In Treatment, have any impact on your return to filmmaking? I’ve worked for both film and TV since graduating film school. My main profession is writing. I like writing for TV if the material’s good. I can stay at home all the time, in front of my computer. I like the fact that whatever I write is not up to me to direct. If I include a scene with a car crash, I don’t have to film it.

Definitely. War is like a very bad acid trip, if you’ve ever experienced it. I wanted the audience to go through this experience in a dimension that you don’t know. It’s completely different from your everyday life. The design of the animation is intended to produce this effect. From the very opening, when you see dogs running through the streets of Tel Aviv, you’re in this very unpleasant hallucination. Then it goes deeper and deeper until it reaches the documentary footage of the massacre.

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Were you surprised by some of the negative reactions Waltz With Bashir received from leftists in Israel? I was surprised I didn’t get any reaction

from the right-wing. It was really welcomed. It was adopted very warmly by everybody, but the extreme left. I can understand what they’re saying. but I don’t agree with it. How closely does the film follow your real process of recovering memories of the war? It’s pretty close, but you have to understand that there were 2 stages of filmmaking. There was the stage of gaining back my memory, which was the first step: making research, meeting people, writing the script, doing interviews. Then when we started working on the animation - each part took 2 years - and raising money, I was no longer concerned about memory or the therapeutic process. I was worrying about art and financial problems. What was your biggest challenge? The biggest challenge was just making it happen. Making this kind of film, which is unique and different, in a world where film genres are rigidly categorized. It’s really difficult to make a breakthrough in terms of raising funds and approaching TV stations. If you come with something new, it

The Animated World of Bashir

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neglected rock’n’roll and started listening to jazz. Now I only listen to free jazz and classical music. There’s a scene in Waltz With Bashir where someone watches a porn video. I was curious why you decided to make it so explicit. Explicit is a relative term in animation. It was much more extreme originally. We had a lot of arguments about this scene. The main animation designer didn’t want to work on it, but after screening the film in Israel, all the spectators who were soldiers in the early ‘80s told me they had a common memory of watching their first porn movie ever in Beirut. We didn’t have VCRs in Israel in 1982. They arrived in 1983-4, but Lebanon was flooded with them, especially Betamax. We wanted to make the scene funny. The film got an R rating from the MPAA. Are you surprised? The images of bodies at the end are much more extreme. We made an American version of the porn scene for TV broadcast. We put bathing suits and speedos with stars-and-stripes on the characters, including the dog. There’s no penetration. I think it’s much funnier. It will be on the DVD. We offered this to the US distributors Sony Classics but they didn’t want it. Are you worried that people coming in off the streets might think it’s all fictional and not realise it’s a documentary? always threatens people. They fear for their jobs. I don’t know why. Did you have a hard time balancing a larger historical perspective with your own story? I was not at all concerned with the larger historical perspective. I made a very personal film. I had no general statement. If there is one, it will be made by people who see the film. Taking a statement from a private story and finding a universal message has nothing to do with me. It’s up to film critics and the audience to define the film. 20

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I liked your use of ‘80s pop music. Were OMD’s “Enola Gay” and Public Image Ltd.’s “This Is Not a Love Song” favorite songs of yours from the period? I’m not an ‘80s fan. My musical education is stuck in the mid ‘70s. My editor grew up in the ‘80s and brought a lot of music in. I’m totally disconnected from the music of this period. Rock music is done for me by the late ‘70s. I like Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks, Pink Floyd’s Animals, Roxy Music and T. Rex. After that, I

I’m not worried. It’s more a philosophical question. Who decides when a film ends being a fiction film and starts being a documentary film? Is there any law? Is the image of a camera more real than a drawn image? In the end it will be a digital image. It will be made of pixels. So is it more real if it’s done by pixels or by beautiful artists who can draw someone for two months? And both images are using the same voiceovers, so what is more real?

ANALYSIS

CINEMATOGRAPHIC RIGOUR A Case of Four Indian Filmmakers By Amrit Gangar After the Slumdog Millionaire won several Oscars not long ago, media persistently, and loudly tried to make us believe that in the contemporary history of (Indian) cinema there existed nothing else but this film; even the bubbly Bollywood got blurred for a while; as if it was end of history. Well, the Bollywood behemoth too had been implying that there was no other stream flowing on the Indian filmscape but the mystified mainstream. All this happening in the land that essentially believes in non-absolutism and multifaceted ness of life and culture. Unfortunately, commissions and omissions of media, particularly of electronic media, during the past decade or so, have changed the ‘mass’ mindscape substantially, illusioning myth into reality, fiction into fact. And in the process there is lesser and lesser space that is stubborn enough to subvert it; constantly keeping the human stream of consciousness on a flow that is naturally normal. It will not take much effort to see that the coin is not one sided as it is made out to be, and I am not talking about the so-called smaller budget multiplex niches. My reference here is to a small

Amit Dutta

but sturdy body of certain Indian (short) films. This is the realm that still takes risk to face the mindless onslaughts of market economy whose ego was pumpingly inflated before the American “bubble” burst recently. The makers of these films (their length really does not matter like a painting whether it is small or big) are comparatively young and thinking artists. A minority that follows previous Indian masters such as Mani Kaul, Kumar Shahani and Kamal Swaroop among others. In this essay, I would like to talk about the cinematographic works of four filmmakers: Amit Dutta, Vipin Vijay, Ashish Avikunthak and Kabir Mohanty. Strangely, when the world outside – film festivals, university circuits, film schools, film foundations, and even film archives - does take a serious and respectful note of their works, in India they remain inadequately exposed, debated and written about. The reasons for such a situation could be many. One that keeps troubling me is the lack of serious study of cinema. In the country of over one billion people and thousands of films, there are barely a couple of film studies departments in

Vipin Vijay

universities, the rest all cater to mass media or mass communication, arbitrarily presuming cinema to be a product for only mass consumption. Products that sell are good, those that don’t, have no room in the place that knows only buying, selling and rejecting. Obviously, such environment is brutal for an artist-filmmaker. But as it has happened in the history of mankind, art survives and so does the precarious artist. What is needed is to save the precious little public space that sustains them and in turn saves the over-all social health and ecology. Talking about these four filmmakers, what I find most interesting is the exploration of temporal sensibilities in their works, in their own subjective ways. It is their approach to time (along, of course, with space) that should demand our attention. By its very svabhâva cinematography, I believe, is temporal, as most of the great cinematographic works have sculpted in time. Interestingly, all the four filmmakers that I am going to talk about individually have largely worked on celluloid, exploring its optical potentiality. Perhaps Avikunthak is more consistent and committed in this

Ashish Avikunthak

Kabir Mohanty DOCUMENTARY TODAY

context. But nonetheless, their acceptance of video is deeply care- and mind-ful. For them the video is not just an easily manipulatable digital gadget. Amit Dutta’s cinematography is minimal to the core and austere and I don’t think it is so because most of his works so far have been made at the Film & Television Institute of India (FTII) as a student-and-teacher-practitioner. His cinematography doubtlessly shows depth and profound playfulness and that perhaps echo Kamal Swarup’s work and ideas at least during his initial creative phase. Born on 5 September 1977 in Jammu, India and brought up there, Amit Dutta joined the FTII and graduated in film direction in 2004. Later on he had a brief teaching stint at the National Institute of Design (NID) in Ahmedabad. He now teaches at his alma mater, the FTII and also independently practices creative filmmaking. Amit Dutta’s films have won several prestigious awards in India and abroad including FIPRESCI Award at Oberhausen, Germany; Gold Medal at Bilbao, Spain; Golden Conch at the Mumbai International Film Festival and two Indian National Awards. Besides having been presented in numerous national and international venues, his works also occupy critical mentions in the catalogue of Lightcone France, which envisages “alternative histories” of cinematography from the standpoint of various perspectives and also in the book Cinema of Prayoga, which traces the history of experimental cinema in India. His latest short film Jangarh Film Ek is part of the international competition of the prestigious Oberhausen Short Film Festival in Germany, 2009.

Amit Dutta’s Jangarh Film Ek is about the Gond tribal artist Jangarh Singh Shyam, who won world renown after being brought to Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal by J. Swaminathan. He started working and painting in the city till he committed suicide in 2001. 22

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Well-known film scholar Jonathan Rosenbaum called Amit Dutta an “extraordinarily gifted Indian experimental filmmaker.” In Senses of Cinema, George Clarke called him, an “accomplished Indian experimental filmmaker.” In the context of cinematographic duree / duration (see Note at the end of this essay), I find

Amit Dutta Keshkambli, video, 25 mins, 2002 Digital Room, video, 25 mins, 2002 Fireproof Room, 35mm, 5 mins, 2002 They Remained in the Shadows, video, 16 mins, 2003 Masan, 35mm, 10 mins, 2003 Chakravak, 35mm (cinemascope), 4 mins, 2004 Ksha Tra Gya, 35mm, 22 mins, 2004 MaPa, 35mm, 10 mins, 2005 Ka, video, 45 mins, 2006 Ramkhind, video, 90 mins, 2007 Kramasha, 35mm, 22 mins, 2007 Jangarh Film Ek, video, 22 mins, 2009 While at the FTII, he made ten student films and wrote a script for a Hindi feature film. He also made a feature length documentary on the Warli tribe for the Department of Anthropology, University of Pune. He also made a video installation commissioned for an art gallery in Berlin. Dutta’s films significant as he is dealing with memory. His films such as Masan, Chakravak and Ksha Tra Gya, for instance, seem to be merging the recesses of his mind with those of our own historical pool of narratives – sort of macro and micro memories. As he told me in an interview, “Like Proust, one may suddenly remember one’s childhood, and the memory of it is more accurate and pure than the actual childhood. That’s what I am really interested in – the pure memory.” Together they, as he says, become subjective, and form a web of this particular kind of memory – memory of

memory, so to say. For Dutta, the acquired memory is also equally pure. In his films, Dutta seem to be creating a conflict between these two memories. And I consider memory as duree, which offers cinematography a temporality, evoking its essential svabhâva. Dutta’s much acclaimed 2007 short film Kramasha (To be continued…) creates, along with duree, a refreshing spatial environment. A play between the conscious and the unconscious, the film weaves memory into time and space into memory. It preserves the mystery of cinematography, as it were. Kramasha has been voted by the film critics of Senses of Cinema as one of the Best Films of the Year 2007.Till the time of writing this essay, I have not seen his last film Jangarh Film Ek, which is about the artist Jangarh Singh Shyam, who belonged to the Gond tribe, and when Bharat Bhavan was constructed in Bhopal, J. Swaminathan brought him to Bhopal. Jangarh started working and painting in the city and became very famous and then one day in 2001, he committed suicide in a museum in Japan. Dutta, in fact, proposes to make a series of films on him and this being the first, he has called it Film Ek.

With his short films, Dutta, I believe has brought in a new thinking and feeling environment into Indian cinematography, through the multiple prisms of Kathasaritsagar and other Indian narrative traditions, both oral and written, including the modernist experimental writer Vinod Kumar Shukla; besides continental views of life, including those of Gilles Deleuze’s book on Bergson. Some of Dutta’s films have been archived at Oberhausen, Lightcone, France and Bilbao, Spain. Among the young filmosophers of his age, I don’t find many counterparts to Amit Dutta in the Indian filmmaking practice. However, the one that strongly needs our attention is Vipin Vijay – his works and thoughts; and the necessary restlessness akin to an artist. Nandini Ramnath of Time Out called Vipin Vijay, “Indian experimental cinema’s new hot ticket,” and talked about his signature film Broken Glass that he made for the 2007 International Film Festival of Kerala in Thiruvanthapuram. Screened before every festival film, Vijay’s film, said Nandini, “opened with a boy tied to the moon by a rope and included image of a barking woman and a blue-faced

Experiments in pure memory … Amit Dutta. DOCUMENTARY TODAY

in the Age of Greed that we are living in. In black & white, Egotic World looks monumental for its locational choices and takes and its profound delineation. Vijay describes himself as a small-town boy from a “rabbit hole for any Alice to weave stories.”

Hawa Mahal as seen by Vipin Vijay.

look alike of the goddess Kali. Two days into the festival, some viewers began to play a game. They howled along or clapped loudly. Others jeered. Clearly, filmgoers who don’t bat an eyelid when a movie transports its lead pair from Andheri to Alps in a matter of seconds couldn’t make much sense of what was unfolding on the screen.” As I referred to above, like Amit Dutta, Vipin Vijay (b. 1976) too explores cinematography’s lila in duree - in time. And this promise is seen right in his diploma film Egotic World or Unmathbudham Jagath that he made at the Satyajit Ray Film & Television Institute, Kolkata in 2000. Egotic World deeply explores cinematographic abstraction in time. And space - even while using actors. Significantly, it is the film based on a profoundly nonnarrative Yoga and Advaita Vedanta, a text of the scripture Yoga Vasistham. The book is divided into six prakaranas or chapters, viz. Vairagya Prakarna (Dispassion), Mumukshavyavahara Prakarna (Qualifications of a Seeker), Utpatti Prakarna (Creation), Sthiti Prakarna (Existence), Upashama Prakarna (Dissolution) and Nirvarna Prakarna (Liberation, the last is the longest one divided into purvardha 24

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(pre-) and utarardha post-), a sort of prologue and epilogue. Presented as the discourse of the great sage Vasistha and Prince Rama when he is in a sate of dispassion at a young age, Yoga Vasistham is the longest text in Sanskrit after Mahabharata and Ramayana. Vipin Vijay contemporises and secularizes the text narrativizing a boy of seventeen who is entrapped inside an abode. He escapes from the Zone for a three days of perfect freedom or bliss, and goes back to abode on the fourth day. Now he finds himself elevated from the worldly pleasures, rejects liberation, attains sushupti avastha (deep sleep) and merges into the Black hole bearing the sorrow of the future. The rest of the characters who come towards him create the space-time orientations. The Boy denies the state of liberation and sacrifices himself inside an industrial belt. It is like a circular agitation, which does not exhaust itself in ecstasy and begins to gain from it. I choose to write about it at length because it is a student’s diploma film and in a way we would immediately think of the institute that allows nurturing of such a philosophical-cinematographic quest –

Fusing archival footage, memories and commentaries on politics, Vijay’s short film Video Game won the prestigious Tiger Award at the Rotterdam International Film Festival. A personal journey about life and nature, Video Game uses a motor-car (as in video games children play) alluding, as if, to Ritwik Ghatak’s memorable film Ajantrik (1958) that for the first time in Indian cinema explored man-machine relationship while epically humanizing the narrative in multiple contexts. Vijay seems to be paying a tribute to this master through this gem of a film. He had shot Video Game in Purulia (West Bengal) where he had shot Egotistic World earlier. Not bound so much by a written script, it is the randomness (time) that I find Vipin Vijay’s cinematographic works significant for. He seems to be pushing the essential time, at times, into strange ‘mythological’ spaces to reflect upon modern times. For his filmmaking, Vipin Vijay has received grants from various foundations in India and abroad. In

Vipin Vijay Tatwamasi, 2001 The Egotic World, 35mm, 2001 Kshurasyadhara, 2001 Hawamahal, 2004 Video Game, 35mm, Digital Video, 2006 A Flowering Tree, 2007 Legend of the Holy Potato, 35mm, 120 mins, 2009 (work in progress)

Ashish Avikunthak Etcetara, 16mm, 33mins,1995-98 Kalighat Fetish, 16mm, 22 mins, 1999 Rummaging for Pasts, Digital Video, 27 mins, 2001 Dancing Othello, 16mm, 18 mins, 2002 End Note, 16mm, 18 mins, 2005 Shadows Formless, 35mm, 82 mins, 2007

2003, he received the Charles Wallace Arts Award for research at the British Film Institute and India Office Records, London. He received support from the IDFA, Amsterdam; IFA, Bangalore; Majlis, Mumbai and PSBT, New Delhi for his works. A multiple award winner, Vipin Vijay’s films have been shown at several film festivals across the world. Two of his films have been acquired for permanent archive at the US Library of Congress. Vipin is at present working on a feature film with a support from the Hubert Bals Film Fund, Rotterdam. His feature film project was invited to 3 Continents Film Festival 2007, Nantes, Paris at Produire au Sud to represent India. Slightly older than Amit Dutta and Vipin Vijay, Ashish Avikunthak (b. 1972) provides yet another gripping example of Indian cinematography that steadfastly believes in its temporal (spatial) explorations through the individual narratives or non-narratives that they embark to weave. Avikunthak has been making films in India from the mid nineties. His films (several as special retrospectives) have been shown in various film festivals around the world and other venues, including Tate Modern, Centre George Pompidou, Paris and Pacific Film Archive, Berkley. Kalighat Fetish won the Best Documentary award in 2001 at the Tampere Film Festival, Finland. He has recently finished his first feature length film, Shadows Formless, which

had its world premier at the Locarno Film Festival in 2007. He has a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from Stanford University and currently teaches at Yale University. Avikunthak does look at filmmaking as ‘sculpting in time’ as the great Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky puts it. In fact, Avikunthak’s foray into filmmaking was directly an attempt at playing with time. The case in point is his short film Et cetera (1998), which is a tetralogy of four separate films, thematically coherent within a conscious bonding and exploratory in nature. They seek to examine the various levels at which the reality of human existence functions. Et cetera is an attempt at engaging with real time, the fact that they are single shot, single takes, unedited films. For Avikunthak, as a temporal experience, they are most

linear cinematographic narratives, most pure. In fact, Avikunthak seems to be ‘slicing time’ in these films. Interestingly, it is the haptic cinema that attracts Avikunthak. The term ‘haptic’ is used in psychology to indicate the tactile, proprioceptive and kinesthetic senses. In a way it refers to what Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari called ‘smooth space,’ a space that must be moved through by constant reference to the immediate environment. Closerange space is navigated not through reference to the abstractions of maps or compasses, but by haptic perception, attending to their particularity. Deleuze and Guattari wrote, “it seems to us that the Smooth is both the object of a close vision par excellence and the element of a haptic space (which may be as much visual or auditory as tactile), although the eye

Vipin Vijay’s A Flowering Tree. DOCUMENTARY TODAY

at the University of Iowa in North America, where he studied film and video making. Prior to that Mohanty (b. 1960) had studied economics at Presidency College, Calcutta. Mohanty’s films and videos have been shown at many festivals and art venues in India and abroad. He has received support in the form of a number of international grants and awards. From September 2002 till June 2004, he was a Visiting Scholar in UCLA’s Department of Art in the USA.

Nirakar Chhaya or Shadows Formless was premiered at the Locarno Film Festival.

in turn is not the only organ to have this capacity…” Working mostly in 16mm, Avikunthak, as I understand, deals increasingly with optics, thereby continuing with the traditions of the experimental film, which I call Cinema of Prayoga. What is important is the way he temporalizes the haptic, the physical space. The relationship between the living and the inanimate is the pivot on which the action in the films occur. Avikunthak retains his engagement with duree in all his works but perhaps more emphatically in Kalighat Fetish / Kalighat Athikatha (1999), Dancing Othello / Brihannala Ki Khelkali (2002) and End Note / Antraal (2005) besides Et cetera. 26

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Avikunthak’s feature film Shadows Formless / Nirakar Chhaya is based on the Malayalam novella Pandavpuram by the distinguished novelist Sethumadhavan. Trapped between two monologues, a lonely and abandoned wife’s fantasy comes to life when the paramour she invokes springs forth and transforms her reality. On such narrative anchor, the film quite delicately retains its temporal moorings. First premiered at the Locarno International Film Festival in 2007 and later at different venues, at MIACC Film Festival in New York it was also honoured with an award. In age, oldest of the four, Kabir Mohanty’s engagement with cinematography goes back to his days

With video, he developed a special relationship after having seen the works of such masters as Vasulkas, Nam June Paik and Bill Viola. Video provided Mohanty an opportunity to do, what he calls, ‘solo’ works that he was contemplating for many years. Video always made more sense to him as a ‘solo’ praxis – like a musician or a painter. However, in the process of choosing video, a lot of thinking had gone into it – about the intrinsic nature of video per se. The first single channel video that Mohanty made was called Home (1996). It pulsates in duree, in time and to achieve that in video one needs a meditative approach, a sustained belief. Film (celluloid) making for Kabir is like an ensemble, a jugalbandi. It was while shooting his short film and now i feel i don’t know anything (on 35mm), the Dhrupad singer Bahauddin Dagar told Mohanty that the director’s interaction with his fellow artists – cinematographer, actor, et al – was like a jugalbandi. Obviously, Mohanty does not subscribe to the auteur theory. Interestingly, Mohanty now feels that both solo in video and ensemble in film are strongly related. By alluding to music, Mohanty also alludes to time. How does Mohanty approach his video studies? Interestingly, duree or duration for him is a ‘section of time’. For him, this ‘section of time’ is not a shot because it accepts dysfunctionality. As he says, ‘something accumulates in this time; something unfolds. Nothing is left out, you are not editing, you are not putting things together later, you feel a great

sense of lightness. And at the same time, it doesn’t feel slight because a phenomenal amount of energy has already gone into it.” As a matter of fact, Mohanty’s video studies are very small scale-wise but still they acquire a certain level of monumentality in their historic-philosophic resonances, even in their soloness. I think it is his temporal tendency that makes his video practice transcend the obvious hereand-now. Mohanty’s video making practice is like musicians’ engagement with music. In this context, it is important to understand his approach. As he explains, “During the shoot, I let many things go, someone coughing on the way, or a black spot intervening; in the process there could be a lag, a dip, but there is always life because my mind is still alert. In a conventional technical sense you can’t call this a shot. I think this kind of video making practice might be making musicians feel closer to my work. It is the practitioner’s sensibility moving in time. And I think video provides the experience of a seamless time.” It is Mohanty’s recent video work titled song for an ancient land I found achieving a kind of monumentality that is perhaps rare for a video. Proposed to be a four-part work, song for an ancient land draws substantially from the historian-mathematician D.D. Kosambi, who had a very radical view of history that lived all around us. History at the Doorstep, he would call. Mohanty finds history just outside his home in the Pali area of Mumbai’s suburb of Bandra. It is all there in the fruit seller’s, in the cobbler’s, on roads, in trees - in time. In duree that his rigorous videostudy deepens to transcend. Mohanty believes that video’s relation to film has not been explored adequately well in India as well as outside. Video, as he maintains, has a certain quality of sculpting. At Iowa, his teacher (Leighton Pierce) who worked in films around the same time as Bill Viola told him that Viola had inspired his films. Mohanty finds it interesting how a video artist could

inspire his contemporary counterpart in film. Bill Viola, who comes from music background, has not shot on film ever in his life. By now it is apparent that it is duree that runs through the works of these four filmmakers, in its own rhythm and that offers a certain dignity to

cinematography (including video) it longs for. It is extremely easy to make or produce films like products and sell them in markets, and like any other products they might sell well or not. They, in the final analysis, are doomed to find their place in the profit-and-loss ledger, real or perceived, black or white!

Kabir Mohanty Eldon Moss, 16mm, 30mins, 1986 Angela, 16mm, 30mins, 1986 Riyaaz, 35mm, 15mins, 1990 When hungry eat, when tired go to sleep, Feature film script, 1993. Hubert Bals Fund Award, International Film Festival Rotterdam Fond Sud Grant, Ministry of External Affairs, France Home, Video, 28 mins, 1996 And now i feel i don’t know anything, 35mm, 35mins, 2001 night I, Digital Video, 4 mins, 2004 6’58", Digital Video, 7mins, 2003 Mountain, Digital Video, 2.5mins, 2005 Dwelling, Video and Sound Installation, 2006 Song for an ancient land Part I (of four parts), Video Essay, 51mins, 2006 Handheld, Video Installation, 2008 Works-in-progress: Song for an ancient land, Parts II, III and IV, together 200mins, making the entire work 250mins or approx. 4-hour long. Untitled, Sound Installation with recorded tracks and live microphones, with Vikram Joglekar, sound recordist and designer, based in Rome, Italy. Untitled, Video Installation in collaboration with dancer Padmini Chettur. DOCUMENTARY TODAY

Besides the obvious ‘temporal’ unities, I also find the ‘non-realist’ approaches that these four filmmakers take to their cinematographic practice. This, as I believe, must have been influenced by Mani Kaul, Kumar Shahani, and Kamal Swaroop among other filmmakers across the world. Both Kaul and Shahani have questioned the very making of the lens deriving from the Renaissance’s theory of perspective / convergence. As Kaul says, “The effort in cinema has been naturally limited since the birth of the pinhole camera came about through perspective itself. Perspective also provides an illusion of being or moving in a threedimensional space, leading up to notions of realism and realist structures of narrative, which control the contemporary idiom in the cinematograph and generate certain powerful cliches, including those that animate hyper-realist conventions.” According to Kaul, convergence (or ‘climax’ in the conventional narrative) is very much the fruit of a movement that runs from a foreground to a middle ground to a background, casting a horizon where parallel lines are ‘seen’ to converge. After a series of minor

Desolate sea beaches in Kabir Mohanty’s Song of an Ancient Land.

convergences the major climatic convergence winds up the argument of the narrative discourse. Prior to the appearance of perspective, the epics and later the chronicles spread themselves in the manner of poetic elaboration, expansive description, often not reaching the climax in time

when viewed against rhythms prevailing today. The termination of the event, which, these days, would be built, developing into a climax, did in the traditional texts suddenly appear at the very end. Fight against perspective has inspired many a modern painter, writer, musician and filmmaker from the turn of the 20th century. (An Approach to Naukar ki Kameez, Mani Kaul, Cinemaya, 31, Winter 1995-96) It would be interesting to see and study the works of the four filmmakers referred to in this essay in this background that look at cinematography as a radically different dispensation. And here lies the hope for a cinematography that sculpts itself in time, beyond the realist frame, as it were. Hope, perhaps, lies in their rigour of austerity.

The fountainhead … Mani Kaul, among other filmmakers, has had a great influence on the four filmmakers discussed in the article. 28

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Note: Without going into the complexity of the term duree, I have used it more simply in the sense of Bergsonian duration, however, not in a sense of an objective mathematical unit. It is rather a subjective perception of space-time. – AG (Amrit Gangar is a Mumbai-based author and curator.)

ESSAY

How Copyright Laws Inhibit Documentary Filmmakers By Shari Kizirian The laws and practices dealing with intellectual property both inhibit and protect artists. Copyright laws and other intellectual property protections shield the artist from having his or her work appropriated for uses, either commercial or otherwise, without compensation and acknowledgement. Intellectual Property laws also inhibit artists by limiting access to materials, also protected by copyright law, which could be used in the creation of new work. Social-issue documentary makers, too, are subject to these same protections and limitations in the creation of their works. Documentarians have often relied on the umbrella protection of journalists whose reports are protected by “fair use” exceptions to copyright laws. The public’s right to know has often trumped the copyright holder’s legal right to compensation. However, fair use does not cover every situation and legal action challenging a documentary maker’s claim to fair use, even though eventually upheld, can often cripple a producer’s ability to distribute the work. In addition, the conglomeration of media outlets under corporate ownership have increased the legal threat to independent makers who lack the resources, including legal staff, even to fight a copyright infringement challenge.

incidental inclusion of a trademarked building in a city’s skyline or of a painting hanging in some interview subject’s living room. For example, use of the Zapruder footage of the Kennedy assassination can cost up to $15,000. Music for films also can be prohibitively expensive or altogether disallowed, such as in the case of Nick Broomfield’s high profile exposé “Kurt and Courtney,” for which rights holder and Cobain widow Courtney Love denied Broomfield the use of Nirvana songs just before the film was scheduled to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. Adapting historical written materials for documentaries can also be

prevented, if not rendered prohibitively expensive, as in the case of a Dutch filmmaker whose attempts to make a documentary based on Anne Frank’s diaries were, temporarily at least, thwarted by the copyright holder, Anne Frank Funds. Social-issue documentary makers are not often engaged in such high-profile work and usually are able to remain below the radar of legal action. However, keeping a low profile frequently means reaching a limited Courtney Love denied Broomfield the use of Kurt Cobain’s Nirvana songs. Kurt and Cobain are seen here before Cobain’s death.

Most documentary makers, as artists themselves, recognize the need to credit the creators of original works of art, but can often not afford to pay rates the rates required either by archives for footage or for the DOCUMENTARY TODAY

It may seem minor at first glance, but filmmaker Micha X. Peled’s decision to obscure any reference to Wal-Mart in the publicity posters for his documentary “Store Wars: When WalMart Comes to Town,” has far-reaching implications for issues of censorship.

The Zapruder footage of the Kennedy assassination can be prohibitively expensive.

audience. Makers incorporating footage of copyright protected or trademark materials can be prevented from having any audience at all. In 2001, ITVS commissioned several independent filmmakers to create interstitials about 9/11 in an effort to balance the popular news media’s onesided view of the attacks and their aftermath. Ellen Spiro created four such interstitials, one of which, “Dog Bless America,” was a humorous and critical look at the unquestioning patriotism that swelled just after the attacks. Because rights to the original song, “God Bless America,” were not cleared, Spiro’s piece was neither broadcast nor streamed on the ITVS Web site. Although a copyright infringement challenge could have been aptly met with an argument for parody under fair use exceptions to copyright laws, the threat alone of such a challenge was enough to suppress the piece. Now, although ITVS aired Spiro’s three other interstitials, “Dog Bless America” will likely never be seen. Copyright also protects the filmmaker against misuse or misrepresentation of works. During the brouhaha over Marlon Riggs’s documentary about African American homosexuals, “Tongues Untied,” presidential candidate Pat Buchanan used portions of the documentary in television ads 30

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railing against government funding and public television broadcasts of such work. His use of the clips violated copyright laws and he was warned against using them. Copyright infringement can also be wielded as a tool of corporate censorship. A corporate interest, though not threatened financially by nonpayment of licensing fees, can invoke infringement and hinder investigations into its corporate practices, which affect public interest.

Micha X.Peled negotiated with Wal-Mart to gain access to film in its stores for Store Wars: When WalMart Comes to Town.

To make the ITVS funded documentary about what happens when public space becomes privatized, Peled negotiated with Wal-Mart to gain access to film in its stores and to interview employees, to use footage of founder Sam Walton and shareholders’ meetings, and to use other types of corporate owned footage. At no time in the negotiations was payment for use of any footage discussed. The negotiations centered on Wal-Mart’s attempts to assert editorial control over the final documentary. Peled and producers at ITVS were ultimately successful at getting the necessary footage and at acquiring the access needed while maintaining editorial control. Luckily for Peled, he had the support of ITVS and the imprimatur of PBS, on his side. Plus, the costs (including time spent) of meeting each challenge were not prohibitive. In the end, Peled was able

enter a contract with PBS or other broadcasters knowing their films will have a life outside its television broadcast, often editing one version for television and one for educational or even theatrical release. PBS, or even HBO, has the rights to broadcast for a limited time and are generally most interested in generating publicity for and limiting exposure to the work for the premiere only. Most filmmakers insert special clauses into their contracts thereby ensuring that their films can still be used for educational benefit.

Vietnam protesters burn the American flag. You can do this because there is no copyrights for flags.

to make the film he wanted. However, fear of lawsuits led to an increase in the cost of Errors and Omissions Insurance by about 40 percent. As for the poster—an important marketing tool that could have capitalized on the Wal-Mart trademark to attract viewers to the broadcast—it originally included a photo of a WalMart storefront in colors associated with Wal-Mart’s own marketing campaigns. For fear of being sued for trademark violations, Peled requested changes to the poster to obscure the Wal-Mart storefront and opted for a different color scheme.

technologies to limit access to intellectual property have not yet been fully experienced by social-issue documentary makers. Broadcast flags, which are designed to prevent unlawful copying of works aired, have so far had little effect on such projects. Most social-issue documentary makers

Judith Helfand and Dan Gold’s “Blue Vinyl,” for instance, was picked by HBO, but the producers were careful that the Web site developed for the film and any outreach screenings planned for their documentary about the deleterious effects of vinyl and its manufacture would not be interfered with. Some filmmakers, such as Arthur Dong who turned down $250,000 from ITVS for Family Fundamentals, prefer to remain completely independent unless he can maintain the right to selfdistribute his own works. By maintaining complete control, he can use his projects as he sees fits, offering them for benefit screenings or even

Peled explains the implications: “It’s the threat of suits rather than actual action that causes costs to rise and leads to self-censorship. During the Vietnam War, protesters burned the flag; there’s no copyright for flags. Now, to protest the actions of corporations, the most powerful entities today, what you are going to do, shred their logo on camera? That logo is copyright protected.” The implications of digital rights management and the use of digital

Dan Gold, one of the directors of Blue Vinyl. DOCUMENTARY TODAY

handing out free copies if he feels it will help him achieve his goals. Broadcast flags and any encryption coding designed to prevent copying of social-issue docs can benefit the filmmaker by protecting her works from piracy. Most doc makers are trying to earn a living, too. However, the uninhibited copying of some works can be more important to some makers who, for what ever reason, can afford to be less interested in royalties lost and more interested in spreading the information or message in their documentaries. Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Taylor happily acknowledge that their documentary “In and Out of Africa” is being illegally copied throughout Africa. More people can see the film, which is more important to them than collecting payment for each copy made or

collecting royalties for each screening. Such pirated tapes also can help build an interest in their work, facilitating distribution on a next project. In any case, documentarians prefer to have the decision left in their hands rather than in the hands of the broadcaster or Webcaster (as the reality of broadband approaches). Threats to social-issue documentarians take more menacing forms. Attempts to restrict access to government information—the USA Patriot Act and the current debate over the Office of Management and Budget’s ruling that the GPO now must be opened up to competition—as well as the ability provided by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act for intellectual property holders to take away fair use access to materials by writing restrictive codes into the software offer many challenges to the social-issue documentary

Ilisa Barbash.

maker—the effects of which may not be felt or assessed until some point in the future. An informal network of experimental and documentary filmmakers who share copyrighted materials and knowledge about dealing with copyrighted footage already exists. Also, filmmakers can sometimes save money by trading footage from their own projects in exchange for use of archival materials or other footage. Arthur Dong made own such trade for his film “Family Fundamentals”: footage from one of his previous films in exchange for clips from Fox news broadcast. The rise of formal “commons,” such as the Stanford-based Creative Commons, although well intentioned, will have to meet a heavy burden of quantity and diversity of materials to benefit social-issue documentary filmmakers. Since its creation, Creative Commons has attracted some musicians, photographers, authors, and filmmakers to exchange copyrighted materials or to offer their works to the public domain. However, a large enough pool of resources has not yet been developed to benefit those requiring use of archival footage, access to copyrighted music, and other materials necessary to social-issue documentarians. Indeed, most socialissue documentaries have other copyrighted materials embedded within them that cannot be made available for free exchange to another member of the commons.

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It remains to be seen if commons licensing can become a major factor in loosening the restrictions on intellectual property uses. The recent Supreme Court ruling against the Eldred challenge to the Copyright Extension Act, by upholding the right of Congress to create such legislation, makes the urgency of commons licensing more apparent than ever. Concern about the appropriation of cultures, stories, and knowledge in documentary films has been a concern since the silent era and continues to mark the current climate surrounding Intellectual Property Rights. Although few documentaries break even and still fewer make a profit, makers still feel the need to provide some sort of compensation to their subjects. This compensation can take the form of cash or gifts, given in ways and at times designed to have the least impact on the behavior of the subjects on camera. In their book, “Cross Cultural Filmmaking,” Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Taylor describe some filmmakers, including Sarah Elder and Leonard Kamerling of the Alaska Native Heritage Film Project, who go further by sharing copyright with the subjects of their documentaries. Filmmaker Maja Tillman Salas, who produced a five-part video project for China’s Center for Biodiversity and Indigenous Knowledge, feels that the knowledge shared by her film subjects belongs to them. The filmmaker agreed to teach filmmaking to her subjects in exchange for sharing their knowledge about indigenous cultural practices, but she felt that wasn’t enough. Tillman Salas also shared filmmaking credit with all her subjects, whose knowledge of papermaking and the manufacture of cloth from hemp plants she considers to be their intellectual property. However, given the nature of her films, it is unlikely that any financial profit will ever have to be divided among them. (Shari Kizirian is the Managing Editor, Release Print, Film Arts Foundation)

The Public Domain Creativity and innovation rely on a rich heritage of prior intellectual endeavor. We stand on the shoulders of giants by revisiting, reusing, and transforming the ideas and works of our peers and predecessors. Digital communications promise a new explosion of this kind of collaborative creative activity. But at the same time, expanding intellectual property protection leaves fewer and fewer creative works in the “public domain” — the body of creative material unfettered by law and, to quote Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, “free as the air to common use.” Until 1976, creative works were not protected by U.S. copyright law unless their authors took the trouble to publish a copyright notice along with them. Works not affixed with a notice passed into the public domain. Following legislative changes in 1976 and 1988, creative works are now automatically copyrighted. We believe that many people would not choose this “copyright by default” if they had an easy mechanism for turning their work over to the public or exercising some but not all of their legal rights. It is Creative Commons’ goal to help create such a mechanism.

Open Content The free software and open source software communities have inspired what is sometimes called “open content.” Some copyright holders have made books, music, and other creative works available under licenses that give anyone permission to copy and make other uses of the works without specific permission or a royalty payment. Creative Commons hopes to build on the work of these pioneers by creating a menu of license provisions that people can combine to make their work available for copying and creative reuses.

The Commons The idea of “the commons”lies in between these two concepts — resources that are not divided into individual bits of property but rather are jointly held so that anyone may use them without special permission. Think of public streets, parks, waterways, outer space, and creative works in the public domain — all of these things are, in a way, part of the commons. The “tragedy of the commons” is the familiar notion that widespread public use of a commons leads to its inevitable depletion. But some resources, once created, cannot be depleted. In the words of Thomas Jefferson, “He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine receives light without darkening me.” An idea is not diminished when more people use it. Creative Commons aspires to cultivate a commons in which people can feel free to reuse not only ideas, but also words, images, and music without asking permission — because permission has already been granted to everyone. DOCUMENTARY TODAY

Born In Brothels deals with the children of prostitutes.

What makes for a great moment in a documentary? That can sometimes be a complicated issue, because some of the “greatest” moments are also the saddest, and it’s pretty callous to glorify other people’s tragedy. My standard for “great” here

Barbara Kopple, director of Harlan County, USA.

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is pretty much those moments when I, as a viewer, feel that the documentary I am watching is transcending itself, and reaching out to me in a truly transportive, radical way. Sometimes, it’s a moment that demonstrates the medium at its best, and other times, it’s purely something that elicits my emotional reaction (or course, the two are not necessarily exclusive). 10: Roger & Me: I can pinpoint the moments when I first fell in love with documentary film. One was watching Koyanasqaatsi accompanied by a live performance from Philip Glass; the other is sitting at the Thalia theater in Providence, Rhode Island, watching Roger & Me. The moment with the woman who skins the rabbits was just so jaw-droppingly funny/ real/sad that it had me at the edge of my seat — and opened a window to how powerful docs could be.

9: The Betrayal (Nerakhoon): Maybe it’s because I saw this recently, but toward the end of this riveting film, there’s a reunion moment that had me in tears. I defy anyone to watch this without getting weepy. 8: The Kid Stays in the Picture: The opening sequence of this film — from the raising of the red curtain to the thrilling effects of pictures floating in three-dimensional spaces, accompanied by Robert Evans’ bizarre narrative voice — was the perfect introduction to a film that bathes in its own Hollywood mythologizing. 7: Grizzly Man: It’s not when Timothy Treadwell gets eaten that gets me; it’s when he says, “I will die for these animals, I will die for these animals, I will die for these animals.” And he did. This makes me realize I’ll

have to do another list — the greatest doc characters. Treadwell is definitely in my top five. 6: Bowling for Columbine: I may be going against the grain here, but when director Michael Moore interviews Charlton Heston, the moment is so wrong, so exploitative, and yet so fascinating to watch that I have to put it on this list. Maybe it shows us that Moore’s brilliiant, or that he’s a bastard — but either way, it’s all about what he does best. 5: Born into Brothels: About 30 minutes in, the impoverished children of prostitutes go for a trip to see the Indian Ocean for the first time. With soaring, Indian chant music chiming rhythmically on the soundtrack, and the children’s anxious faces brimming with excitement, the moment is filled with hope and joy. As the bus driver blares his horn, the setup is at once familiar for anyone who has gone on a road trip as a child, but at the same time markedly foreign. And then, as the children return to the red light district, we in the audience hear a singer’s tragic wail, and we witness the children’s faces growing stoic. It’s as convincing a depiction of the depths of hell on earth as any caught on film.

A moving moment in The Betrayal.

4: God Grew Tired of Us: In this film about the lost boys of Sudan (who walked a thousand miles to escape war in their homeland), there’s a scene that breaks my heart. Toward the end of the film, after the boys are relocated to America, one of them is reunited with his mother. When she arrives at the Syracuse airport and sees her son for the first time in 20 years, she lets out a heart-piercing wail and collapses to the floor. The intensity, the clashing of cultures and the pure dramatic high of the moment, is at once baffling and cathartic.

3: Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills: The loss of innocence and the destruction of justice takes on a surreal level of clarity when the stepfather of one of the murdered boys, who shows himself to be totally unhinged and is subtly presented as a suspect in the eyes of the filmmakers, if not the police, visits the site of the crime. 2: Salesman: Paul, one of the salesmen featured in the Maysles’ brothers’ ground-breaking documentary, sits in a coffee shop and looks out the window. It’s as simple and quiet a moment as could be, but it is so filled with longing and lost dreams that it equals or even beats the best you could find in a Cheever or Updike story. 1: Harlan County, USA: Remember when the scabs and gun-toting thugs attack the strikers? What makes this unforgettable to me is when the sheriff waves his gun in the most laconic, insidious way at director Barbara Kopple. You can hear Kopple yelp in fear; I was shaken to the core. One of the lost boys of Sudan finds a home in America in God Grew Tired of Us DOCUMENTARY TODAY

MEMOIRS

The Man Who Conquered the Palk Straits Former newsreel cameraman H.S. ADVANI recalls that momentous day in April 1966 when he was deputed to record the rare occasion of Mihir Sen conquering the Palk Straits Winter in Bangalore was quite cool during the last week of March 1966. I had been posted there as Assistant Newsreel Cameraman. A communication received from our Producer (Newsreels) based at our Bombay headquarters got me into quick action mode. I was asked to “cover” Mr. Mihir Sen, a renowned channel swimmer and a 36-year-old barrister from Bengal who was to swim across the Palk Straits any day after 2nd April, 1966. Mr. Mihir Sen had made news earlier as the first person to successfully cross the English Channel. I was asked to get in touch with the Defence PRO for the arrangements and any help that I may require. When I contacted the PRO he asked me to meet him at Mandapam near Rameshwaram by 31st March, 1966. As soon as I reached the PRO’s makeshift office in Mandapam, I found, to my pleasant surprise, that a sizeable group of Press friends had assembled. Many of my Press photographer-friends like Chari from The Hindu, Raghavendra from Indian Express, and Venkatachala from the Bangalore Deccan Herald and correspondents from The Hindu, Statesman and many other newspapers and sports magazines including the well-known newscaster Melville De Mellow of All India Radio, had already assembled there. Soon after the usual bonhomie followed by excellent south Indian flavoured coffee, the PRO got down to the business of briefing the assembled Press. Unfolding the events that were 36

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to follow, he emphasized that the Indian Navy was giving its full support to Mr. Mihir Sen so that he could achieve his feat. Lieutenant Sharma, Captain of I.N.S.Sharada, told the gathering that the entire press would be ferried across to Talaimannar, which is in Sri Lanka, by I.N.S.Sharada. Mihir Sen was to start swimming from Talaimannar before dawn and was expected to take about 15 hours to cover the stretch of 22 Km to reach Dhanushkodi by about sunset. Lt. Sharma added that Mr. Sen would be accompanied by four swimmers from the Navy. The Press would be given a small motorized boat to “cover” the event. The boat would be at a distance from Mr. Sen so the pressure from the waves created by the motorised boat would not disturb him. This announcement posed a major problem for me: how could I film the start of the event since it was scheduled to start much before dawn, which meant it would still be quite dark when I started filming. I discussed the problem with all the Naval Officers as well as the

PRO as to how we could light up the area where Mihir Sen was to take a plunge into the Indian Ocean. The Naval officers came up with various ideas, one being the use of shooting flares to light up the area. The idea of lighting up the sky was not feasible because of the speed of the B&W film I was using at that time. Finally, at the end of the discussion, I found no light was available –particularly in that small village of Talaimannar. Unlike today, film technology had not progressed enough to solve issues such as these. Reluctantly I resigned myself to dealing with the issue on D day. That evening Mihir Sen along with the Naval Officials met the assembled

On the morning of 4th April the entire group – including the Press – set sail by I.N.S.Sharada. Melville D’Mellow of AIR who was the seniormost of the Press, made our one-hour journey lively and enjoyable with his humorous talk and songs. Talaimannar was a small hamlet on the north coast of Sri Lanka with a fairly small population of fishermen. After lunch we moved around. I was still trying to locate a possible source of light for filming the pre-dawn sequence. There did not seem to be any possibility at all. Once again I postponed the decision with “let’s face the situation as it emerges. Mihir Sen refreshes himself midway between the swim. Press. He formally announced that he would begin his swim from Talaimannar probably on the morning of 2nd April – depending on the tide and current level. The next day, at the breakfast table, one of the journalists broke the news that the swim had been postponed by a day. The Naval PRO who arrived on the scene a little later confirmed the postponement. He said that arrangements had been made for the Press to visit Rameshwaram which was an hour’s drive from where we were. I suspected that the sightseeing visit was a ploy to keep the journalists away from Mihir Sen but nevertheless we set out for Rameshwaram soon after breakfast. We all had good fun visiting the ancient temple. As we were returning to Mandapam, the PRO told us that we would be visiting Mandapam’s Aquarium in the noon where the Director of the aquarium would meet us. The journalists began murmuring, “Oh! One more visit!” The PRO added that this time Mihir Sen and the Naval Officials would also accompany us to the aquarium. That seemed to satisfy the journalists. The Director of the Aquarium took us around and showed us the several family of fish that could be found in the Palk Straits. Apart from the deadly sharks, there were the Stinging Fish. “One sting from these is enough to cut the stung portion of the body,” he said

ominously. While the Director kept telling us about the many deadly species of marine life, I kept studying Mihir Sen’s expression. His face couldn’t hide the utter shock of what was to come. At one stage, I even felt that he might be seriously having second thoughts about his safety. Of course, the Director assured us that the possible danger could be overcome with adequate precaution. Towards the end of the aquarium visit, while we were having coffee, an announcement was made that the exact date of the swim had been finalized. It was to be 5th April, 1966.

That night we rested in a small house. A few people in high spirits kept singing. Melville D’Mellow gave them company. Everyone joined in at the chorus. It was great fun singing all the way. The PRO told us that we were to leave for the sea at 4 a.m. the next morning. Several jeeps assembled the next morning at 4 a.m. and ferried all us to the nearest point where Mr. Sen was to start his swim. The jeeps solved my problem of shooting in the dark at 4 a.m. The headlamps of the jeeps provided me with enough light. I asked the drivers to bring the jeeps to the

Sharing an honoured moment with Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. DOCUMENTARY TODAY

was sailing about half mile away and was in constant touch, through walkietalkie, with the entire group. Since the sky had now brightened up, the visual media press – that is, the photographers and I – requested the PRO to take us close to the swimmer so that we could get close shots. He told us that the small oar boats could only carry two additional persons at a time. As the oar boat slowly came towards us it was decided that The Hindu’s senior photographer and a very popular and jovial personality Chari and I would go first. Both of us were not swimmers and so along with our photographic equipment we also took along some protective gear. Holding aloft the trophy Mihir received for his swimming prowess. point where Mr. Sen was being prepared for the swim. This was a short distance of 500 feet. To my relief, the drivers agreed to my suggestion. I got back into the jeep and the entire convoy moved to the point where Mr Sen was seated. I got down and started directing the drivers to bring the jeeps as close to the point as possible. 12 jeeps focused their headlamps on the entire team of people who were about to prepare Mr. Sen. They were applying oil and several types of repellents. With the headlights of all the jeeps focused on Mr. Sen and his men, the light was indeed sufficient to capture the event on the fast film I had. After taking all the relevant shots from the shore, I ran and stood knee-deep in the water just as he was getting ready to take the plunge. I was able to capture all the actions. Though the sky was still dark I could film his movements as long as I could see. At last I was indeed happy. The Naval officers along with the entire assembled Press got into a fairly big motorised boat at the nearby jetty and, a little later, we were on the way to Dhanushkodi. On the east side on the Indian Ocean horizon the sky was slowly getting brighter. After sailing some distance, another motorised boat arrived. We could see another sailor bringing several big containers which 38

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were transported to our boat. A few minutes later the Naval PRO announced the arrival of breakfast. We were treated to a sumptuous breakfast of South Indian delicacies followed by real South Indian flavoured coffee which helped to digest the heavy breakfast. At around 6.30 a.m. we could spot the swimmer group: Mihir Sen guarded by four swimmers, one in front and another in the rear. The Navy’s ace frogman Lt Martis was on Sen’s right. The group was followed by several oar boats very close to the swimmer. I.N.S.Sharada

The oar boat was very wobbly in the sea. Two oarsmen rowed the boat slowly towards Mr. Sen. It was a rare sight: watching Mihir Sen, swimming against the spread of orange light emanating from the rising Sun. I did not lose a moment and captured the magnificent view. We were now very close to Mr. Sen. I filmed him in action. It was still morning and he was in high spirits. This I could see in the closeups. After we were both thoroughly satisfied with what we had covered, we returned. One by one all the photographers and correspondents had their turn.

Being awarded the Padma Shri at the hands of President Rajendra Prasad.

By 11.30 a.m. the Sun was scorching down upon us. It was getting very hot in the boat. I kept taking long distance shots that gave an idea of the scorching heat from the bare sky. The PRO told us that Mr. Sen would be given fruit juice and tender coconut water. Once again we went to film the sequence of him swimming in the unbearable hot sun. As the boat approached the group of swimmers I saw that Mr. Sen had stopped swimming for while – maybe for a little rest. A few minutes later he drank the juice and coconut water and then looked around. He began talking to Lt Martis. Mr. Sen was swimming with his eye on reaching the goal: Dhanushkodi. As we moved away from him, I got many more shots. This time I felt that Mr. Sen had definitely slowed down a little. At lunch time our boat moved close to the main ship. Two sailors got down the ropes with packed lunch packs. Another sailor brought down two big containers of south Indian sambhar. Lunch was delicious and sumptuous and, I must say, the Naval cook had a good idea of the Press appetite. Probably another half an hour must have elapsed when suddenly we heard a shot being fired. Our eyes and ears were glued to the swimming zone. The PRO told us that the ever-vigilant Lt Martis had spotted a three-foot-long snake and had taken a successful potshot at it with his pistol. Apparently an unperturbed Mr. Sen had gone on swimming in spite of the anxiety caused in the party following him. By then he had covered about 11 miles and had another 11miles to go. Dusk approached and I could see that the sun was slowly getting ready to call it a day. I asked the PRO for another trip in the oar boat. Once again we reached Mr. Sen. I “shot” him from several angles in close-ups. He was showing signs of fatigue. The setting sun with its varied hues of colour that lit up the sky was a treat for my trusted Eyemo camera. That view is still etched in my memory chip forever. I wished I

had Eastmancolor film to capture that colourful sky. Whenever I think back to that day I wonder if my favorite Eyemo has ever seen such a magnificent canvas of the setting sun. Back on board of our boat, as the skylight was fast fading, the PRO told us that we would be returning to I N S Sharada. On board the ship we were told that Mr. Sen was a little off-course and hence, was likely to reach Dhanushkodi late. The steady breeze of the night made the current very strong and took him off the course. Ace frogman Lt Martis corrected the course just in time and continued to swim alongside him. I N S Sharada was monitoring the party regularly and hence kept updating us. By midnight we decided to sleep for some time before we reached Dhanushkodi. Around 5 a.m. we were all wide awake and ready to reach Dhanushkodi. All of us got into the small motor boat that took us to the pier near the shore. We got onto the pier. As we moved we found out that, after a little distance, the pier had narrowed. We had to balance and move to a distance of about 100 feet. I st6ood there with my camera held on to my shoulder on one side. On the other side I had a bag full of Eyemo film rolls and accessories. I started moving slowly. A distance of

twenty feet was left when I lost my balance and fell down on the beach. I got up and to my horror found that all the three lenses I had were covered with sand – fortunately dry sand. Luckily I was able to clean up the lenses after removing the sand with a brush and polishing them with chamois leather. Once again I was ready to shoot. All my press photographerfriends helped me. We moved towards the point where Mr. Sen was to land. There was a fairly large crowd. A row of nadaswaram players were already playing. I got several shots of the nadaswaram players as well as several people with colourful flowers and garlands were waiting anxiously looking to the spot where Mr. Sen was to arrive. A few minutes later I spotted the party approaching the shore. I started shooting. A little later, when Mr. Sen was about to reach the shore, I pressed the trigger and managed to immortalise Mr. Sen completing the swim and walking gracefully to a hero’s welcome. It was 7 a.m. My camera was still shooting as his wife and brother gave him warm hug. It was an emotional sight to watch Mr. Sen hugging Lt Martis who had also swum all the way for 26 hours and was with Mihir Sen all through the entire marathon swim.

Mihir Sen after his swimming days are over. DOCUMENTARY TODAY

60 DIAMOND YEARS

Kuldeep Sinha, Chief Producer, Films Division, performs the bhoomi pujan just before the construction of the stage for the Diamond Jublee celebrations.

Kuldeep Sinha addresses a press conference announcing the Grand Finale of the Diamond Jubilee in Mumbai. On his right is Mr Manish Desai, Regional Director, Press Information Bureau.

Poet and scriptwriter Javed Akhtar is escorted into Films Division by Dinesh Prabhakar, Director Muisc (left), Officer on Special Duty Anil Kumar N. (right) and Senior Producer Suresh Menon (behind left) on the occasion of Communal Harmony Day.

The Films Division staff takes an oath on Communal Harmony Day.

Sunil Kant Gupta (on the flute) and Saswati Saha (on the sitar) strike up a rare musical composition at the opening of the Grand Finale of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations.

Lighting the auspicious lamp are (from left) Mr V.B.Pyarelal, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, Ms Sushama Singh, Secretary, Ministry of I&B, film actress Manisha Kelkar, film magnate Yash Chopra and Kuldeep Sinha, Chief Producer, Films Division.

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Kuldeep Sinha speaks as part of the inauguration ceremony.

A souvenir detailing the year-long country-wide Diamond Jubilee celebrations of Films Division was released. Yash Chopra, Kiran Shantaram, Ms Sushama Singh and Kuldeep Sinha soon after the release of the souvenir.

Kuldeep Sinhaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s novel the Darkness in the Arc was also released by Yash Chopra.

Chief Guest Yash Chopra was felicitated with a special memento issued on the occasion.

Other honoured guests felicitated: yester-year star Biswajeet, composer Ravi, Ameen Sayani, actor Govind Namdev.

More honoured guests felicitated: filmmaker Dr Jabbar Patel, ghazal maestro Rajendra Mehta, producer Kiran Shantaram, composer Anil Mohile. DOCUMENTARY TODAY

Other film industry veterans honoured: singer Usha Timothy, singer Sudesh Bhosale and composer Anandji

Filmmaking is essentially teamwork, says Kuldeep Sinha, as he introduces the crew members of the inaugural film Rafi We Remember You to the audience which was enthralled by the mellifluous voice of the legendary singer.

The second day of the celebrations included an Open Forum, coordinated by IDPA. The speakers: Ram Seshan, Miriam Chandy, Kuldeep Sinha, Ramesh Tekwani and Nidhi Tuli.

Poetry to relieve the soul from the tedium of discussions. A mushaira was also held to mark the occasion.

The final day included another Open Forum. The speakers: Harsha Vedpathak, Dr Jabbar Patel, Kuldeep Sinha, Ramesh Tekwani, and Manoj Srivastava.

Just before the closing ceremony. Kuldeep Sinha felicitates Mr Subhash Lala, former Director of Administration, Films Division.

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Former filmmakers, technicians and administrators of the Films Division were felicitated at the closing function of the Grand Finale of the Diamond Jubilee. Among those felicitated included B.N.Mehra, R.Krishna Mohan, Y.N.Engineer, Prabhakar Pendharkatr and K.L.Khandpur.

The other staff members felicitated: Ramdhani Ahir, V.G. Samant, Jagdish Pulekar, R.R.Swamy and Girish Rao.

The other staff members felicitated: S.N.Maharaja, Vijay Parmar, N.D.Naiku, W.D.Sathe, Bhupen Mhatre, K.V.R.K.Rao.

The other staff members felicitated: M.N.R.Khan Afridi, A.G. Abraham, A.S.Samel, K.K.Gupta, J.M.Sawant and R.G. Sastry. DOCUMENTARY TODAY

NEWS

Padma Archives goes online On February 16, 2009, five organisations – oil21.org from Berlin, the Alternative Law Forum from Bangalore, and the Majlis, Point of View and ChitraKarKhana/CAMP) from Mumbai – officially opened out the Pad.ma Archives (http://pad.ma) to the general public. PAD.MA - short for Public Access Digital Media Archive is an online archive of densely textannotated video material, primarily footage and not finished films. The entire collection is searchable and viewable online, and is free to download for non- commercial use. The organizers see Padma as a way of opening up a set of images, intentions and effects present in video footage, resources that conventions of videomaking, editing and spectatorship have tended to suppress, or leave behind. This expanded treatment then points to other, political potentials for such material, and leads us into lesserknown territory for video itself... beyond the finite documentary film or the online video clip.

The design of the archive makes possible various types of “viewing”, and contextualisation: from an overview of themes and timelines to much closer readings of transcribed dialogue and geographical locations, to layers of “writing” on top of the image material. Descriptions, keywords and other annotations have been placed on timelines by both archive contributors and users. At the moment, PAD.MA has 378 “events” on video, mostly from Mumbai and Bangalore. This adds up to 7 days 4 hours 29 minutes 7 seconds of fully transcribed video footage, which we expect to grow to more than 400 hours by early 2009. As a part of the launch the organizers arranged a seminar/workshop with various people who have been engaging with pad.ma. Shaina Anand began the day by providing the background to pad.ma, and how the various organizations involved came together to conceptualize pad.ma. In

its one year of making, pad.ma had already inculded over 150 events from Majlis’s Godaam, Chitrakarkhana’s collection of micro media and other contributions including that of Point of View, Alternative Law Forum and footage by filmmakers such at T. Jayashree and Saeed Mirza. Shaina said that the main reason for the day was to get a sense of how people from different disciplinary backgrounds from film makers to artists, and scholars to activists could use pad.ma to explore the relationship between text and image, to examine the possibilities that it opens up, and also to look at the blurring lines between those who produce images, those who interpret it, and those who are supposed to consume it. The first presentation of the day was made by Aagaz, a voluntary youth group from PremNagar, Meghwadi and SanjayNagar bastis of Jogeshwari. Members of Aagaz including Shaali Shaikh, Durga Gudillu and Ismail Sharif spoke about their contribution to pad.ma. About 15 hours of footage from their video project Ek Dozen Pani was collaboratively annotated to describe some relationships between infrastructure, water and the city. While infrastructure is hyper visible in most cities in their diverse forms, from high rise shining malls and multiplexes to decaying pipes from which water and electricity leaks to poorer neighborhoods, the members of Aagaz used the layers of annotation in pad.ma to go deep into their own histories of how infrastructure gets to be made and unmade in urban experience. (online at http://pad.ma/find?l=Lj)

The PADMA online archives. 44

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Sanjay Kak spoke about his own relationship to found footage after the

Sebastian Lütgert and Jan Gerber looked at 10 remarks about video and the internet, which balances between the exhilaration about video on the net and the material realities of low bandwidth etc. They distinguished between open source as a ‘cool attitude’ and openness as a form of practice that constantly requires interventions that reframes the ways we think of our own practices. They also argued that licenses are ‘real’, in that issues of format of videos, interoperability etc are all affected by proprietary licenses and the future of video on the net is also an issue about closed or open systems. The Qawwals of Hazrat Nizamuddin.

experience of making Jashn-e-azadi, and he was invited to write over a twohour long tape of found footage, Flight Over the CFL. In what can only be described as an ethnography of a media event, Sanjay Kak’s reading of this film opens out for us the historical and analytical possibilities that lies in material which may seem completely ordinary and uneventful. Combining the skills of a film maker with that of the historian, Sanjay’s contemporary reading of the material opened out ways in which we can think the relationship between events, fragmentary material and contested political histories (online at http:// pad.ma/Vg92c17o/info)

not immediately available at the time of the making of the film. (online at http://pad.ma/Vu5mgs8w/info) Nida Ghouse’s presentation raised the critical question of the difference between seeing an image, reading and image and understanding the experience of pad.ma which attempts to bring text and image together. Nida located the development of the various versions of pad.ma and its implications for newer forms of reading that are made available. Finally, Nida looked at the idea of the electronic archive not just as an archeological site for data mining, but also as a construction site of ideas and possibilities.

Kaushik Bhowmick was invited by pad.ma to be a guest annotator, and Kaushik took up the challenge by trawling through all the events and settling on ten of them. But rather than choosing to annotate them through information or analysis of the events (which ranged from bar dancers to the item song in hindi films to the lumpen audience), Kaushik chose to read and write across them. Drawing from mythology and film theory, Kaushik chose to make poetic connections across images. Arguing that film eventually relies on the production of sensibilities, Kaushik’ sannotations sought to capture the evocative feel of the videos and the ways they spoke to

Priya Sen, a film maker from Delhi revisited a film that she had made six years ago The Knower of Secrets about Qawwali singers in Hazrat Nizamuddin. In her annotations, Priya looked at what it would mean to capture the experience of the film maker in the making of the film, an experience which is never exhausted by the end product that emerges in the form of the finished film. Her annotation moves between the personal, the affective, the theoretical and the analytical. On Pad.ma, the knower of secrets emerges as a text which opens out to different registers of experience and reflection which were

The B’Nei Menashe are said to be the ten lost tribes of Israel. DOCUMENTARY TODAY

Ayisha Abraham who has made a film Straight 8 using found footage chose to look at rare films made on Ram Gopal, a dancer who became famous in the mid-twentieth century. Using the footage of Ram Gopal that had been shot by an amateur film maker Tom Dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Aguiar, perhaps the only existing fragment of moving image of Ram, Ayesha posed questions about the relationship between the materiality of film, the role of archives and the reconstruction of histories. (online at http://pad.ma/Vsnjewdj/info)

The legendary classical dancer Ram Gopal.

each other. (online at http://pad.ma/ Vejbx6uz/00:02:54.000) Desire Machine Collective from Guwahati chose to focus on the idea of the North East as it emerges in popular discourse and in the news. They curated a set of items which provided a name and place to the idea of the north east. In their curation they sought to raise the question of how an idea like the North east comes into being, where it finds form in media discourse, and also ways in which a counter archive that displaces one central idea of the north east could emerge. They chose to read one segment of a film Tango Charlie and its hugely stereotypical image of the north east and contrasted this with videos that looked at the Bnei Menashe, the lost tribes of Israel from Mizoram. (online at http://pad.ma/find?l=Ll) 46

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Lawrence Liang made a presentation on the relationship between the image, politics and the distribution of the sensible. Drawing form Jacques Ranciere, Lawrence argued that politics was already aesthetics, in that ideas of the political often draw from sensorial metaphors such as visibility and invisibility, and politics may consist of interruptions/interventions in the distribution of the sensible, which modify the Aesthetic-political field. He tried to link this to an understanding of the political which is not dependent on a pre determined political field, but which is open to redefinition through a reversal of assumptions of social roles. In the case of pad.ma, the blurring of the lines between image makers and image readers would constitute such an aesthetic-political interruption.

Ranu Ghosh has been working on the changing urban landscape of Kolkatta, looking at the emergence of new high rise apartments against the decaying landscape of factories that have shut down. In her presentation she spoke about the south city project which has emerged on the lands of the Usha sewing machine factory. She has used Pad.ma to annotate the history of the struggle of an individual against the acquisition of his housing quarters, and he was given a camera to document what was happening, since there are no visitors allowed inside the premises. The annotations become another layer through which the relationship between the film maker, footage shot by the subject of the film, and the audience interact. (online at http://pad.ma/ Vfsgvjes/info) Nilanjan Bhattacharya has been working on questions of traditional knowledge, and biodiversity. He presented an interview with Madhav Gadgil and related Prof. Gadgils view points on rituals and superstitions and myths as essential to the maintaining of sacred forests and knowledge systems through footage from his older films that included exampled of buddhist, hindu and animist rituals. (online at http://pad.ma/Vs6e8x5j/ 00:13:51.000) Sadanand Menon showcased two films on Chandralekha. The first was part of a program made for a cultural show on Doordarshan, and the only footage available of it is the versions recorded

from television. In an example of how text/image and histories (personal and public) interact, Sadanand’s annotations on the Tanabana program takes us through an intimate journey with Chandralekha. Moments that would otherwise be missed (a dog passing by, Chandra making Rangoli), if we were just watching the film, are re-read by Sadanand to create a shared space where we begin to understand Chandra’s philosophy of creativity and the body. Ghar Bachao, Ghar Banao Andolan is an organization that has been working on housing rights, particularly against corporate privatization. They took an existing footage in pad.ma “One Day in the Life of Niranjan Hiranandani” and re’ read it against information that they have been collection for a few years (through the use of RTI as well as investigative journalism). The grandiose vision of Hiranandani is read against the material conditions of housing for the poor, while his statements of corporate responsibility are read against the corrupt practices prevalent in the real estate industry. In a playful manner, GBGB completes the incomplete narrative of images through sharp political satire. (online at http:// pad.ma/Vtowua9j/L2kv9) At the same time, Pad.ma responds to the invitation and challenge of a landscape beyond “the film” as the desired end-product of this medium, and beyond youtube as its default online repository. Filmmakers and others are already engaged in many forms of presentation, interpretation, and the combination of images and ideas. Pad.ma suggests some specific new relations between images and text, production and commentary, online and offline, visibility and possibility. It proposes a few new ways to write about and discuss documentary film practice, ways to base academic work on video sources, and more generally, ways to still care for something that has become “democratic”. All of these claims, of course, will be tested in Pad.ma’s new phase.

The war in Gaza.

Free Video Footage from War on Gaza Al Jazeera, the well known Arabic news television channel has now made available select broadcast quality footage of its exclusive Arabic and English video footage from the Gaza Strip produced by their correspondents and crews at the Al Jazeera Creative Commons Repository available online at http:// cc.aljazeera.net. The footage has been released under the ‘Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution’ license which allows for commercial and non-commercial use. This means that news outlets, filmmakers and bloggers will be able to easily share, remix, subtitle or reuse the footage. Explaining the terms of usage an Al Jazeera spokesman said, “According to the license, you must attribute the footage to Al Jazeera (but not in any way that suggests that we endorse you or your use of our work). You are also required to leave our logos intact, reference the website and the license itself.” “The ongoing war and crisis in Gaza, together with the scarcity of news

footage available, make this repository a key resource for anyone producing content on the current situation,” said an Al Jazeera spokesman.

Indian documentary bags top award at Kara festival The Indian documentary Superman of Malegaon by Faiza Khan shared the Best Documentary award with Finnish director Iris Olsson’s ‘Kesan Lapsi’ (Summer Child) at the 7th Kara Film Festival which closed on February 18, 2009. The other documentary awards included The Best Live Action Short (Maheen Zia/”Match Factor”), Best Animated Short Film (Meezan Ali Mir/‘Sam’, shared award), and a host of awards for feature films. The Ciepie for the Best Live Action Short went to Pakistani director Maheen Zia’s film ‘Match Factor’ produced in Germany, while the Best Animated Short Film award was tied between ‘Meme les pigeons vont au paradis’ (Even Pigeons Go To Heaven) by Ale Camargo from France and ‘Sam’ by Meezan Ali Mir from Pakistan. DOCUMENTARY TODAY

Supriyo Sen’s Wagah bags Berlin Fest award jails as prisoners after the 1971 IndiaPakistan war and their fight for freedom without help from authorities of both countries. Festival Director Dieter Kosslick and Campus Programme Manager Matthijs Wouter Knol opened this year ’s Berlinale Talent Campus before an invited audience of 600 to introduce 350 talented filmmakers from 106 countries to exchange views with international experts and to network amongst themselves. Directors and screen-writers Sir David Hare (“The Reader”) and Daniela Thomas (“O Primeiro Dia”) as well as composer Max Richter, mentor of the Volkswagen Score Competition, welcomed this year’s participants, partners and guests. The evening culminated in the world premiere of the five short films shortlisted for the Berlin Today Award 2009. A scene at the border, Wagah.

Indian filmmaker Supriyo Sen’s 10minute short film Wagah won the sixth Berlin Today Award at a parallel initiative held at the ongoing 59th Berlin International Film Festival.

Pakistan. Wagah completes the trilogy for the two time National Award winning director who has been exploring the story of the partition of India for almost a decade.

The award was announced by the German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier who said that Wagah was “a convincing manifesto against any wall that divides people”.

Sen’s previous two films are Way Back Home and Hope Dies Last in War, which won the prestigious Sundance Documentary Grant and the Pusan International Film Festival’s Asian Network of Documentary Award in the past.

The theme of the competition was “My Wall” which had been given to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall this year. Five short films from different parts of the world, each a maximum of 10 minutes in length, were funded by a German production company with support from Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg and the Federal Foreign Office. The Jury comprised Emily Atef, Wim Wenders and Andreas Dresen. Sen’s documentary is about the ritual that takes place at the frontier post along the border between India and 48

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Hope Dies Last in War explored the tragedy of 54 families who believed that members of their family are still languishing in Pakistani Supriyo Sen holds aloft the Berlin Today Award.

Apart from Sen’s Wagah, producer Anna Wendt’s documentary My Super Sea Wall, which shows the struggle for survival of 375 inhabitants on the Alaskan island Kivalina, received Honourable Mention. Five short films from different parts of the world, each a maximum of 10 minutes in length, were funded by a German production company with support from Medienboard BerlinBrandenburg and the Federal Foreign Office.

Mahesh Bhatt docu. on genetically modified food

8 Opens Montreal Festival

Bollywood filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt’s latest directorial venture is a documentary named Poison On A Platter which launches a movement against genetically modified food coming from the United States and other countries. Produced in association with the Coalition for a GM-Free World, the documentary seeks to expose the nexus between biotech multinational companies from the US and Government regulatory bodies in India. Described as the first Indian documentary on adverse health impact of GM foods, Bhatt’s film makes a mockery of the Central Government’s claim of not allowing import of any GM foods in the country as it conclusively demonstrates that supermarkets in India are flooded with harmful food stuff and biotech multinational corporations are cashing on the ignorance of unsuspecting consumers in India. “It is by far the most disturbing subject that I have dealt with in my documentaries, simply because it concerns nearly every single person living on this planet,” says Mahesh Bhatt, presenter and anchor of the film.

Mahesh Bhatt.

Afghanistan’s first all-girl soccer team in Afghan Girls Can Kick.

The feature length anthology film 8, comprising eight short films on various aspects of human living opened the fourth Montreal Human Rights Film Festival which has created an important niche within the city’s filmfest landscape, bringing an unusual and eclectic range of documentary and fiction films. This 2009 selection travels across several continents, exposing issues of power affecting the rights of oppressed groups and individuals. Other films at the fest included Afghan Girls Can Kick, Bahareh Hosseini’s poignant documentary about young women who form Afghanistan’s first all-girl soccer team. The Art and Apathy is a film in four parts, in which the IsraeliPalestinian conflict is picked apart from the perspective of artists, describing how radical new ideas might bring an end to the conflict. Masaki Arai’s Little Baghdad takes us to the community of Iraqi expats who have fled their country and live in Damascus. Since the beginning of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, more than two million Iraqis have been forced to leave due to the conflict. This film, from Japanese television, tells us some of their harrowing stories. Trans issues are explored in Making

the Face, an Indian entry about Tom, a make-up artist who says he possesses the spirit of a woman but is in a man’s body. This gender identity issue means a boost to Tom’s career; both women and men say they feel comfortable with him because of his mix of feminine and masculine traits.

Anand Awarded The Bombay High Court asked Doordarshan to pay Rs 10 lakh as compensation for plagiarizing a part of well-known documentary film Waves of Revolution made by Anand Patwardhan in 1975. Patwardhan had dragged DD to court, alleging that the government broadcaster used a part of the footage from his film without his permission in a 2003 short film entitled 26th June 1975. Patwardhan’s film was about students’ movement in Bihar, led by Jaiprakash Narayan, prior to the Emergency. DD acquired rights to the film, and telecast it in 1977. In 2003, DD asked one of its employees to make a film to mark the anniversary of imposition of Emergency. The film, entitled 26 June, 1975, was telecast on 26 June, 2003. The judge also restrained DD from rescreening 26 June, 1975. DOCUMENTARY TODAY

MIFF Winner is part of Slumdog DVD Manjha, a 41-minute dark tale from the streets and slums of Mumbai, which bagged the top award at the Mumbai International Film Festival in 2008, as well as the Best First Film award given by the Indian Documentary Producers Association, will be a part of the DVD of Slumdog Millionaire, to be released by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment. Shot in black-and-white, the short film tells the story of Ranka (Gaurav Kamble) a hot tempered orphan street kid. He makes manjha for living. He has a little mentally retarded sister Chimi. She is 3, he is 10. One night, after the hard day's work, when both kids are having their supper in some dark alley. One cop appears and takes Chimi and sexually abuses her. Chimi will never be that same girl again. Next morning, Ranka ends up killing the cop under silent sun… in the process, he himself lost all the remaining little innocence he had in him – but Chimi is protected. Manjha is 28-year-old filmmaker Rahi Anil Barve’s debut film. Rahi Anil Barve has specialized in Advanced Computer Graphics. He owns a firm, 'Just Render'. Worked on more than 30 films and 200 advertisements in the past 12 years. Manjha is his first film. It was filmmaker Anurag Kashyap who showed the film to Danny Boyle. According to him, Boyle found the film

to be “visually-stunning, emotionallycaptivating, surprising and gripping, everything a short film should be”. And Manjha was included as a special feature in the Blu-Ray DVD package of Slumdog Millionaire. Barve wrote Manjha at the height of his frustration, apparently under heavy influence of alcohol, in 15-minutes flat on a deserted Konkan beach. Barve started work on Manjha in 2005, much before Boyle made Slumdog Millionaire. When Barve couldn’t find a producer, the movie time had to be cut by half. Shot on handycam after two years of pre-production, two months of rehearsals and eight days of shooting in the Worli slums and streets of Mumbai with five crew members, the movie was produced for Rs 60,000 with funding from a generous uncle. From being beaten up by slumgoons, to a big Hollywood studio backing out from producing the movie and almost losing the film when his hard disk crashed, Barve has seen it all. Now the former graphic designer is looking forward to making his second film, Tumbad, a story – written on the same frustrating day as Manjha – about the folk tales of the Peshwas in Maharashtra, with a dash of horror in the tale. Kashyap will be producing the movie along with White Clouds.

Vasundhara Sanman for Madhav Gadgil Eminent Pune-based ecologist, Padma Shree Madhav Gadgil was honoured with the Vasundhara Sanman for his contribution to the fields of population biology and ecological history, among other areas, at the second edition of Vasundhara International Film Festival, held in Pune from March 22 to 29, 2009. Mr Gadgil was felicitaed by Mr Narendra Jadhav, vice-chancellor of University of Pune, with a Puneri pagdi, uparna, a citation and a memento. The festival, inaugurated by Atul Kirloskar, opened on March 23, which was also World Weather Day. The festival showcased 75 films, an art and book exhibition, interactive sessions and other programmes on issues related to environment. The message of the festival ‘Preserve. Protect. Save the Earth. For Generation Next!’ is a tribute to Vasundhara, or Mother Earth. These are award-winning and critically-acclaimed films based on issues like environment, wildlife, energy, air and water. A short film and documentary film competition for Indian filmmakers, production houses, NGOs and other organisations has also been organised.

Rahi Anil Barve, director Manjha (right) receives the top award at MIFF 2008 from actress Nandita Das. 50

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Pan Nalin to make UN film

Karan Johar’s new passion Karan Johar and a sleeping “A-lister” Shahrukh Khan.

Pan Nalin.

Indian origin film-maker Pan Nalin (who has directed acclaimed films like Valley of Flowers and Samsara among others) is among 30 international directors who have been approached by the United Nations to make short films that aim at propagating a saving the environment awareness message. Actors Ewan McGregor and Danny Glover, directors Stephen Frears, Paul Haggis and wellknown Algerian film director Rachid Bouchareb (who directed Indigene) are some of the heavyweights who have already been roped in for this project. The works of these celluloid masters is a part of United Nations’ Patronage Project - Visual Telegrams, and filming of these shorts will be done in the country they hail from. The initiative will also have local celebrities acting in it, and the first of the 15 films from 15 directors will be premiered at the forthcoming Cannes Films Festival. Besides its theatrical and television release, all the short films will be formatted for mobile phone viewing across the world. “When United Nations Patronage Project — Visual Telegrams invited me to make a short film on Save Our Environment, I felt honoured. Finally, I can speak about the cause which deals with saving our ecology in my own way. I have been given complete creative freedom on the script and direction,” Pan says.

Karan Johar has discovered a new passion. He wants to now produce informative profit-free short films for television that would subscribe ways to achieve an improvement in the quality of our life.

me. I got together with a politician friend Mukul Deora, called up my writer-friend Niranjan Iyenger to write the script and asked my Dostana director and friend Tarun Mansukhani to direct it. And we were ready.”

The entire music video from Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions featuring young A-listers from Hollywood asking the young in India to vote was put together in two days flat. “And that included Salim (of Salim-Suleiman)’s background music,” said Karan proudly. Stars beginning with Abhishek Bachchan and Karan Johar himself, trooped into the studio to have their say on camera. Karan was delighted. “I had to do nothing except pick up the phone and ask everyone to come and record their message for the young. I was surprised by how readily and quickly they took time off from their busy schedules for this publicinterest broadcast.”

First Chhattisgarh Film Festival

And considering it stars every A-lister from Kareena Kapoor to Abhishek Bachchan, that’s no mean achievement. “The credit for the music video must go to Imran Khan,” says Karan Johar who has been shooting non-stop with Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol for My Name Is Khan. “I had gone to meet Imran for a film when he brought up the idea of a video on voting. His enthusiasm rubbed off on

The 1st Chhatttisgarh Peoples Film Festival (Chhattisagarh Jan Filmotsav) was inaugurated at the Nehru House of Culture in Bhilai on 22 March 2009 by Shri S.C Bayar, former Chief Secretary of Madhya Pradesh. The Bhilai Film Archive was also inaugurated on the same day and at the same location by filmmaker Amar Kanwar. Eminent sculptor from Bhilai and recipient of the Padma Shri Mr M.J. Nelson was the special Guest of Honour. A traditional Chattisgrahi Panthi dance troupe led by Rishi Tandon performed at the opening. Well known singer Vinay Mahajan from Gujarat also sang. The opening film was a short film entitled Aisa Kyon which was produced by Bhilai filmmaker Ajay TG and directed and shot by 5 young girls from the Dabrapara Labour Camp and Drkshakshi Balangan. Six documentaries and a feature film were shown though the day. DOCUMENTARY TODAY

Banned Singapore docu is big hit on Internet A video made by Mr Seelan Palay about the dictatorial control of Singapore has attracted wide viewership on the Internet. Entitled One Nation Under Lee, the 40-minute film also features interviews with the late J B Jeyaretnam and former solicitor-general Mr Francis Seow. Released last May, the documentary has been viewed more than 40,000 times on YouTube. It has also been screened in film festivals in other countries, especially Malaysia where it toured four states as the featured Singapore film in the Freedom Film Festival 2008. The film was first screened in Singapore at the Excelsior Hotel. Even though the event was a private one and only invited guests were allowed, officials from the Media Development Authority nevertheless forced their way into the function and demanded that the film and the projector be handed over. Since then One Nation Under Lee has been banned by the Government. Nevertheless, the film has been widely disseminated on the Internet as viewers forward it to their friends.

‘Bollywood overwhelms short films in India’ “The short film is not really celebrated in India primarily because Bollywood is overpowering all these small efforts. When I came out of India and saw the short films from Europe and the US, it really opened my mind. Traveling to different festivals in the world really helped me to grow as a filmmaker,” said Indian filmmaker Umesh Kulkarni whose short films were shown at the Gulf Film Festival held in Dubai this year. Umesh Kulkarni was speaking at a panel discussion – In Focus: India – on “films that are made beyond the glitter of Bollywood” held as part of the second Gulf Film Festival, held under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Majid bin Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, Chairman of the Dubai Culture and Arts Authority (Dubai Culture). The panel comprised distinguished short, independent and documentary filmmakers filmmakers and industry professionals, discussed the films that are made, and covered the history,

The movement against a dictatorial reign … One Nation Under Lee. 52

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present and future of Indian production. Director of the Third Eye Asian Film Festival Sudhir Nandgaonkar pointed out that many professional feature directors look to shorts and documentaries for innovative ideas, since the low cost of digital independent production allows for greater experimentation. Umesh Kulkarni attributed this greater risk-taking to freedom from commercial constraints, saying that documentary film is a different form, “The best thing about short film is you’re not competing with anyone. You don’t have to sell a short film, or become rich or recover the money,” he said. “Commerce which is so evident with feature films is not so evident with the short films. One can really experiment and do what one wants, and that kind of freedom has really helped in developing all kinds of short films and different expressions,” Kulkarni added. Fellow filmmaker Anand Gandhi pointed to the sheer number of people now participating in film, and the informal organization that is taking place, with café screenings and film clubs springing up to generate more platforms for short filmmakers to screen their work. While Bollywood has outshone the independent movement, Gandhi stated that the movement had always been there, waiting for an outlet. All the panelists agreed that festivals were the perfect outlet for short filmmakers. The issue of the commercial value of short films was taken up by Pranav Ashar, President of film distribution company Enlighten, who pointed out that while individual shorts may not have strong market clout, compilations of shorts on similar themes have proved profitable in markets such as Korea.

NEW FILMS: FOREIGN

The Lion In Winter

John Dowers’s latest documentary Thrilla In Manila tells the story of two great boxers forever linked by three epic bouts, and looks at their final fight, considered the most brutal, from Frazier’s perspective for the first time. The film deftly tracks an extraordinary personal battle between two friends, and captures the poignant moment in the socio-cultural history of the country when they became American sports icons and legends. One of the most surprising facts you learn about Joe Frazier is that the former world heavyweight boxing champion currently lives in a small, squalid apartment in north Philadelphia

adjacent to the shabby gym that bears his name. Such humble living quarters say a lot about the 64-year-old retired athlete who has largely disappeared from the public view. Unassuming and at times self-negating, Frazier is a lion in winter, seemingly content with his spartan existence. In this respect, he’s also the antithesis in almost every way to his arch nemesis – Muhammad Ali, the shameless show boater. A re-examination of Frazier’s career as well as a corrective to the culture’s pervasive Ali hagiography, the movie depicts a complex rivalry that extended well beyond the boxing ring – and that persists even today.

In The following interview John Dower talks about the making of Thrilla In Manila. Did you always intend to tell the story from Joe Frazier’s side? Completely, but the film actually wasn’t my idea. Channel 4 wanted to make the film and they asked me to direct. We were really fortunate that they gave us all the money to make it, which is rare these days. What was it like to interview Frazier? We all fell in love with him. He’s pretty crazy, a good kind of nuts. He was really unpredictable and was often difficult to interview. Some days, he just wasn’t in the mood. In the opening shot, he comes into the film and you can barely see him because we didn’t know he was going to be there that day. How did you get the footage from the Manila fight? We had a great archive researcher. It wasn’t easy. The rights for the footage kept changing hands. Did you approach Muhammad Ali for the film? Yes. We contacted him in the beginning. Fortunately, he didn’t ask to be in the picture. The Ali mythology ends with the Rumble in the Jungle. So the Thriller in Manila doesn’t quite fit the myth, which is why we wanted to make the film. Tell us about filming at Frazier’s gym in Philadelphia. People kept dropping in to say hello to him, which was great but made it really hard to conduct interviews. We finished the film a year ago but now it looks like the gym might close. It’s not totally confirmed. But Frazier is a cat with nine lives.

John Dower (inset) directs the sports documentary Thrilla In Manila about the Joe Frazier-Mohammad Ali bout.

Did Frazier like the movie? It took me seven months to get him to watch the footage from the Manila fight. He never gave a reason. But when he watched our film, he said he liked it, which was a relief to us. DOCUMENTARY TODAY

A Hollywood Dynasty Explored Did Kirk need persuading? Not at all. Kirk is a passionate man and this was an outlet for him. He’s also written three amazingly honest and soulful books.

Famous father and son … Kirk (right) and Michael Douglas.

A Father... a Son... Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, directed by Lee Grant for producer Joseph Feury, is a fascinating portrait of two charismatic Oscar-winners who share, along with a last name, a passion for movies, women, family, and taking risks. An extraordinary glimpse into the private side of a Hollywood dynasty, the film includes exclusive recent conversations with Kirk Douglas and Michael Douglas, as well as other family members and friends, drawing upon dozens of film clips to illustrate how the public and private lives of each actor often intersected.

Michael Douglas allowed her unfettered access to the two legends. Lee Grant has also directed the 1986 Academy Award-winning feature documentary . In addition to directing nearly 60 TV and feature films, Lee Grant also won a DGA Award for the drama Nobody’s Child. Grant is a prolific actress who won a Supporting Actress Oscar for the 1976 comedy Shampoo. In the following interview she talks about the film. How did the project come about? Michael and I had talked about it over the years. Then, three years ago, at a Christmas party, he said, “Let’s do it.”

Kirk and Michael’s freewheeling conversations expose long-simmering rifts between these two ambitious, multi-talented entertainers, including a little-known dispute over the casting of 1975’s Oscar-winning Best Picture One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Kirk starred in the stage version and at one point even owned the film rights to Ken Kesey’s groundbreaking novel, but after Michael took over as producer, Jack Nicholson landed the starring role, for which he won an Oscar. The documentary also takes an honest look at Kirk’s legendary womanizing and Michael’s alcohol use, and the toll they took on those closest to them. Lee Grant’s close friendship with 54

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Lee Grant seen in her award-winning role in Shampoo.

Since you appeared onscreen with Kirk in “Detective Story” in 1951, many people would assume it was your connection with him that made the documentary possible. I worked with Kirk when I was starting out, but we hadn’t really kept in touch. My husband [producer Joe Feury] and I have been close to Michael since the ’70s, when we would all hang out together. Was it hard to get Michael and Kirk talking in this revealing way? They both knew this was perhaps their last chance to resolve issues that remain between them. They obviously love each other, but there are still old issues over “Cuckoo’s Nest.” Were there some things that were too awkward to include? No, nothing was held back. Michael called all of his friends and told them not to leave anything out when I talked to them. The word “intimidating” seems to apply to Kirk in his prime. Women were mad about him. The country was mad about him. And Michael was more of an interior kid. It was impossible for him to live up to his father’s image. So he first made his mark as the producer of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, a huge, surprising, Oscar®-winning hit. Then, it was such a release for him to find his own voice as an actor by starring in an adventure film like Romancing the Stone. It’s hard to imagine Michael Douglas lacking confidence. But it was a tremendous struggle for him. Kirk was like a superhero, but Michael was everyman. I think his choice of material in films like “Fatal

Attraction” and “The China Syndrome” was brilliant in the way they captured the times. When I first saw “Falling Down” I was stunned, because of the way it reflects the feelings of people who feel disregarded and don’t know how to deal with their rage. It’s interesting that both Kirk and Michael went on to work for the UN, because underneath all of the work they’ve done is a reflection of the world we live in. Apart from speech difficulties stemming from his stroke, Kirk still seems amazingly vital. We addressed that subject at the start of the film because we wanted to allow Kirk to speak for himself and not through subtitles. And you do get used to his speech quickly. Kirk is completely comfortable with himself today - his attitude has always been “take it or leave it.” Did you learn things about Michael and Kirk that you didn’t know? I learned a lot. Although Michael has been friends with me and my husband Joe for a long time, there are things you don’t ask your friends. The camera gave me the cover to do that. Michael and Kirk went as far as they could go in this film. There are issues between them that will never go away, but at least there is an agreement to love each other in spite of everything.

NEW FILMS: INDIA +VE LIVING (C.Vanaja/Telugu with English) C.Vanaja’s +Ve Living, which won the Golden Pearl award at the Hyderabad film festival held in March 2007, narrates four real-life stories of grit and gumption that go much beyond ordinary life and living. It tells the story of four women who are HIV Positive and records their journey towards a life of dignity and hope in spite of an uncertain future..Binding the four stories together is the story of Priya who is the anchor of film, making connections with three other women who are bold enough to tell their stories on camera. Priya also tested HIV Positive when her husband died three years after their marriage. She decided that she would do something better than simply withdrawing and cursing her destiny. Priya joined the Hyderabad-based Prevention of Parent to Child Transmission Centre (PPCTC), putting her skills in writing and documentation to good use to connect with other positive women and record their case studies. She now works as the project coordinator and is also secretary of the Hope Network.

Rama is a widow with a small daughter whom she leaves with her mother in the village while she handles her job and stays in a hostel. Rama was a shy, introverted person who knew nothing about the world beyond the confines of her home and neighbourhood. But when her husband died of AIDS and her in-laws left her to fend for herself, Rama found her voice and fought back. She demanded that her in-laws give her a share of the familyowned field or else return the dowry paid to them at the time of her marriage. The argument snowballed and was reported by almost every newspaper in Andhra Pradesh. Rama finally had her way and today she is able to plan for her daughter’s future. Parvathi, who stays with her two teenage sons in a village in Guntur district. Her husband was first working as an agent to procure cotton from farmers. He used to earn Rs 3,000 per month as also some additional income. Later, he started his own business. They were settling down to a comfortable life when tragedy struck and Parvathi tested HIV-positive, thanks to her husband’s multiple sleeping partners. Sovamma sells fruit for a living. When her husband died of AIDS there was no help available to even take him to hospital, Sovamma’s target for the future is simple: to build a small house for her two children. Living in a hut at present, she has hired a mason to help her build the house. She agrees that life as a widow is tough. Vanaja juxtaposes one narrative with the other. She moves in and out of the lives of the four women with beautiful fluidity, capturing not just their stories on film but also their expressions, which reveal more than words. +ve Living is about four HIV Positive women who have lived life bravely. DOCUMENTARY TODAY

Malegaon; dancing in the fields; saving his love from slick goons; flying up to catch better signals when the cellphone network is weak. Computers has made it possible. Nasir has shot the film on chroma, where actors perform over a green sheet, and the background images are generated digitally. It would cost him Rs 2 lakh at a Mumbai studio. With Rs 2 lakh, he could make four movies, he says. He’d rather do it on his own. Nasir needs to balance his means with quality, instead of the other way round, where budgets seem inversely proportional to content.

SUPERMEN OF MALEGAON (Faiza Ahmed Khan/Hindi)

Director Nasir Shaikh instructs the Malegaon Ka Superman.

Faiza Ahmed Khan’s Supernen of Malegaon is a hilarious and tender documentary which takes you into the heart of the mofussil district of Malegaon in nashik, Maharashtra where an unlikely filmmaker, former video theatre owner and maker of wedding films, Nasir Shaikh is shooting his latest feature film Malegaon Ka Superman. This is not the first time Nasir has “taken on Bollywood”. He had earlier made Malegaon Ke Sholay and Malegaon Ki Shaan, both superhits. This time his takkar (battle) is with Hollywood.

weddings. He does remakes of popular blockbusters now. They are fresh works still. Only the premise is borrowed. For this, he even names the original movie on the title. Nasir is evidently untouched by the credit-stealing ways of Bollywood, though he only lives about 300 kilometres from Mumbai. Nasir’s parody takes Superman to

It’s quite a moment in Faiza’s documentary when Nasir finally reveals his Christopher Reeves: a worryingly thin, short, dark man Akram Khan, who appears in a Superman sky-blue suit with M for a new emblem, and the long nada of his boxer-shorts deliberately left hanging. Akram has taken leave to play the main role. He works 12-hour shifts in a power-loom, like most of Malegaon, which hardly gets power for a few hours in a day. The documentary was partly produced by KBS (Korean Broadcasting System) and NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation), bagged the Jury Award for the Best Documentary Feature at the Asiatica Film Mediale, Italy’s annual Asian film festival.

The documentary is about the making of a movie called Malegaon ka Superman and tells the fascinating story of a ragtag crew of people from Malegaon (in Nashik, Maharashtra) who set out to make a “Superman meets Bollywood” kind of flick in their own town on a shoestring budget. Faiza Ahmed Khan has managed to capture all the flavors, trials and inspirations of the tiny film industry of Malegoan that specializes in spoofs made for the local film market. Years before, Nasir had taken up a moving camera to shoot local 56

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Superman flies … with a little help in Malegaon Ka Superman.

THE OTHER SONG (Saba Dewan/ Hindi-Urdu-English / 120 minutes) In 1935 Rasoolan Bai, the well known singer from Varanasi, recorded for the gramaphone a thumri that she would never sing again - Lagat jobanwa ma chot, phool gendwa na maar (My breasts are wounded, don’t throw flowers at me).A variation of her more famous Bhairavi thumri - Lagat karejwa ma chot, phool gendwa na maar (My heart is wounded, don’t throw flowers at me), the 1935 recording, never to be repeated, faded from public memory and eventually got lost. More than seventy years later the film travels through Varanasi, Lucknow and Muzzafarpur in Bihar to search for the forgotten thumri. This journey opens a Pandora’s box of life stories, memories, half remembered songs and histories that for long have been banished into oblivion. It brings the film face to face with the enigmatic figure of the tawaif, courtesan, baiji and the contested terrain of her art practice and lifestyle. To understand the past and present of the tawaif the film must unravel the significant transitions that took place in late 19th and early 20th century around the control, censorship and moral policing of female sexualities and cultural expression. Rahul Roy handles the camera and Asheesh Pandya, Gissy Michael and Vipin Bhati the sound.. The film is edited by Reena Mohan, Khushboo Agarwal, Mahadeb Shi and Anupama Chandra

Rasoolan Bai.

Parts of the Sunderbans are simple being gobbled up by the sea. A shot from Mean Sea Level.

MEAN SEA LEVEL (Pradip Saha) As massive industrialisation and globalisation set India on the path of becoming an economic superpower, the remote islands in the Sunderbans are becoming the unfortunate victims of global warming and rising sea levels. People living on these islands, devoid of basic infrastructural benefits and connected to the mainland by just three rickety ferries a day, are losing their homes and hearths as the swirling waters of the Bay of Bengal swallow up entire islands, leaving them stranded. The Centre for Science and Environment’s (CSE’s) documentary, Mean Sea Level, explores the human tragedy behind the statistics of internal displacement in the Sunderbansand uses the narrative of affected individuals to explain the trauma of being reduced from once-prosperous rural folk to environmental refugees. The film, which recently had its global premiere at Ghoramara, uses footage from the besieged islands of Ghoramara and Sagar to explain how Lohacchara and Suparibhanaga went under water 18 years ago. Those rendered homeless from Lohachhara and the fastdisappearing Ghoramara have been rehabilitated in Sagar, which is the

largest of the islands in the Sunderbans. More than 7,000 people have left Ghoramara over the past 30 years. Another 5,000 continue to live a precarious existence on the island. Ghoramara has been reduced to 4.7 km, that is, half of its original size of 9 km; meanwhile, Sagar continues to lose up to 100 bighas every year. Thus the fate of both new and old inhabitants is in question. Filmmaker Pradip Saha offers us a glimpse of the history of the Sunderbans and how the British and the zamindars of Midnapore cleared forests to bring in the first human settlements to Sagar and other islands in the region. The mythological background of Sagar and Kapil Muni’s ashram, around which the Ganga Sagar Mela is held every year, is also explained. The ashram had to be relocated thrice to its present position owing to rising sea levels and massive erosion that destroyed the earlier structures.

B-TOWN GROOVE (Adam Dow/English/15 minutes) Today, the term Bollywood defines a style, a walk, a talk, and to some extent, a sense of being in Mumbai. This sense of being for the younger generation in the city, becomes apparent when we flicked on the television and saw hot DOCUMENTARY TODAY

bodies grooving and shaking on screen. This culture, the fusion of east meets west, is what Indians define as the ‘masala mix’, which is aptly revealed in Bollywood dance sequences. It is the role of the dance choreographer to create his/her own style with this form of Bollywood dance. Remo is a successful choreographer whose journey began as a backup dancer. With no family background or formal education in dance, Remo has made his mark as a lead choreographer in the industry and has also begun directing music videos and promo videos, as well as his own feature. As we learn more about Bollywood

‘fusion’, we meet the dynamic duo, Harshall-Vitthal, who have made their claim to fame as choreographers behind the winning couple of the popular dance competition T.V show “Naache Balliye”. As the younger generation of choreographers in Bollywood, Remo, Harshall and Vitthal, expressively redefine the look and style of Hindi films, similar to how youngsters are redefining themselves in an urbanizing Bombay.

FATHER LOVE (Adam Dow/English/10 minutes) Before delving into the industry, it’s important to take a step back and

understand the way the Indian cinema industry works and the workers’ struggle. Indian Film Producers such as Mukesh Bhatt, Ritesh Sidhwani and Ketan Maroo of Shemaroo Entertainment, shed light upon the backbone of the industry and the business of filmmaking in India. On the otherhand, we follow Premji Singh Thakkur, head of the Vigilance Committee of the Federation of Western India Cinema Workers. As a migrant to Bombay who started off as a spotboy on the sets, Premji, whose name literally translates as “father love”, introduces us to the world of laborers and workers in the film industry. By focusing on the art of being able to ‘run the show’, this episode takes an insight into India’s chaotic and crooked film world.

TOWERS OF MUMBAIS (Varun Grover/English narration with Hindi interviews/30 minutes) The documentary profiles the festival through two different, now-concurrent now-anti, ideologies at play in Mumbai. Alternating between a DahiHaandi team (called ‘Lashkar-eShivba’) in Central Mumbai and a group of old-men in Girgaum, part of the same group which started this festival in Mumbai 75-years ago, the film tracks the lives and mechanics of the people involved in the festival. From a peep into their daily lives, to the grueling training sessions, to the final day where 200-men board the trucks to help and support their team on the streets Towers of Mumbai documents the commercial, social and political aspects of this unique festival which combines culture, sport, and religion into one risky, gritty competition of human spirit and fantasies.

THE FINAL INCH

The Towers of Mumbai in the times of dahi handi. 58

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(Irene Taylor Brodsky/English/) Nearly 50 years after a vaccine for Polio was developed in the United States, the Polio virus still finds refuge in some of the world’s most vulnerable places. Into India’s impoverished neighborhoods, The Final Inch follows the massive – and yet highly

personalized - mission to eradicate Polio from the planet. One of history’s most feared diseases, now largely forgotten; Polio has become a disease of the world’s poor. A quiet army goes door-to-door, and slum to slum, to reach the last unvaccinated children. The global strategy aimed at hundreds of millions of children becomes intensely personal for the vaccinators working to save them. In the most marginalized Muslim enclaves, children are hidden from vaccinators because American-made medicines are not to be trusted. Others are deliberately kept behind closed doors as a form of social protest by their frustrated communities. For the world’s poorest, saying ‘no’ to vaccinations is sometimes their only political voice. And then there are the millions of homeless children across India, who get the disease because they cannot be found in time. In all, The Final Inch explores how the final days of any endeavor are always the most challenging and is a profound testament to those working on the front lines of public health in the backwaters of our world. Everyone’s stories challenge our most basic assumptions about disease, poverty and our own health as a human right.

First Frameflixx Awards Student animators from Chandigarh walked away with as many as five awards at the recently concluded 1st Frameflixx Awards for Animation, Visual Effects & Short Films, organized at Mumbai by Frameboxx Animation and Visual Effects, with the aim of bringing together talented student animators and artists on a unique platform with the industry and showcase and reward their creativity. The Silver Trophy in the Best Animation Film category was awarded to the film Child’s Play which dealt with the impact of industrialization and environmental damage on our planet. This film was spearheaded by Ankur Kapoor along with a team of students which included Atul Kashyap, Harjeet Singh, Isha Walia, Parvinder Singh and Rajan Sharma. Ankur Kapoor, who has number of international and national awards in the past for his animation and live action short films, was awarded the Platinum Achievers’ Trophy along with the Best Live Action Film Award for his film Half the Truth. Another Chandigarh student Harneet Singh was awarded the Best Post-Production Demoreel Award for Excellence in Visual Effects.

The Final Inch depicts the fight against polio.

Paramjit Singh bagged the coveted Animation Grand Challenger Trophy chosen from among more than 50 entries received from all major animation training brands across India. The 1st FrameFlixx Awards received more than 300 entries for animation, visual effects and short films made by the students from all across India which were judged by an eminent panel comprising of top names from the international animation and visual effects industry. The jury included Pankaj Khandpur from Tata Elxsi, Aijaz Rashid from Prime Focus, Biju.D. from Fablefarm Studios, Vaibhav Kumaresh from Vaibhav Studios, Uttam Pal Singh, an independent animation film maker, Steve Wright from Steve Wright Digital FX, Los Angeles, Greg Acuna from Palaflicks, Veerendra Patil from Paprikaas Interactive, Seshaprasad from Rhythm & Hues, Xavier Roig, a VFX Supervisor, Chris Joyce & Jim Butler from Anglia Ruskin University, UK “The first edition of Frameflixx Awards was a resounding success and had an extensive participation from student animators, visual effects artists and film makers from across the country”, said Naveen Gupta, Executive Director and CEO of Frameboxx. DOCUMENTARY TODAY

VIDEO PRIMER

Merging Creativity and Productivity (This is a continuation of our series on understanding the world of video.) It’s important to choose video editing software that won’t limit your reativity—software you won’t outgrow as you build your skills. As your skills develop, you’ll want an editing solution that fosters productivity, especially if you’re doing professional post-production. Adobe Premiere has been designed to include many features—like the History palette, for example—that encourage you to experiment, without the risk of losing valuable time if you decide to return to an earlier point in your editing process. The Storyboard window and Automate to Timeline are also key creativity and productivity enhancing features. Storyboard window: The Storyboard window in Adobe Premiere is a key productivity and creativity tool for quickly visualizing your video production. Using the Storyboard, you can experiment with your production’s layout, and assemble a rough cut within

Project window

minutes. Then you can send the clips to the Timeline in sequence, using the Automate to Timeline command, or play the clips from the Storyboard window directly to the selected video output display.

Tell your story: The Storyboard window helps you quickly determine the best way to tell your story visually. Add clips to the Storyboard window by simply dragging and dropping. Reorder them by dragging clips into new positions. Arrows are automatically drawn between clips to show the storyboard flow, and an end marker is displayed. Display a clip’s vital statistics: Icons

within each thumbnail indicate whether the clip contains video and audio. A clip’s title, timecode, and user-added comments can be displayed. The Storyboard window also shows the combined running time for all clips.

Set In and Out points: The Storyboard lets you do more than

merely arrange clips. Double-click a file in the Storyboard to change its In or Out points or to add markers. The Storyboard’s context menu lets you locate a source clip, add the clip to the project, and change the speed of a video clip or the duration of a still clip. Automate to Timeline: The Automate to Timeline command can simultaneously send a sequence of clips from the Storyboard—or from the Project window—to the Timeline. This time-saving feature can streamline the production of a wide variety of video projects. Here are just two examples: Rough cuts—with transitions: Assemble a collection of still images and/or video clips in the Project window. Drag and drop them into the order you like—rearranging as often as you want—in the Storyboard window. Then specify an overlap and a default transition. When the clips are placed using the Automate to Timeline command, the overlaps and transitions are automatically inserted.

Automate to Timeline dialog box Adobe Premiere offers a host of elegant, efficient workflow solutions for all kinds of users. Organize your clips with bins in the Project window and then use the Storyboard window to help quickly visualize your production. When you are ready to assemble your storyboard on the Timeline, use the Automate to Timeline feature to automatically place the clips in the Timeline with overlaps and transitions. Timeline window

Storyboard window 60

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Web Marker

Automatic music videos: Organize a sequence of clips in the Project or Storyboard window. Then drop a series of unnumbered markers onto the Timeline, highlighting rhythmic features as you listen to your audio track. When you perform Automate to Timeline, your clips will be choreographed to the music, cutting in and out at the beats you marked. The Automate to Timeline dialog box offers several options for sending clips to the Timeline, including sending a whole bin or only those clips selected; placing clips sequentially or at unnumbered markers; inserting at the beginning, edit line, or end; and specifying how many seconds or frames to overlap between clips.

Timeline Markers: Markers indicate important points in time and, among other uses, can help you position and arrange clips. Working with markers is much the same as working with In and Out points, but markers are only for reference and do not alter the video program. In Adobe Premiere, each clip can individually contain a set of up to ten markers numbered from 0 to 9. The Timeline can also contain its own set of up to ten numbered markers. Additionally, the Timeline and each clip can individually contain up to 999 unnumbered markers. In general, you add markers to clips to identify important points within individual clips; you add markers to the Timeline to identify significant time

points that affect multiple clips, such as when you need to synchronize video and audio on different clips. Timeline markers can include:

a comment, which will appear in the Program view of the Monitor window,

a chapter link, which can initiate a jump to a specified point in a QuickTime movie or on a DVD, or

a Web link, which will initiate a jump to a Web page in the browser when the video is playing on a computer connected to the Internet or an intranet.

Adding, Mixing, and Sweetening Audio Audio can play an equally important role to imagery in telling your story. The right voice over, music, or sound effects can add information and impact to your video program. Understanding Digital Audio: You hear sounds because your ear recognizes the variations in air pressure that create sound. Analog audio reproduces sound variations by creating or reading variations in an electrical signal. Digital audio reproduces sound by sampling the sound pressure or signal level at a specified intervals and converting that information to numbers which can be recorded as computer code. The quality of digitized audio and the size of the audio file depend on the sample rate (the number of samples per second) and the bit depth (the number of bits per

sample). Higher sample rates and bit depths reproduce sound at higher levels of quality, but with correspondingly larger file sizes. Accordingly, digitizing stereo audio requires twice as much disk space as mono audio. You will need to be mindful of audio sample rates in relation to the timebase and frame rate of your project. It is a common mistake to create a movie at 30 fps with audio at 44.1 kHz, and then play back the movie at 29.97 fps (for NTSC video). The result is a slight slowdown in the video, while the audio (depending on your hardware) may still be playing at the correct rate and will, therefore, seem to get ahead of the video. The difference between 30 and 29.97 results in a synchronization discrepancy that appears at a rate of 1 frame per 1000 frames, or 1 frame per 33.3 seconds (just under 2 frames per minute). If you notice audio and video drifting apart at about this rate, check for a project frame rate that doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t match the timebase. Capturing Audio: Getting audio into your computer is similar to capturing video. In fact, if you recorded sound onto your videotape, you will probably capture the audio concurrently with the video. Note that DV camcorders support only 32 or 48 kHz audio; not 44.1 kHz (audio CD quality). So, when capturing or working with DV source material, be sure to set the audio for 32 or 48 kHz. DOCUMENTARY TODAY

If you are not going to use the audio that was recorded to your videotape, or if you want to add additional audio clips, you can import separate digital audio clips from tracks in other video files or from audio files stored on a hard disk or on other digital media such as a CD or DAT tape. If you want to add analog audio, you need to capture it using the proper audio or video capture card. You may want to create a separate bin for sound files, in the Project window, to keep things organized.

The Adobe Premiere Audio Mixer The Audio Mixer window, which resembles an audio mixing console in a professional sound studio, contains a set of controls for each audio track; each set is numbered to match its corresponding audio track in the Timeline. You can make adjustments using the Audio Mixer controls, or by typing in precise numerals. The Audio Mixer works in conjunction with the Monitor window so you can experiment and make adjustments while watching your video in real time. Master Control Track Controls

If you plan to export or play back the final cut from Adobe Premiere, we recommend that you capture audio at the highest quality settings your computer can handle, even if those settings are higher than the settings you’ll specify for final export or playback. This provides headroom, or extra data, that will help preserve the quality if you adjust audio gain (volume) or apply audio effects such as equalization or dynamic range compression/expansion. Standard practice is to make sure the gain level is correct when A 44.1 kHz sample rate you capture because, if the gain in an audio clip was set too low when it was digitized, increasing the gain may emphasize noise or introduce distortion. Mixing Audio: Mixing audio refers to adjusting audio qualities and combining audio tracks. For example, you might combine dialogue clips with ambient background sounds and a musical sound-track. Mixing audio in Adobe Premiere can include any combination of the following tasks:

Fading—i.e., increasing or decreasing—the volume levels, also known as audio gain, of audio clips over time: You can adjust the gain of an audio clip at precise time points in your video program, in the AdobePremiere Timeline window. Under each audio clip in the Timeline is a Volume rubberband on which you can create and manipulate handles to adjust the volume of an audio clip. Or, you can DOCUMENTARY TODAY

Automation Read/ Write/Off buttons

Mute/Solo Controls Pan/Balance

Audio Gain Sliders

Numeric Audio Gain Input

use the Volume faders in the Audio Mixer to adjust and record the volume levels for each audio track in your video program in real time, all while listening to and watching the video program.

Panning/balancing stereo clips: For example, you might want to pan a dialogue clip to match the person’s position in the video frame. Panning an audio clip shifts the sound from a single (monophonic) channel to either the left or right stereo channel. Balancing adjusts the balance of sound between the two channels in a stereo clip. In addition to the Volume rubberband, Adobe Premiere includes a Pan rubberband under each audio clip in the Timeline. You can create handles to pan or balance your

audio clips using this rubber-band, or you can use the Pan control in the Audio Mixer to precisely position audio in a stereo channel.

Sweetening the sound and adding effects: Adobe Premiere provides a wide range of built-in controls for audio sweetening, or sound processing. For example, the compressor/expander effect finetunes the dynamic range of audio clips, the notch/hum effect removes distracting hum, the reverb effect acoustically simulates a live interior, and the parametric equalizer effect lets you tweak specific frequency ranges. As with video effect plugins, while a number of audio effects are included with Adobe Premiere, you can add more sound capabilities by adding third-party

audio effect plugins. Like video effects, you can add multiple effects to a single audio clip, and audio effects can also be keyframed so that they change over time. You can edit, add effects to, and mix up to 99 tracks of audio in Adobe Premiere. When you import or capture a video clip that contain audio, the

audio track is linked to its video track by default, so that they move together. You can unlink and relink video and audio clips in order to perform a variety of editing tasks. Basic editing procedures for audio-only clips are virtually identical to those for editing a video clip, such as setting In and Out points, speed and duration. When you edit a video clip linked to an audio clip,

although the audio will appear on its own track, below the Video 1 track on the Timeline, your edits are applied to both video and audio. You can process an audio clip in several ways: choosing a menu command for a selected clip, adjusting volume and pan/balance levels either directly in the Timeline or by using the Audio Mixer window, or applying an audio effect.

USEFUL EDITING TECHNIQUES

Changing clip speed: Clip speed is the playback rate of action or audio compared to the rate at which it was recorded. When the speed is accelerated, everything appears to move faster; when the speed is reduced, the action or audio plays back in slow motion. Changing a clip’s speed alters its source frame rate. Some frames may be omitted when the speed is increased; when the speed is decreased, frames may be repeated. Changing the speed to a negative value, (such as -100) causes the clip to play in reverse. You can change a clip’s speed numerically in the Adobe Premiere Project window, or in the Timeline window by choosing Clip > Speed from the title bar. You can change speed visually in the Timeline window by using the rate stretch tool to drag either end of the clip. A 3-point edit can also change the speed of a clip. Altering clip duration: The duration of a clip is the length of time it plays—from its In point to its Out point. The initial duration of a clip is the same as it was when the clip was captured or imported; if you alter the source In and Out points, the duration of the clip changes. In Adobe Premiere, you can edit In and Out points in the Project window, the Monitor window, or directly in the Timeline. You can change duration numerically in the Project window

or in the Timeline window by choosing Clip > Duration from the title bar. You can change duration visually in the Timeline by dragging either end of the clip with the selection tool. It’s important to note that when you perform any action that extends the duration of a clip (which may include ripple or rolling edits) additional frames must be available in the source clip (the clip you originally captured or imported) before the current In point and/or after the current Out point. This is why it’s a good practice, whenever possible, to capture extra material.

Ripple edit: A ripple edit changes the duration of a clip, correspondingly changing the duration of the entire program. When you use the ripple edit tool to shorten or lengthen a clip by dragging its beginning or ending in the Timeline, the adjacent clip is not affected and, consequently, the duration of the program is shortened or lengthened. Rolling edit: A rolling edit changes the duration of the selected clip and of an adjacent clip, maintaining the overall duration of the program. When you use the rolling edit tool to shorten or lengthen a clip by dragging its beginning or ending in the Timeline, the adjacent clip will be correspondingly lengthened or shortened, maintaining the overall program duration.

Slip edit: A slip edit shifts the In and Out points of a clip without changing the clip’s duration, without affecting adjacent clips, and without altering the overall program duration. You can use the slip edit tool in the Timeline to drag a clip left or right, and its In and Out points will shift accordingly. In other words, a slip edit alters which specific portion of the source clip is included, but does not alter the duration of the selection. The slip edit is extremely useful for when you slap a bunch of clips down quickly, then plan to go back and fine tune later, but do not want to mess up the pacing and edit points downstream.

Slide edit: A slide edit preserves the duration of a clip and of the overall program by changing the Out point of the preceding clip and the In point of the following clip. When you use the slide edit tool, sliding an entire clip forward or backward in the Timeline, the adjacent clips are correspondingly lengthened and/or shortened by the same number of frames, therefore, the duration of the program stays the same. A slide edit affects three clips: the clip being slid (the duration of which stays the same), as well as the two clips before and after the slid clip (the durations of which are both altered). The overall program duration is maintained. DOCUMENTARY TODAY

A dinosaur wakes up The Films Division of India is the largest repository of recorded history in both celluloid and digital formats. But what does this organisation have to offer for the future, asks DEREK BOSE.

Films Division of India completes 60 years. For all the media attention and public interest the event has generated, this could well be another desultory year in the history of the world’s largest production house for documentary and short films. But who cares. In truth, many do not know of the existence of FD. Fewer still are aware that this government organisation, which has been at the vanguard of the short films’ movement in India, is the largest repository of recorded 64

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history — in both celluloid and digital formats — with close to 8,500 titles to its name. All major filmmakers — from Satyajit Ray to Adoor Gopalakrishnan to Shyam Benegal, Gulzar, Prakash Jha and Vidhu Vinod Chopra — have directed films for FD. Another little known fact is that it houses a world-class research and reference centre and has an international digital film archive with more than 10,000 rare prints sourced from all over the planet. But beyond this archival role, what

does the organisation have to offer for the future? FD chief Kuldeep Sinha is quite upbeat on this count. From upgrading film making technology and training of technicians to holding film festivals and introducing digital text books in collaboration with educational institutions, the man has many plans lined up. One project particularly close to his heart is starting a television channel exclusively for documentary films. “I have been campaigning for this

documentary channel for the past 15 years,” he says. “As pioneers of the documentary film movement, we are eminently suited to run this channel. It would be the first TV channel of its kind, not only in India but in the whole of Asia. I am sure that with regular telecasts on this channel, the gap of understanding between documentaries and the audience will narrow down.” Sinha’s concern is no different from that of any private producer of documentaries and shorts. He needs an audience for his films. How does he create a captive audience that pays for what it sees? So long as exhibitors had to pay one per cent of box-office collections for showing “government approved films” (prior to main screenings at commercial theatres), the FD was in business. Those films included information and educational shorts, news-reels on national events and of course, propaganda stuff for the government of the day. In the early 80s, when the exhibitors rebelled, refusing to pay FD for imposing itself on them, the party was over. The issue landed in court and the exhibitors won. FD could not defend its stand of perpetuating a practice that was initiated by the British before Independence. In effect, no Indian News Review (INR) produced by FD has been screened since 1984. The stoppage of FD screenings in commercial theatres across the country came as a huge body blow for the organisation from which it is yet to recover. At one stroke it lost not only its revenue source, but also the visibility it had

enjoyed with the masses. To make matters worse, television came into India in a big way, rendering it redundant. It was completely beaten by the satellite revolution.

create a brand equity for the channel.

Left to survive on grants from the Information and Broadcasting Ministry, FD has since remained a dormant organisation — a slumbering giant commanding an enormous (largely idle) work force, infrastructure and equipment worth crores (mostly gathering dust) and landed property located in prime locations in almost all major Indian cities. Once every two years it shakes itself up to hold the MIFF (Mumbai International Film Festival) for documentary, short and animation films in February and thereafter, relapses into slumber. Such is the public perception of what was once the most vibrant and prolific film production house of the nation.

Tragically enough, the government is expected to step in here also. As Sinha puts it: “I agree we would be competing with entertainment channels for the mind space of viewers. But since when have documentary films served the purpose of entertainment? The basic objective of a documentary is to record and present events for posterity. This is education stuff, like text books. Just because people prefer fiction and novels, will you stop printing text books? This is the argument I have been putting forth to the government.”

Given this background, Sinha’s efforts at starting a dedicated documentary channel on TV should come as a shot in the arm for FD. For one, its films would once again, find a platform to be “seen”. Two, its resources (including excess manpower) should be optimally utilised. Three, short filmmakers across the country, would find a rallying point as in the good old days and build upon common synergies. Four, with intelligent programming and smart marketing strategies, it can even be financially self-sustaining, if not profitable. And finally, regular telecasts of documentary and shorts would raise public awareness about this much neglected area of filmmaking and

All this sounds fine. But who will put in the money for such a channel?

What could be difficult for FD is changing its mindset — getting out of its inertia and thinking ahead, with the times. Contemplating a TV channel, by itself betrays outdated thinking in this age of rapid technological progress sweeping across the film and media sectors. Today, everybody is talking of ‘nanoisation’ of films — short clips that tell a story, which can be delivered across multiple platforms like the Internet and mobile telephones for good money. FD should be positioning itself to exploit these emerging opportunities — more so, as no other media organisation is as well equipped as it is in doing so. A documentary channel can always serve as a parallel platform for further exploitation of its works. It is only with such out-of-the-box thinking that FD would be able to reclaim its past glory. DOCUMENTARY TODAY

The Voice Continues To Haunt active on the scene and happy to cooperate. “I was also fortunate to be able to interview the three great composers who had utilised his voice extensively: Anandji, Pyarelal and Ravi,” said an excited Kuldeep Sinha. Mohammad Rafi has left behind a rich legacy of songs sung by him over 35 years. Rafi’s voice, ranging from the melancholic to the boisterous, was such that it suited every mood and every occasion in films. His is one voice that has been imitated the most and yet, no one has been able to recreate the Rafi magic. At best, each of these singers has been able to imitate just one aspect of his voice. But nobody possesses the versatility that Rafi did.

A rare photograph of Mohammad Rafi with composer Naushad, the man who gave him his first break in Hindi films. Mohammad Rafi, one of the legends of Indian cinema still has a tremendous impact on the music lovers. His voice continues to haunt us even today. The voice has now returned to haunt us in Films Division’s latest film Rafi We Remember You, directed by Kuldeep Sinha. The film has been edited by Bhupen Mhatre. Shankar Patnaik is the Director of Photography while Ram Sahay is the Operative Cameraman. Sound is handled by V.S.Bhatt and F.A.Waris. “For me, making this film was a dream come true. When Rafi Sahab passed away in 1980 I wanted to make a film on him but the project just did not take off. 28 years later when no one had made a film on him I decided that I should take up the project,” says Kuldeep Sinha. But he was certain that he did not want to make a conventional biographical. So he set out to make a 66

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film which would reflect the ethos of the great singer through the voices of his friends, relatives and well-wishers. This feature-length documentary is a rare combination of interviews and archival footage which has been gathered from all corners of the country. This unique blend has resulted in a film which brings alive the magic of the voice which enthralled an entire generation. “Rafi had sung more than 30,000 songs in various languages so it was quite a task selecting the ones we would use,” says Kuldeep Sinha. “We wanted the research to be impeccable.” The main source of information was the legendary singer’s son Shahid Rafi. Two actors for whom Rafi had consistently sung for — Shammi Kapoor and Biswajeet — were still

Rafi was born in a small village called Kotla Sultan Singh near Amritsar on December, 24 1924. His family shifted to Lahore when he was still a baby. A fakir used to come to their locality in Lahore every day and sing. The young Rafi was so fascinated by him that he used to follow him around. His elder brother Hamid was aware of Rafi’s love for music and encouraged it. Rafi gave his first public performance at the age of 13. Among the audience sat noted composer Shyam Sunder who was so impressed that he invited the young Rafi to come to Bombay. Rafi Sahab, as he was affectionately known, recorded his first song in 1944 for a Punjabi film Gul Baloch with music director Shyam Sunder. In the year 1944 Mohammad Rafi decided to move to Bombay where he was first given a break by Naushad in Pehle Aap (1944). Not many people know that had acted in couple of films, Laila Majnu (1945) and Jugnu (1947). Says Kuldeep Sinha, “Rafi’s life was so enriched that even a ten-hour documentary will not do justice to him. It is a matter of great regret that I had only a little more than an hour to tell this story.”

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