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24 Redefining Visual News N.V.K.MURTHY, former Joint Chief Producer (Newsreels), writes about those heady days of the 1960s and 1970s when there was no television and the weekly newsreels of the Films Division laid down the parameters for visual news.
30 The Cover
The Legacy of a Documentary Guru
Best Documentaries of 2009
Robert Flaherty created an excitement and appetite for documentaries with filmgoers, filmmakers and studio heads. Documentary Today celebrates his 126th birth anniversary.
Documentary Today takes stock of the year that has been and chooses the Best Documentaries of 2009 in the United States, Europe and India. This is a listing of the “must-see” documentaries for any film lover. Cover Photo: The Cove PLUS: The Other Contenders, a section on films which were good but not good enough to make the list.
41 A Musical Week in Goa Films Division creates the third hit in a row: its weeklong celebration of Indian classical music and maestros at the International Film Festival in Goa.
20 Managing Reality KULDEEP SINHA takes a close critical look at what documentary means and whether the documentaries of today truly follow Grierson’s dictum of “recording reality” or are they merely sensationalist. His conclusions will shock you! 2
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56 The M.I.F.F. Dossier Interviews with the makers of the most interesting films to be shown at the 2010 Mumbai International Film Festival of Doumentary and Short Films.
From The Editor’s Desk
Many eyebrows were raised … many apprehensions aired … when delegates of the last 2008 Mumbai International Film Festival for Documentaries, Short and Animation Films saw many “Guests” from mainstream cinema participating in what was essentially a documentary film festival. These “guests” not only enjoyed the films being screened but also actively participated in various other activities being held on the periphery. Vidya Balan, Subhash Ghai, Mahesh Bhat, Basu Chatterjee, Ravi Chopra, Mubarak Begum, Rajit Kapoor, Rajeshwari Varun … the list was seemingly endless. Later, Yash Chopra, Anandji, Ravi, Biswajeet, Amin Sayani, Sudesh Bhosle, Usha Timothi were part of Films Division’s Diamond Jubilee Celebrations in Mumbai. Another stage line-up of musical celebrities was visible at the Moments with the Maestros, a festival of films on musical greats held during the recently concluded I.F.F.I. 2009 in Goa. South Indian film stars Nagarjuna and Amala as well as musical geniuses Shiv Kumar Sharma, Pandit Jasraj, Amjad Ali Khan, Pandit Ram Narain, Gulzar made their presence felt. The presence of Bollywood biggies had shattered the long standing myth that the documentaries cannot and shall not attract those who do not practice ‘Reality Cinema’. Some murmured that it was a back-door admission of popular cinema personalities to “encroach” and “pollute” the basic concept of a documentary – which, according to these diehards, should not entertain. Films Division since its inception remained aloof and kept a distance with mainstream cinema to maintain its own distinct identity – quite forgetting that one of its own founders was the legendary Hindi cinema director V. Shantaram. During M.I.F.F.-2009 when a reporter asked noted actress Vidya Balan, “why she chose to be a guests in the M.I.F.F. inauguration”, she proudly replied, “I started my career with documentaries. I love them.” It is not only documentary filmmakers but also the Media and the critics who created this artificial wall between documentary and feature films looking deprecatingly at each other. Since it was I who initiated the process of integrating the two main genres of filmmaking, the critics accused me of diluting the serious nature of a documentary. I have always been of the view that a filmmaker is a filmmaker for any
genre of filmmaking, be it a documentary, an advertisement film or a fiction film. They all communicate in different ways. It is left to a film maker if he chooses any of the genres to communicate his ideas effectively. Thus, no filmmaker is inferior to another. Another reason for such integration is that a film maker always criss-cross between the genres. No one is exclusive only to a particular type of filmmaking, it is the motivation that prompts a Film Director to make a documentary, a fiction film or an advertisement film. It gives a lot of heartburn to short filmmakers when they observe that a lot of importance and glamour is attached to fiction films and film festivals. They always accuse the festival organisers for according step-motherly treatment to documentary and documentary filmmakers. While they demand parity with mainstream cinema, they themselves remain unwilling to break the imaginary wall between documentary and mainstream filmmakers and appreciate the efforts put in every type of film. I think the main problem lies with documentary filmmakers who have come to believe that a documentary or non fiction film should be serious or ponderous. In spite of ten festivals we have still not learned this lesson that a documentary film can be a fun film. A serious subject can be put across in an interesting fashion. In the United States feature-length documentaries not only get a theatrical release on their own but also attract huge crowds. Documentary filmmakers like Michael Moore are as big as any star from Hollywood. All we have to do is believe in ourselves and our Muse.
Kuldeep Sinha Editor Kuldeep Sinha Executive Editor Sanjit Narwekar Correspondents Shankar Patnaik Ramsahay Yadav 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
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The Best Documentaries of 2009 It is the beginning of another new year and time to take stock of what was achieved in the previous year. These then are Documentary Today’s choice of the best documentary films made in 2009. The best documentary films of 2009 use a wide range of cinematic techniques and effects — including infra red cameras, animation and graphics — to present compelling stories elucidating the pressing issues of our day, including environmental and social issues of global importance. Many are enlightening travelogues that take you to Earth’s remote areas to bring home the point that we must be more respectful of our planet and each other. They cry out for social justice, reveal ways in which we can improve our attitudes and behavior. These “must-see” documentaries of 2009 will last through the ages. 4
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The Best of United States operations in Taiji, Wakayama, Japan. In the 1960’s, he captured and trained the 5 wild dolphins who would play the role of Flipper in the hit television series of the same name. This popculture phenomenon fueled widespread public adoration of dolphins. It was when one of the dolphins committed a form of suicide in his arms, closing her blowhole voluntarily in order to drown, that O’Barry came to see it as a curse not a blessing. Since then O’Barry has worked tirelessly as an advocate on behalf of dolphins around the world.
My Neighbour My Killer
My Neighbour My Killer Director: Anne Aghion The 1994 genocide of Tutsis by Hutus left Rwanda physically and psychically bereft and unable to function. Seven years after the Tutsi genocide, the Rwandan government mandated the surviving population to reconcile. The Gacaca Law mandated Tutsis and Hutus to reconcile – to forgive and move on with the rebuilding of the nation. Trials take place in fields, town squares, schoolyards. The Gacaca open-air hearings engage citizen-judges in trying their neighbors – confessed genocide killers are sent home from prison, while survivors are asked to resume living next door to them. as peaceful neighbors. The tag line of My Neighbor My Killer is: “When peace comes, how do you make it right again?” The film shows the post-genocide struggle of surviving Tutsis and guilty Hutus to turn Rwanda’s blood-soaked turf into common ground on which they can
live in peace. My Neighbor My Killer takes us to a rural community to watch the process. Villagers sit on the earth and we, through the camera’s eye, sit among them. Surviving women tell how men slaughtered their families. Anne Aghion spent more than nine years chronicling the peace process to produce this brilliant documentary that brings us to a new level of understanding about the human capacity for creating mutuality.
The Cove Director: Louie Psihoyos The Cove is an exposé of the annual killing of about 2,300 dolphins in a National Park at Taiji, Wakayama in Japan. The film was directed by former National Geographic photographer Louie Psihoyos, and was filmed secretly during 2007 using underwater microphones and high-definition cameras disguised as rocks. The movie follows former dolphin trainer Richard O’Barry’s quest to document the dolphin hunting
After meeting with O’Barry, Psihoyos and his crew wind up in the small town of Taiji, a town that appears to be devoted to the wonder and mysteries of the dolphins and whales that swim off their coast. But in a remote, glistening cove, surrounded by wire and “Keep Out” signs, lies a dark reality. It is here, under the cover of night, that the fisherman of Taiji, driven by a multi-billion dollar dolphin entertainment industry and an underhanded market for mercurytainted dolphin meat, engage in the unseen killing. Together with the Ocean Preservation Society, Psihoyos, O’Barry, and the crew utilizes special tactics and embark on a mission to get the truth on what is really going on in the cove and why it matters to everyone else in the world.
Unmistaken Child Director: Nati Baratz The Buddhist concept of reincarnation, while both mysterious and enchanting, is hard for most westerners to grasp. Unmistaken Child follows the four-year search for the reincarnation of Lama Konchog, a world-renowned Tibetan master who passed away in 2001 at age 84. The Dalai Lama charges the deceased monk’s devoted disciple, Tenzin Zopa (who had been in his service since the age of seven), to search for his DOCUMENTARY TODAY
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master’s reincarnation. Tenzin sets off on this unforgettable quest on foot, mule and even helicopter, through breathtaking landscapes and remote traditional Tibetan villages. Along the way, Tenzin listens to stories about young children with special characteristics, and performs rarely seen ritualistic tests designed to determine the likelihood of reincarnation. He eventually presents the child he believes to be his reincarnated master to the Dalai Lama so that he can make the final decision. The film provides a rare, intimate and very moving look at the processes and rituals observed by Tibetan Buddhists as they carry on the ancient rites of their religion. Stunningly shot, Unmistaken Child is a beguiling, surprising, touching, even humorous experience.
Unmistaken Child
Director: Dana Perry
How can a mother, we may ask, make a film about the death of her son? What defines this film as a remarkably unique and truth-telling achievement is the way it explores how filmmaking can create closure for its creators as well as its audience.
It is a film that raises questions. It asks how a young boy can end his life at the tender age of 15. It struggles to find answers about what kind of family he had and the life he led. By its very nature, it is a naked display of its filmmaker’s personal life at its most revealing and perhaps disturbing.
Dana Perry has gathered home movies, photographs, and a variety of different documents to tell the story of her son, Evan: his bipolar illness, his life, and his death, and their impact on those who loved him the most. She interviews his siblings and friends, his doctors and his teachers, and in the
Boy Interrupted
Boy Interrupted
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process, she chronicles a harrowing and difficult journey. The camera provides insight and revelation, and yet Boy Interrupted is a film that is also full of despair. The film’s saving grace is that it functions, in the final analysis, as therapy for both its viewers and its subjects at a most fundamental level. It is an essentially human story, and a parent’s worst nightmare.
Playground Directed by Libby Spears Sexual exploitation of children is a problem that we tend to relegate to back-alley brothels in developing countries, the province of a particularly inhuman, and invariably foreign, criminal element. Such is the initial premise of Libby Spears’ sensitive investigation into the topic. But she quickly concludes that very little thrives on this planet without American capital, and the commercial child sex industry is certainly thriving. Spears intelligently traces the epidemic to its disparate, and decidedly domestic, roots—among them the way children are educated about sex, and the problem of raising awareness about a crime that inherently cannot be shown. Her cultural observations are couched in an ongoing mystery story: the search
for Michelle, an American girl lost to the underbelly of childhood sexual exploitation who has yet to resurface a decade later. Punctuated with poignant animation by Japanese pop artist Yoshitomo Nara, Playground illuminates a sinister industry of unrecognized pervasiveness. Spears has crafted a comprehensive revelation of an unknown epidemic, essential viewing for any parent or engaged citizen.
Crude Director: Joe Berlinger The Texaco/Chevron contamination of the Ecuadorian Amazon, dubbed the Amazon Chernobyl, is a much larger although lesser known calamity than that of the Exxon Valdez. Toxic chemicals have turned thousands of square miles of rain forest into a wasteland where nothing will grow, and several tribes of indigenous people have been brought close to
extinction, along with the region’s unique flora and fauna. Joe Berlinger’s film exposes the extent of the damage and follows the 27-billion dollar law suit that the local people and international environmental and humanitarian groups have brought against Chevron. Rarely have such conflicts been examined with the depth and power of Crude. These real characters and events play out on the screen like a sprawling legal thriller. The film is indeed a Herculean work of investigative journalism that lays out the decades-long indignities suffered by an indigenous group living—or, rather, dying—in an area of Ecuador’s Amazon region ravaged by oil drilling.
Prodigal Sons Director: Kimberly Reed Kimberly Reed, a magazine editor, goes home to Helena, Montana for her 20-year high-school reunion and a fence-mending mission with her
resentful adopted brother Marc. But along the way Prodigal Sons uncovers stunning revelations, including a blood relationship with Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth, intense sibling rivalries and unforeseeable twists of plot and gender. Reed’s rare access delicately reveals not only the family’s most private moments, but also an epic scope as the film travels from Montana to Croatia, from jail cell to football field, from deaths to births. The twists and turns of her story, from gender bending to ancestral history, are flabbergasting but never exploitative: instead of a Tarnationstyle look-at-me geekshow, she uses her candid, sometimes bruising footage with scrupulous concern for all, treating everyone as people first and material second. The film is an unflinching portrait of her family that is absolutely engrossing. Kim Reed’s compassionate vérité style of filmmaking captures the lives of her family in such an organic way that their exceptional and challenging stories puncture the surface of our expectations. Questions of sexual orientation, identity, severe trauma and family love are effortlessly explored as the subjects freely open up their lives to the camera. Raw, emotional and provocative, Prodigal Sons offers a moving, illuminating examination of one family’s struggle to come to terms with its past and present. It’s sure to open both your mind and your heart.
Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi
Crude
Director: Ian Olds A Westerner’s abduction will make headlines around the world, but the film examines what happens for those who don’t make the international headlines—in this case an Afghan. Twenty-four-year-old Ajmal Naqshbandi is a “fixer,” someone hired by foreign journalists to facilitate the gathering of news stories. In 2007 he DOCUMENTARY TODAY
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was captured with an Italian journalist by the Taliban in Afghanistan. With the aid of his government and high levels of publicity, the Italian was spared, but the Afghan wan’t so lucky. After the dust of his murder settles, Ajmal’s friends, family, and his fellow abductee try to make sense of the harsh fate that befell him. This emotionally mesmerizing documentary takes an intensely personal journey into the dangerous and unseen world of wartime news gathering, where nationality can determine the value of a life. The film achieves a weighty tension by mingling two story-lines. Six months before his abduction, Ajmal amiably shepherds American journalist Christian Parenti from one dangerous interview with machine-gun-toting militants to the next. The chronicles of this assignment are interrupted by brutal, Taliban-shot images from the squall that was to come—Ajmal and journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo, mistaken for spies, bound and battered, captives at the mercy of a rogue army.
The Good Soldier Directors: Lexi Lovett and Michael Uys The Good Soldier follows the journeys of five combat veterans from different generations of American wars as they sign up, go into battle, and eventually change their minds about what it means to be a good soldier. The documentary present a cadre of highly decorated soldiers who’d
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The Good Soldier
fought valiantly in America’s wars — World War II, Vietnam, the Gulf War and Iraq — and, in doing so, came to the conclusion that warfare neither a righteous nor effective way to resolve differences of opinion, ideology and/ or national interests. As Chief Warrant Officer Perry Parks, who flew helicopter combat missions in Vietnam, says, “A young person who is considering a life in the military needs to know that it is not just the job, the education, the travel - the glorious parts they show you. Your real bare bones job is to go out and kill people. Every man is an infantryman. Every soldier’s priority is to conduct the war.” Taking it further, Captain Michael McPhearson, who grew up on Fort Bragg, changed his mind about the military after fighting in the Gulf War. “Soldiers serve the public; they serve our society. I am saying do with me what you will. I am giving you my mind and my body. When I go to war, my body can be broken, my mind can be broken, or I don’t come back. I give you permission to do this. I swear to uphold the Constitution, which includes the Bill of Rights. It is a generally just document. When leaders break that, then I believe a
soldier has the right to break their agreement. McPhearson, resigned his commission and has become the Executive Director of Veterans for Peace. He now faces the anguish of having a son in the military. “I also believe that a soldier has a right to decide they don’t want to kill anybody anymore. They have a right to break that too, because I have to live with taking somebody’s life. You don’t,” he says in the film.
Soundtrack For A Revolution Directors: Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman The film tells the story of the American civil rights movement through its powerful music -the freedom songs protesters sang on picket lines, in mass meetings, in paddy wagons, and in jail cells as they fought for justice and equality. The film features new performances of the freedom songs by top artists, including John Legend, Joss Stone, Wyclef Jean, and The Roots; riveting archival footage; and interviews with civil rights foot soldiers and leaders, including Congressman John Lewis, Harry Belafonte, Julian Bond, and Ambassador Andrew Young.
Spain
Flores De Rwanda (Flowers Of Rwanda)
The Art Of Failure
Soundtrack For A Revolution celebrates the vitality of this music. The freedom songs evolved from slave chants, from the labor movement, and especially from the black church. The music enabled blacks to sing words they could not say, and it was crucial in helping the protesters as they faced down brutal aggression with dignity and nonviolence. The infectious energy of the songs swept people up and empowered them to fight for their rights. In sum the film is a vibrant blend of heart-wrenching interviews, dramatic images, and thrilling contemporary performances — a film of significance, energy, and power.
The Art Of Failure: Chuck Connelly Not For Sale Directed by Jeff Stimmel The Art of Failure: Chuck Connelly Not for Sale is the unusual story of the rise and fall of a major talent, along with Julian Schnabel and JeanMichel Basquiat, from the 1980s art world. Though he was extremely talented with a profitable collection of work, Chuck Connelly ended up alienating every collector and gallery owner he worked with. This 63-minute documentary follows the life of this brilliant yet enigmatic painter, who had great success as a young artist but who now sees his career fading. Driven by desperation, and left by his wife during the course of this documentary, Connelly hires an actor to pose as a young, upcoming artist to sell Chuck’s work to galleries and art dealers. The film provides an intimate and often troubling character study of
Connelly, a working-class guy from Pittsburgh who holds “traditional” beliefs that art is, above all, about personal expression and craftsmanship. These notions have proven to be less-than-fashionable in today’s elite art world, the inner workings of which are also glimpsed in the film. Shot over six years, this dramatic and entertaining documentary explores a painter’s passion for his work, despite being his own worst enemy. A number of insiders in the art world are interviewed in the film, including the venerable gallery owner Annina Nosei, who launched both Chuck’s career and those of Basquiat and Schnabel; the successful 1980s artist Mark Kostabi, who is the very opposite of Chuck; Walter Robinson, editor of ArtNet, who provides astute insights into Connelly’s art; Matt Garfield, Chuck’s patron, and others. Interestingly, in 1989 Martin Scorsese was looking for an artist who could be a model for his film, New York Stories: Life Lessons. Several art dealers recommended Connelly. Subsequently, the “wild man artist” played by Nick Nolte was based on Chuck, and all of the artwork shown in the film was Connelly’s.
Mugabe and the White African Directors: Lucy Bailey & Andrew Thompson, This film follows Mike Campbell who, in 2008, took the government of Zimbabwe and President Robert Mugabe to international court for violation of human rights. (see Documentary Today July 2009)
Director: David Munoz Rwanda today. 14 years after the Rwandan genocide of 1994, that took away the lives of more than 800,000 people. What’s the current situation of the people of Rwanda? What feelings prevail in the hearts of the victims of the Rwanda genocide? Can genocide victims and killers live together? What’s the importance of education in a post-genocide society? Could films become a way of educating the people of Rwanda, and specially Rwandan children? Can a film festival make a difference? May the history of the Rwandan genocide happen again? Who should act when a genocide is taking place? Do we, as individuals, have any responsibility of stopping a genocide? These are the questions that the film poses and seeks to answer. Denmark
Burma VJ - Reporter I Et Lukket Land (Burma VJ Reporting From a Closed Country) Director:Anders Hosbro Ostergaard Armed with pocket-sized video cameras, a tenacious band of Burmese reporters face down death to expose the repressive regime controlling their country. In 2007, after decades of selfimposed silence, Burma became headline news across the globe when peaceful Buddhist monks led a massive rebellion. More than 100,000 people took to the streets protesting a cruel dictatorship that has held the country hostage for more than 40 years. Foreign news crews were banned, the Internet was shut down, and Burma was closed to the outside world. So how did we witness these events? Enter the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), aka the Burma VJs. Compiled from the shaky handheld footage of the DVB, the film pulls us into the heat of the moment as the VJs DOCUMENTARY TODAY
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The Best of Europe themselves become the target of the Burmese government. Their tactical leader, code-named Joshua, oversees operations from a safe hiding place in Thailand. Via clandestine phone calls, Joshua dispenses his posse of video warriors, who covertly film the abuses in their country, then smuggle their footage across the border into Thailand. Joshua ships the footage to Norway, where it is broadcast back to Burma and the world via satellite. Burma VJ plays like a thriller, all the more scary because it is true. Germany
The Sarajevo Tunnel Directors: Michael Möller & Slavica Vlahovic Sarajevo, May 1993: Surrounded by Serbian troops in the mountains armed with heavy artillery, there is no escape from the besieged city. No way out, now way in. The Sarajevo Tunnel was constructed by the besieged citizens of Sarajevo during the Siege of Sarajevo during Bosnian War between 1992 and 1995 in order to link the city of Sarajevo, which was entirely cut-off by Serbian forces, with the supposedly neutral area at the Sarajevo Airport set up by the United Nations.
Burma VJ
Beginning in January 1993, the Sarajevo Tunnel was dug by Bosnian volunteers working in 8-hour shifts. The tunnel was 1.5 metres in height and width, and ran for approximately 800 metres in length. The Sarajevo tunnel was completed in mid-1993, which allowed food and humanitarian aid to come into the city, and people to get out. The tunnel was one of the major ways of bypassing the international arms embargo and
providing the city defenders with weaponry. In effect, the tunnel saved Sarajevo. Today, behind the restored facades and veneer of bustling activity, painful memories, feelings of retribution and mutual recriminations still smoulder. Held together by a fragile peace, the modern European metropolis of Sarajevo today still bears the omnipresent scars of the bloody civil war. The film relates the dramatic stories associated with the tunnel, before, during and after its construction. It shows how the tunnel came to shape the lives of people until the present day. France
Les Plages d’Agnès (The Beaches Of Agnes)
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Director: Agnès Varda To celebrate her 80th birthday, the famed French filmmaker Agnès Varda invites us on an autobiographical walk on the beach. Already in 1954, Varda anticipated the French New Wave’s youthful assault on traditions with her debut La pointe courte and since
somewhere else. The film follows the inhabitants at a suitable distance, and doesn’t provide any text or explanation but lets the images and the people speak for themselves. Below Sea Level also includes an impressive starring role for the spectacular desert sky. Germany
Das Herz von Jenin (The Heart Of Jenin)
The Beaches Of Agnes
1990, she has exclusively focused on making documentaries. In Les Plages d’Agnès she weaves photographs, vintage footage, scenes from her films and present-day sequences into a memorable voyage through her life, during which she confronts the joy of creation and the pain of personal loss, death and aging. It is a singular trip played out against the exciting context of the postwar explosion of cultural expression in France. She knew everyone: her colleagues in the French New Wave, the Black Panthers in California and even Jim Morrison, who would visit when in Paris. Idiosyncratic, engaging and deeply moving, Les Plages d’Agnès is the autobiography of a magnificent artist and a woman of vital curiosity.
live here answer to imaginative names like Bulletproof, Insane Wayne and Bus Kenny. They kill time by messing around, doing odd jobs, talking and living. For some of them, this desolate place with no electricity or running water is a temporary address, while for others it’s a permanent vacation. A Vietnam veteran who now goes by the name of Cindy opened a hair salon here. Lili is a new arrival who lost custody of her only son and now does acupuncture. Mike Bright grieves over his dead daughter and fills his days writing songs. Everyone has his or her own reason for being here, and especially a reason not to be
Director: Leon Geller & Marcus Vetter The Heart of Jenin is the story of Ahmed Chatib, a Palestinian boy shot by Israeli soldiers whose father, Ismail Chatib, decided, within twelve hours, to donate his son’s organs to six Israeli children to save their lives. One and a half years have passed since then. To find out how his deed changed the lives of the recipients’ families, Ismail travels throughout Israel, from its northern hills on the Lebanese border, past the contended Holy City of Jerusalem and up to the edge of the Negev Desert in the south. The film is a trip through occupied territory and hearts occupied by prejudice. It leads us to the families who have learned to overcome their prejudices and to families who still speak of the misfortune of having to live with the organ of an Arab. It is the story of a humanitarian peace gesture that seemed, for a short instant, to
Italy / USA
Below Sea Level Director: Gianfranco Rosi About 200 miles southeast of Los Angeles and 20 feet below sea level, a commune of outcasts lives in the middle of the desert. They’re not some hippie colony, just a group of people who have turned their backs on society and want to be left alone. On this bare, arid plain, we see a mobile home here and there, a car or an impromptu house. The people who
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response to anti-Semitism can we really appreciate how Jews today, and especially modern Israelis, respond to the world around them, in New York and in Moscow, in Gaza and Tel Aviv. Argentina
Nuestros Desaparecidos (Our Disappeared) Director: Juan Mandelbaum
Defamation
prevail over the insoluble conflict between Israel and Palestine. Austria
Defamation
Israel. While in Jerusalem, he drops by the house of his grandmother that offers her insight on the issue and declares that she is the “real Jew”.
Director: Yoav Shamir What is anti-Semitism today, two generations after the Holocaust? In his continuing exploration of modern Israeli life, director Yoav Shamir travels the world in search of the most modern manifestations of the “oldest hatred”, and comes up with some startling answers. In this irreverent quest, he follows American Jewish leaders to the capitals of Europe, as they warn government officials of the growing threat of anti-Semitism, and he tacks on to a class of Israeli high school students on a pilgrimage to Auschwitz.
The film questions our perceptions and terminology when an event proclaimed by some as anti-Semitic is described by others as legitimate criticism of Israel’s government policies. The film walks along the boundary between anti-Zionism, rejecting the notion of a Jewish State, and anti-Semitism, rejecting Jews. Is the former being used to excuse the latter? And is there a difference between today’s anti-Semitism and plain old racism that is affecting all minorities? Opinions often differ and tempers sometimes flare, but in Defamation we find that one thing is certain - only by understanding their
On his way, Shamir meets controversial historian, Norman Finkelstein, who offers his unpopular views on the manner that antiSemitism is being used by the Jewish community and especially Israel for political gain. He also joins scholars, Stephen M. Walt and John J. Mearsheimer, while they give a lecture in Israel following the release of their book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, about the unproportional influence the Israel lobby in Washington enjoys. Yoav visits Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem, the must stop for all world leaders on their visits to
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The film is filmmaker Juan Mandelbaum’s personal search for the souls of friends and loved ones who were caught in the vise of the military and “disappeared” in his native Argentina during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship. After learning that Patricia, a long lost girlfriend, is among the desaparecidos, Mandelbaum returns to his native Argentina to find out what happened to her and others he knew who mysteriously vanished. As he revisits the dreams they shared for a revolution that would transform Argentina he also grieves the tragic losses and examines his own choices. Through dramatic stories told by parents, siblings, friends and children of the disappeared, Mandelbaum shows what happens when brutal regimes attack the fabric of a country with great impunity, causing enormous suffering that lasts for generations. Using rare archival footage, Mandelbaum brings the energy and tension of the time and place to life.
Mingozzi who worked as Fellini’s Assistant Director, the documentary interviews La Dolce Vita’’s three leading ladies—Anita Ekberg (Sylvia) who bathed in the Trevi Fountain in the movie, Yvonne Furneaux (Emma), who played Marcello Mastroianni’s (Marcello Rubini) suicidal girlfriend and Anouk Aimée (Maddalena), who plays Marcello’s lover. The film also carries commentaries by Rome‘s paparazzi, whose behavior influenced Fellini’s vision for the film. U.K.
Of Time and the City
Another Planet
Hungary
Masik Bolygo(Another Planet) Director: Ferenc Moldovanyi At the end of 2005 the United Nations decided to dedicate the following years to the problems of our Planet, and declared 2008 the International Year of Planet Earth. What has our Planet become in the first decade of the 21 st century? We live in an extremely divided world, marked by shockingly unjust human conditions, reeling from the symptoms of massive ecological crises. Countries left to fend for themselves, looted and humiliated, completely unable to recover in the wake of civil wars and genocide. The bare minimum of human values and human rights are being trampled upon. The filmmakers started shooting the film in Black Africa in 2005 and finished it in 2007. During these two years they witnessed appalling human fates and encountered various stages of humiliation and defenselessness. Child laborers, slaves, child prostitutes and child soldiers, and children suffering in Dickensian conditions - a shameful and anachronistic state of affairs. Shot on four continents (including Congo, Cambodia and Ecuador), the documentary presents the hidden face of our planet and the general and moral crisis of our world. It reveals shocking facts like: The wealth of the two richest men on Earth exceeds the total GDP of the 45 poorest countries
in the world and three billion people on our Planet earn less than two dollars for their daily subsistence. Tibor Máthé’s powerful imagery and Tibor Szemzõ’s magical music, create a dramatic juxtaposition. Italy
Noi che abbiamo fatto La dolce vita (We Who Made La dolce vita) Director: Gianfranco Mingozzi The film is a tribute documentary presented to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (The Good Life) which won the coveted Golden Palm (Palme d’Or) in 1960. Directed by Gianfranco
Director: Terence Davies The British filmmaker Terence Davies, whose subject has often been his own life, now turns to his city, Liverpool, and regrets not the joys of his youth but those he didn’t have, especially the sexual experiences forbidden by the Catholic church to which he was devoted. He was born into a modest home, shaped by the church, tortured by his forbidden homosexual feelings, and “prayed until my knees bled.” His memories, mixed with those of the city, use remarkable archival footage collated from a century. Includes classical and pop music, and Davies’s deep voice, sometimes quoting poems that match the images. A film of a reverie.
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The Best of India Underground Inferno Director: Umesh Aggarwal Until 1980, Centralia in the heart of Pennsylvannia, USA was a thriving coal-mining town of 1100 people. Its decline as a coal mining town began in 1962, when an underground coalmine in Centralia caught fire. Within a few years pungent smoke began to escape from fissures in the ground. Centralia began to sink, the local highway cracked and collapsed. Trees were bleached white and became petrified, as the fire continued to rage. With only 11 residents; Centralia today is known as a ghost town of America. The film draws a parallel to the Jharia Coal Field, spread over 450 square kilometers, has an estimated coal reserve of 17 billion tonnes. The town of Jharia houses more than half a million people – that is, 2000 people per square kilometer, thus making it one of the most densely populated coalfields in the world. It is also one of the most endangered coal fields because of the coal mine fires. 40 of the total 85 collieries in the region are affected by fire, threatening the very existence of more than half a million people. Today the JCF has 66 active Mine Fires. Across the world, thousands of coal fires are raging. Besides poisoning our air they are one of the major causes of global warming. Controlling these fires is crucial. But once started, they are almost impossible to extinguish. Underground Inferno tracks the two locations and people most affected by coal mine fires (Jharia and Centralia) and suggests modern techniques devised by German Scientists to control this menace.
Pather Panchali: A Living Resonance Director Aloke Banerjee & Joydip Mukherjee After a long gap of fifty years, Satyajit 14
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Underground Inferno
Ray,’s cameraman Soumendu Ray reaches Boral village, where the film Pather Panchali was shot. It is a nostalgic moment for him but an education for those who are accompanying him. He visualizes the frames of the sequences of the film as he had shot them then. He shares the experiences he had, in the past with the film students and next generation of film scribes who are accompanying him. Two contemporary filmmakers, .Girish and Manmohan, start conversations with each other on the aesthetics of Ray’s masterpiece. Their reference is what Professor Satish Bahadur had taught them at the Film & Television Institute of India, Pune. There are other points of view also: Attenborough speaks and so does Derek Malcolm and James Ivory. They all speak on the relevance of the film in today’s context, thus providing a global film perspective,All agree to the sensitivity and legacy of the film which still continues. Wasim, a painter, relates his canvas to the frames of the film, as he paints an image of the film, which comes to his mind instantly, as he ponders about the film. Pather Panchali: A Living
Resonance is a new genre of film experience, a thought-provoking documentary on the legacy and sensitivity of Ray’s immortal classic.
The Other Song Director: Saba Dewan In 1935 Rasoolan Bai the well known singer from Varanasi, India, recorded for the gramaphone a love song that she would never sing again – “My breasts are wounded, don’t throw flowers at me”. A variation of her more famous song “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 and its neighbouring areas to search for the forgotten song. 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 tawaifs or the courtesans who till a century back were amongst the most educated and privileged section of Indian women. Today they stand
Azadnagar in Madhya Pradesh and Gulamnagar in Rajasthan – where the despicable practice is still prevalent.
Supermen of Malegaon
Loha Garam Hai
recast as deviant, their arts, obscene; their story and that of the lost song linked to the making of modern India and the transitions around the control and censorship of female sexualities and cultural expression. The film is the concluding part of Saba Dewan’s trilogy.
Loha Garam Hai (The Iron Is Hot) Directors: Meghnath and Biju Toppo The Sponge Iron Industry is relatively new. Starting with just three plants in 1985 it has grown to 206 plants in 2005 and will soon touch 430 plants. Unofficially the figures are still higher. The plants are centered around Orissa, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand and W.Bengal and in small numbers in Goa, Maharashtra and Karnataka. Very creditable, indeed!
Azadnagar & Gulamnagar Director: Pravin Mishra Bonded Labour, a unique form of slavery in which a worker works free of charge to pay off the loan he has taken. .It is an extreme form of economic exploitation in which the employer wields absolute physical and psychological control over the bonded labourer sapping all vestiges of humanity. In 1976, Government of India enacted the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act and declared that all bonded labourers in the country were free but how has this Act of 1976 been translated into practice? Where and in what condition are the released bonded labourers and their families? The film explores two regions in India –
Director: Faiza Ahmad Khan Supermen of Malegaon follows a small group of people, deep in India’s hinterland, for whom the fantasy associated with film has become the currency with which they buy their sanity, the irrepressible nature of their spirit. Malegaon, tucked away near the heart of India geographically, is fraught with communal tension, under severe economic depression. Yet it houses a tiny film industry. Having begun with tributes, the industry now churns out quirky, low-budget, socially aware, notoriously funny spoofs. Their ambition has grown; they are ready to take on Superman. We follow them on this journey. At times funny, tragic, contemplative. Always warm and engaging. And as the film begins to take shape, through schemes and approaches that are sublimely ingenious, simply bizzarre and purely hysterical, we also slowly discover Malegaon itself. The film is a tribute to that spirit, the spirit that enables The Supermen of Malegaon to make Malegaon’s Superman.
Sabad Nirantar (Word Within The Word) Director: Rajula Shah The ‘Word within the Word is no ordinary one, but embedded in those Sabad Nirantar
The problem, however, is that sponge iron is produced with coal based plants which are extremely polluting and cause serious health hazards. This industry also add to the Climate Change process The film tells the story of the people’s survival in the face of what is probably India’s fastest polluting industry. It shows how governmental machinery is tilted towards the industry and also documents the effort of the people to save their land and livelihood. DOCUMENTARY TODAY
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of Kabir, the 15th century mystic poet whose beguilingly simple songs of devotion, of bhakti, have been remembered and invoked across the Indian sub-continent for hundreds of years, speaking in many dialects and accents, and ranging over most of what is north India and Pakistan. Kabir’s words have the ability to combine the ecstatic address to a nirgun (formless) God with a simple, direct and accessible path to everyday wisdom. That’s what makes his simple yet profound words seem deceptively commonplace. At the heart of the film lies the encounter between the words of Kabir and the ordinary people who are the most passionate guardians of his wisdom – even as they simultaneously change, adapt and proprietorially protect his words!
Lila Director: Bidisha Roy Das & Priyanjana Dutta She is one of the rare Indian movie actresses who left films at a time when the public was craving for more of her. In a sense she was the Indian Greta Garbo. Way back in the 1960s she made just three films: The Householder, Anuradha, Ye Rastey Hain Pyar Ke and then resurfaced again in the 1980s to make two more: Electric Moon and Trikaal. Each film had been made with a director of renown: James Ivory, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, R.K.Nayyar (in his prime) and later Pradip Krishen and Shyam Benegal. She turned away from the limelight to marry Dom Moraes, one of India’s most celebrated poets. Post Dom, Lila Naidu lived a life of painful loneliness at 12, Sergeant House, in Bombay with osteoporosis, alcoholism and stories of a bygone era to be told and shared. Lila was a storyteller, nonpareil. Lila, the film, is vignettes from her life narrated by Lila in her own inimitable style. From her sheltered and almost academic childhood, to her cinematic experiences, her many loves and her desperate attempts at being a householder, this film is Lila’s 16
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Khanabadosh
remarkable journey re-lived through this graceful and elegant actress’ eyes. This documentary is Leela’s story narrated in first person, filmed entirely in her residence in Bombay. This film does not follow straightforward chronological structure or single narrative voice. There is no ideological trajectory of thought or opinion.
Khanabadosh- A Nomad in Spirit and in Reality Directors: Mahvish Rahman, Priya Thuvassery, Swati Bhattacharyya, Tulika The film is a personal journey through the memories and art of the motherdaughter duo: Ajeet Caur, the writer, and Arpana Caur, the painter. It deals with their historical and political trauma of the Partition, the anti-Sikh riots, the feeling of being a ‘refugee’ in their own country and how they choose to express it through their different art forms. The film traces the personal histories of these artists and places them in a larger socio-political context. The stories of Ajeet Caur and Arpana Caur are essentially about 1947 and 1984 incidents, yet they resonate even in incidents of contemporary times.
The Honest Theatre: A Quest Director: Ladly Moukhopadhyay The greatest exponent of post-
independence Indian theatre, the greatest architect of modern Indian drama, the greatest actor of the contemporary stage — all these titles can unhesitatingly be awarded to one person: Sambhu Mitra. His insight into the modern world from the theatrical perspective was unparalleled; his attempt at portraying the world, as he saw it through the medium he loved, was genuine. This dedication to the medium enabled him to continue his wonderful experimentation with the theatrical concept, form and finally to construct his unique theatrical language. Throughout his career he strived to start a movement for Nabanatya (new theatre), which is Sat-natya (honest theatre) as well. This has been the core of his philosophy. Though
and spend their time working a terrible job instead of going to school, but they are also faced with a frightening “mise-en’scene” that permeates their dreams with fires, dead bodies and the fear of spirits. These children are forced to deal closely with death, when they have barely begun to experience their own life.
A School of My Own
Children Of The Pyre
very little of his theatre has been documented or is available in terms of video footage, the film presents some old footage of Mitra with audio recordings and rare stills in an attempt to understand his views. The film also delves deep in the memories of people who have been lucky to know him, most of them being the luminaries of modern Indian theatre and culture and tries to understand his journey towards the Honest Theatre.
Children Of The Pyre Director: Rajesh Jala Children of the Pyre is a compelling real-life, self-narrative of seven such extraordinary children who make their living out of the dead. They collect, snatch or steal used coffin shrouds and sell them for petty amounts in order to ensure their own and their family’s survival Tempered by the heat of the pyre, strengthened in the face of adversities and crafted by a volley of abuses, these imps weave through the pyres and struggle through disdain in this land of the dead. Laughing, smiling, weeping, fighting and shouting, these children run the race for survival - winning it again and again – everyday.
night, burning bodies and releasing their spirits to roam free. The hell fires are operated by Indian men, but are also tended to by many young boys. These boys do the work that no one wants to do: stoking the fires and removing burned limbs. The youths also collect the shrouds from the burned bodies in order to sell them to hawkers. This environment would be a horrific scene for any passerby or worker, but here it is the children who suffer the most. They not only expose themselves to major health hazards
Director: Gargi Sen A School of My Own tells the story of the spread of education in the North Indian state of Himachal Pradesh through an intimate interaction with two children and their families. Shot in the lower Himalayan district of Solan and Upper Himalayan district of Kinnaur, the film paints the picture of a very successful intervention by the State in Education through the two protagonists. The two children, from two different geographical locations in the state, take the viewer into their families, their lives and of course their schools. These are stories of transformation and aspiration, of life and cultures, and of struggles and dreams. And the film asks the very significant question: why can’t the rest of the country do this? The film lives with moments, breathes through them. The form aims to linger in the mind, to evoke rather than explain.
A School of My Own
In Varanasi, on the banks of the Ganges river, lies Manikarnika, one of the largest cremation grounds in India. There, numerous fires rage day and DOCUMENTARY TODAY
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The Other Contenders So many interesting documentaries are being made in the United States and Europe that any listing cannot do justice to all of them. We at Documentary Today realize this and hence this additional list of 10 films which we had to rather grudging leave out. Here they are: Anvil! The Story of Anvil: A story of hope, dogged perseverance and rock and roll, with rock and roll only the occasion for the first two. In 1973, two friends in Toronto started a band and vowed to make r&r until they were old. Now they are old, at least for heavy metal rockers. The band has era moderate rise and a long, long fall, but they refused to give up, and loyal fans around the world kept the faith and treasure the t-shirts. The founders scrape by with telephone sales, demolition and school meal delivery, but keep on rocking. This is the sound of optimism: “Everything on the tour went drastically wrong. But at least there was a tour for it to go wrong on.” Tyson (Director: James Tobak): This surprising documentary discovers a Mike Tyson we didn’t know existed, a bullied little boy who grew up determined to protect himself and often fought out of fear. It’s as if the victim of big kids is still speaking to us from within the intimidating form of perhaps the most punishing heavyweight champion of them all. Working with an unlikely friendship going back many years, Toback asks the right questions and Tyson opens up in ways he may never have before. What emerges is a nuanced and revealing portrait of a heavyweight champion who is anything but the “animal” many people thought they saw. The Most Dangerous Man in America: When military analyst Daniel Ellsberg leaked confidential Department of Defense documents concerning the Vietnam War to the New York Times in 1971, he was both derided as a traitor and celebrated as a hero. “The Pentagon Papers” 18
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The Most Dangerous Man in America
sparked a nationwide debate over how much information should be divulged during wartime and what responsibility the media has, if any, if the government feels its citizens are at risk should the info become public. This incisive documentary takes a look back at the incident and, given America’s current climate, still holds particular relevancy today. Must Read After My Death: A cry from the grave. A woman who died at 89 left behind 50 hours of audiotapes, 200 home movies and 300 pages of documents, ending 30 years earlier on the death of her husband. It tells a story of a marriage from hell. Now assembled by one of her sons, it portrays a toxic marriage, an overwhelmed mother, and a monstrous road warrior father named Charley who was a Good Time Charley, but not at home. After his death, the woman never mentioned
him again. But she kept these records. I’ve never seen anything like it. Capitalism: A Love Story (Director: Michael Moore): Not Moore’s best but still Moore cannot be ignored. Arguably the most polarizing documentarian working today, Michael Moore’s films inspire equal amounts of admiration and vitriol depending on your political views. Capitalism: A Love Story, naturally, is no different, but it does expose and foment the growing realization that for most people without Wall Street bonuses in the seven figures (or more!), the game is rigged and control of your own money seems more and more like a pipe dream every day. Food, Inc. (Director: Robert Kenner): A handful of giant corporations control the growth, processing and sale of food in this country, and don’t want you to realize the extent of their
environmental movement’s elders — Stuart Udall, Denis Hayes, Paul Ehrlich, Pete McCloskey and Rusty Schweickart, among other activists, politicians and forecasters — who give testimony about advances made by conservationists during the 1960s and ’70s, and lead us to an understanding of what happened to bring us to our current situation — on the brink of environmental disaster.
Food, Inc
power. They enforce their policies and threaten reprisals against those raising crops and animals by organic and Green methods. They dictate cruel and unhealthy living conditions for animals, and place our health second to their profits. And they back it all with multi-million dollar ad campaigns portraying themselves as benefactors. The September Issue (Director: R.J.Cutler): What a piece of work is Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, the most ad-heavy magazine in history. Arguably the most powerful woman in fashion, she rules from behind dark glasses and a detached expression. Every word is law. Her staff is on tiptoes, all except for Grace Coddington, a Julia Childian former model who has been on the staff as long as Wintour and is as earthy as Wintour is aloof. Filmed behind the scenes during the ramp-up for Vogue’s all-time record Sept. 2007 issue. “The Devil Wears Prada” didn’t tell the half of it. Collapse (Director: Chris Smith): Terrifying. Michael Ruppert, a controversial blogger from way back, transcends opinion about himself by flatly and concisely laying out facts: We have passed the halfway mark in world oil consumption, and it is rising
as China and India come online. We will run out in about 40 years. Alternative energy sources use oil. You do the math. We are finished by about 2050, and there’s not much we can do. A mesmerizing use of images, music, and Ruppert’s implacable voice. Earth Days (Director: Robert Stone): To explore the fundamental premises and chronicle the advent of Earth Day, our annual celebration of Gaia and whatever ecological awareness we can muster, documentary director Robert Stone has assembled and interviewed a special tribe of the
Outrage: Four years ago filmmaker Kirby Dick exposed the MPAA’s arbitrary ratings dissemination with This Film is Not Yet Rated, an unique exposé on the nebulous backdoor dealings of the cinematic cabal. In ‘Outrage,’ Dick turns his attention to gay politicians, both closeted and out, and allegations of hypocrisy when it comes to legislating gay rights. Dick’s decision to “out” certain people has come under fire, but regardless, the film serves as a microcosm of the overall hypocrisy sadly found in many of our elected leaders. We Live in Public: Josh Harris is billed in this film as “the greatest Internet pioneer you’ve never heard of.” He was a myopic visionary, a man who saw the future more vividly than his own life. His Pseudo.com, sold for $80 million circa 1990, financed a project named Quiet: About 100 of the best and brightest he could find agreed to live 24 hours a day in a
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cavernous space below street level. They would be under video surveillance every moment. How this worked in practice makes a doc all the more fascinating because filmmaker Ondi Timoner was on the scene from the start. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize for best doc at Sundance 2009. What’s the Matter With Kansas?: Portraits of Kansans, right and left, in a state that seems to be letting them down. We meet a likable Christian mother and farmer named Angel Dillard, and a populist farmer named Donn Teske, both struggling to keep their family farms afloat after two drought years. The doc argues that voters in the heartland vote against their own economic and social wellbeing, because they consider hotbutton issues more important. An evangelical con game is excused as the will of God. At the Edge of the Earth: On its third Antarctic Campaign, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, an international organization dedicated to preserving Earth’s oceans, sent two small, ill-equipped ships to the Ross Sea, an internationally designated whale sanctuary, to prevent the Japanese whaling fleet from killing cetaceans on their huge factory ships. There are storms to survive and gripping face-offs with Japanese whalers and — surprisingly — Greenpeace. Good Hair: Chris Rock was genuinely alarmed when his adorable six year old daughter, Lola, was crying because she didn’t have ‘good hair.’ Set into motion by concerns about his little girl’s happiness and self-esteem, Rock investigates American’s — and, in particular, African-American women’s — attitudes towards their hair, and the billion dollar industry that thrives on concerns that it’s not ‘good.’ American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein: The life of Norman Finkelstein illustrates the fate of academics in North America who dare to tell the truth. Chomsky warned 20
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The September Issue
Finkelstein that if he continued writing books exposing establishment myths on the Middle East, “You’re going to get in trouble because you’re going to expose the American intellectual community as a gang of frauds, and they are not going to like it, and they’re going to destroy you.” And that’s exactly what they did as this film shows. Broadcast Blues: A look at the dominance of right-wing media in the USA and its increase after the election of Obama. The director signed an agreement with Springsteen to use his “My Hometown” song in the film but at the last minute, Clearwater, who are the communications behemoth that own the airwaves in America, ordered her to remove it. She asked some
musicians if they’d create a song for her film and they told her that if they did, Clearwater would ruin their careers by blocking them from the airwaves. So it’s clear who pull the strings in communication in America. Cooking History: A documentary film about army cooks and how the everyday needs of thousands of armed stomachs affect the victories and defeats of statesmen. About the field kitchen as a model of a world where food preparation becomes a fight strategy; a fight for great ideals standing on strong legs of the kitchen table. The film is based on eleven recipes of the cooks since the Second World War till the war in Tchechenia; from France through the Balkans to Russia. Cooking History
OPINION We live in magical times, indeed! Lots of things are happening in the field of documentary films. This is partially due to the revolution in the information media but mainly due to an explosion of digital technology and mushrooming of institutes for media studies. A digital camera has made film making simple and economical. An increased awareness about the issues dogging society and individuals has worked like a booster to realistic cinema. Anyone with a digital camera in hand, passion in the mind and a concern for change embarks upon documentary making. It is all so easy now! I have always said that the first shot taken with a movie camera by any novice is a ‘documentary’. This has been proved by the first coverages of the Lumiere Brothers in 1896 with their reality shoots and subsequently by Sawe Dada and Dhundiraj
Govind (“Dadasaheb”) Phalke. It is true even today with anyone trying his skills with a digital camera. Which brings us to the very basic question: what is a documentary? “A documentary is a creative interpretation of reality,” said the pioneer documentary filmmaker John Grierson, thus giving us a definition for the documentary which has lasted us for decades though the understanding of the three crucial words “creativity”, “interpretation” and “reality” has varied from place to place and from person to person. There has never been a tacit understanding of these basic elements of a documentary though no one has really disputed the basic premise that the objective of a documentary should be for the general welfare of society. The definition of ‘reality’ has also undergone a sea change. The interpretation of reality has now been widened. It is
Managing Reality By Kuldeep Sinha
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not only presentation and representation of actuality but also how it should be interpreted. This freedom of expression and interpretation has given media makers a long stick to beat “Reality” the way they want. This personal interpretation of it has resulted in distorted presentation and personal tilt of reality giving its way to higher popularity ratings. That altruistic objective is one reason why documentary films could never get slotted into the commercial (“pure entertainment”) mode Documentary filmmakers at large were constrained to be morally sensitive to social sentiments on various social issues dogging society. These inherent moral barriers notwithstanding the newer set of “realistic” filmmakers not only imbibed commercialism with their bold eye-catching statements but left no stone unturned to create controversies and thus, hog media limelight. In fact, the new documentary makers have coined a new definition by redefining John Grierson’s concept of the documentary. For them, creativity means painting everything black and occasionally grey. There are no whites in their palette of colours. Interpretation implies a personal bias while reality is to be misused and often abused. This has often resulted in an insensitive presentation of reality which, more often than not, has, in the long term, hurt society, and at the larger level, the nation, more than helped it. . While distorting the facts, it is forgotten that the information thus supplied not only damages the cause but also becomes a tool for personal or professional gains. These gains can be multiplied by adding more spice to the “sensation” – dipping the facts into deep sea. Unfortunately the practice of “sensationalisation” has become a habit of many popular television channels, newspapers and documentary film makers. Films Division’s popular newsreels, the Indian News Review (INR), were the inspiration for television channels who started their news bulletins.. These INRs presented reality in the purest form. The cameras were capturing the events the way they were actually happening. How exciting those days were! (In fact you can read about those hectic days in the accompanying article written by Mr N.V.K.Murthy who was the Joint Chief Producer of News reels in the 1960s and 1970s.) Subsequently documentaries began presenting reality with their own interpretation of reality though not deviating from the issues or the message of social concern. They were always – and they still are – passing the most authentic information However, the majority thought that these realistic pieces of information were dry and uninteresting. Hence efforts for spicing up reality began. The entry of private news television channels were thus welcomed by one and all – this igniting the fire for fierce competition and fight for 22
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John Grierson examines the posters of his films.
survival. The news became views. Views became reviews and gradually news, views and reviews all disappeared from the small screen. News channels started instilling sensationalism while the entertainment channels turned to realism. As the News channels were devoid of news and the entertainment channels devoid of entertainment they all began dishing out fake realism. Instead of “interpreting reality” they started creating reality by interpreting television shows of other channels. This cross-promotion of television programmes made a mockery of audience intelligence and made a mess of reality programming by dramatising C Grade content of D Grade newspapers and magazines. Yellow journalism entered the Idiot Box and fingers on the television remote got tired of scanning a whole lot of hundreds odd channels to search for authentic and real news content with its sensible interpretation. It had to take a full circle to realise the worth of the old INRs and the newscast of AIR and Doordarshan. The news readers of All India Radio and Doordarshan have still not regained a smile on their faces and a variation in their tones. They still have the same erratic visual variety overlapped on their faces and same flute blowing slowly on the fast moving 3D animation special effects and visuals. This still reminds us of the adolescence of cinema and television
which used to match perfectly with slow pace of life. But it still has a sweet fragrance because it is what it should be: the real reality. In the race for topping the TRP ratings chart, the channels are resorting to any gimmick which will provoke the innermost sentiments or the basic instincts. The media which was expected to play a positive role in society has became a tool of negativism as news reporters feel anything negative will create controversy giving them high TRP returns. Thus news now revolve around the TRP ratings.. What exactly is this TRP and who decides it? Is there any standard procedure to measure it or is it just a ball game played by television channels in convenience and connivance with the production houses to attract more advertising cream to prove their popularity points? Now television channels showing reality shows have resorted to another money making drama: “Public Voting”. This is in collaboration with telephone service providers. The innocent viewer is duped with higher call/SMS charges per call. Unfortunately there is no audit system for such “public votes”. The voting public remains in the dark as to how many have actually voted for a programme or a participant. In quite a few reality shows the programme producers, in collaboration with the so-called judges, decide who will remain in the programme and who will “go”, thus making ‘public voting’ a farce and questionable. It is almost like not receiving the “goods” after having paid for them. Reverting to ‘reality reporting’ the question to ask: is reality necessarily negative? If it is not, why was the most sensitive live coverage of 26/11 aired by all the channels when our security force were fighting a war with terrorists? Did they not realise that such a telecast was passing all the strategic information to the enemies of India through satellite television? One cannot claim that no one knew that the telecast is watched in more than hundred countries. Similarly dramatised versions of murders, loot, kidnapping, rape, bride burning, family feuds etc. make regular and repeated programming 24X7.
We as lovers of documentary had rejoiced when Mumbai’s main transport carrier the BEST had taken up the screening of the films on the new LCD screens installed in BEST buses for eight hours daily for a month during peak hours. We remember Uttam Khobargade’s words clearly, “We decided to use the LCD TVs in the buses to spread awareness by showcasing these documentaries.” And since he was the general manager of BEST we thought it was a sign of the future that the transport libne should take up such commendable work. We had also hoped that more such documentaries would be shown and it would open up a new means of screening documentaries. Imagine our shock therefore when we read the news that the BEST had discontinued the screening of five short films on child abuse on its buses following protests from commuters that the content of the films were creating psychological problems among children. This was apparently the res7ult of a Mumbai daily reporting the case of a young school girl who refused to stay alone with her father when her mother was not at home. What was even more shocking for us was the fact that the film should cause such an adverse effect. In fact, it is a lesson for all those who underestimate the power of documentary films to bring about a change in society. If one short film after just one viewing in a busy place like a BEST bus could have such an impact what about films which are viewed in the quiet solace of the theatre. What was truly frightening was that no psychiatric counselling was available for the poor affected girl and that even her own mother could not counsel her properly and put things in the right perspective. Psychiatrists and child activists say raising awareness about issues like child abuse and trafficking is important, but emphasize that the way in which this is done, and the medium chosen, are crucial. The saddest part of the whole story is that a great initiative by the BEST to use the medium of documentary films to create awareness has floundered because there was a small mistake in selecting the right content and the right messages. We feel that the makers should never be overexcited while selecting content for a documentary film. The major blame for such insensitivity should also be shared by the NGO which produced such documentary films for the general public. They should first think about how the content and hence, the final film affect the people at large once it is made public. If it is not done documentary makers will fail in their duty to society and the nation.
Films Division in the 1960s... I Am Twenty
With the easy access to television, people have also started taking the medium for a ride to exploit it for some personal publicity and just 15 minutes of fame. There are numerous examples of former bureaucrats and scientists, artists and performers, political leaders in search of a come-back or DOCUMENTARY TODAY
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The time has come to ponder over the ethics of television news.
a debutant who wants to be a known face who are eager to speak to a television reporter adding a few controversial statements so that he is discussed vigorously in the coming days. At such times they forget about the harm they will be doing to the nation and society. Whether it is a statement questioning the success of Pokhran II or the secularism of Jinnah or the foreign origin of Sonia Gandhi or the dynastic politics in India, regionalism vs. nationalism, abuse of democratic freedom, rights vs. duties,. the proponents of freedom of expression and the media will argue that it is their duty to bring out the facts (read reality) out in the open. The point is: do they ever analyse the after-effects of such exposes or whether the media is being used and abused by vested interest “before bringing out the facts”. In the process are we not making a heroes out of a villains? A personal interest thus becomes a public interest so as to justify their deeds. Coming to reality shows on television one may ask how real are these reality shows? Haven’t these things been happening in some form or other in the past even when there were no television competitions? Dance, music, 24
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comedies and jokes, wild-life adventures and expeditions, swayamvars and past life episodes have always been a part of our traditional society. The only difference is that in real swayamvars no one was allowed to make and break promises, or influence the final decision. But then the reallife events were not anchored like our television progarmmes are! Nor did they have producers to dictate results. Before reality is strangulated, before the people lose faith in reality reporting on television, before fake reality creates havoc in society with negative repercussions, before pseudo-realism takes over the thought processes of all concerned (from the producers to the viewers, all television channels (particularly those purveying news), must define their role in positive reporting. They should emulate foreign channels which never compromise on social welfare and national interest for petty gains. Or else, the day may not be far when people will switch off their television sets and once again turn to the old tried and tested conventional media of authentic information, that is, the print media, the AIR news and Films Division’s newsreels and documentary films.
MEMORIES
Redefining Visual News By N.V.K. Murthy My tenure in Films Division was perhaps the most creative period of my career. This period was also marked by many newsreels I produced which left a deep impression on the public mind. Lal Bahadur Shastri, a respected Congressman, had succeeded Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru after the latter’s death. Unfortunately, Shastri died unexpectedly in Tashkent, in the thenUSSR, where he had gone to meet General Ayub, the dictator of Pakistan, following the end of the Indo–Pak war. Indira Gandhi, who was then the Minister for Information and
Broadcasting during the Lal Bahadur regime, took over as the interim Prime Minister. It was in 1965 when the Congress again won the elections that she was elected as the Leader of the Congress Legislative Party. She then became a Prime Minister in her own right. That year, for the first time in India’s young democratic history, the Congress won at the centre but lost in five major states. I wanted to make a special newsreel on the results of this election, recording the views of the leaders of all the seven political
parties recognized by the Election Commission. I had already recorded the views of Atal Bihari Vajpayee (Jan Sangh), S. A. Dange (CPI), E.M.S. Namboodripad (CPIM) and others. For the Congress, I wanted to record the views of the then-President of the Indian National Congress, Kamraj Nadar, who had himself lost the election to a young man put up by the opposition. Kamraj refused to be interviewed. I was in a fix. So I thought of interviewing Indira Gandhi as the Leader of the elected Legislative Party since I could not get the Congress President. I requested my classmate and friend, H.Y. Sharada Prasad, who was the Prime Minister’s Information Adviser, to help me out. Indira Gandhi had spent most of the previous night consulting her senior colleagues in preparing a list of new cabinet ministers to be sworn in by the President of India. In between the consultation with her advisors and a meeting with the President of India, she was to address the foreign correspondents at Hyderabad House, a government building where such meetings were usually held. If I could get a few minutes to talk with her at that time, I was certain I could have a good interview. I planned to get some time from her somehow. When she arrived I told her what I needed and her response was, “But I had no notice of an interview. I am not prepared.”
The tragic death of India’s second Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri was an important news story covered by Films Division.
My reply was, “Madam, I do not want any planned reply. I just want an offthe-cuff answer to one plain question, ‘What is your reaction to this not-sofavorable election result’?” DOCUMENTARY TODAY
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She composed herself. And the answer she gave was brilliant. She said that her father had always told her that everything living faced problems and that only the dead had no problems. She went on to add that the results of the General Elections had no doubt created some problems. But, the situation also created an opportunity to strengthen the federal bonds between the centre and the states, as the various political parties learned to live and work together. When this newsreel titled The Vote And After, hit the screens in cinema houses all over the country, it electrified the audience. My purpose was served and I was happy. I learnt a new language, Marathi, in Films Division. Being a student of Sanskrit I knew the Devnagari script which was also used in Marathi. That enabled me to read printed material in Marathi, though I did not understand the language. Most of the technicians with whom I worked, recordists, cameramen, and editors were Marathi speaking and I wanted very much to communicate with them directly in Marathi rather than through another language. So I requested them to speak to me in Marathi and tried to answer them in Marathi. If I made mistakes I requested them to correct me. They were delighted to cooperate with me. At first I tried to relate the sounds that I heard, with the words that I read in Marathi magazines and newspapers and slowly began to understand simple words and sentences. In time, I managed to make myself understood. Then I started reading Marathi literature, which I found fascinating. I graduated to classics like Swami by Ranjit Desai, and other books. This opened a new world of Marathi culture to me. I felt as elated as I did when I first learnt Kannada at the age of 12 from my Sanskrit teacher in Mysore, and which had opened the whole world of Kannada literature to me. Then, some years later, after I made 26
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Interviewing Mrs. Indira Gandhi was a real challenge.
many friends, a young Muslim man, Darwesh, who was a telephone operator at Films Division, came to ask a favor of me. He knew that one of my frequent visitors was Hamid Sayani. Hamid was a talented English commentary speaker and I requisitioned his services to speak my commentaries for newsreels in English. He also happened to be Head of Radio Ceylon in Bombay. Darwesh was very good at reciting Urdu poetry, especially ghazals (couplets), and he wanted a break in Radio Ceylon. He requested me to introduce him to Hamid Sayani, which I did.
new languages is still with me.
Darwesh saw a couple of books printed in Devnagari script lying on my office desk. They were books of Urdu poetry by Iqbal and Ghalib. Out of curiosity he asked me why I was reading Urdu poetry in the Devanagari script. I laughed and told him I did so for the simple reason that I did not know the Urdu script. He was surprised because I spoke Urdu quite well. I explained to him that being a Hyderabadi I learn at the language early in life without learning the script. He offered to teach me the Urdu script if I had a mind to learn it. I immediately agreed and that’s how, at the age of 50, I learnt to read yet another language. This passion for learning
I started off picking out important current events which had a bearing on social change, and tried to go deeper into them even within the newsreel format. For example, when the Indian Rupee was devalued during Indira Gandhi’s regime as the Prime Minister, I interviewed several people across the social and economic spectrum of Indian society and recorded their views which included in the newsreel. Banking experts were discussing the effect of the devaluation on the balance of payments of the country’s economy. On the other hand, a housewife, Mrs. Komala Krishnan, was very emphatic when she said that one should not bother about the rising
To come back to newsreel, I tried to bring in new perspectives to the newsreel. I had been tremendously influenced by the work of the early English documentary film makers under the redoubtable Scotsman John Grierson. The British documentary filmmakers considered themselves sociologists working with a new medium, film. I strongly felt that the documentary film in India could play a similar role in bringing about social changes, which were the need of the day.
Karnataka, and sought an interview with the Chief Development Commissioner. He happened to be a very imaginative man and immediately appreciated the point. At his initiative, the Karnataka Government started financing the leveling of the ground and recovering the cost later, after the farmer’s first harvest. This illustrated how great changes could be brought about when problems were understood and solutions were implemented in a timely fashion. This convinced me even more of the power of the documentary film.
The Green Revolution comes to India.
cost of imported lipstick. Similarly, when the Green Revolution came to India I made a trip to Ludhiana, in Punjab which was the bread-basket of India. I visited their agricultural university which was a centre for the development of the hybrid wheat revolution. I found that even after this hybrid product was successfully tried and demonstrated, the farmers in Punjab were reluctant to use the new hybrid seeds because the yield did not have the same golden yellow color of their traditional wheat. They felt that the new hybrid wheat was not as nourishing. The extension workers at the agricultural university realised that they would have to first convince the Punjabi women that the new variety of wheat was as nutritious, if not better, than their traditional grain. So they offered these farmer families small plots of land within the university and asked them to grow new crops, paid for by the university, harvest the wheat, and eat it. They were asked to continue to use the hybrid seeds on their own lands only if they were convinced of its good nourishment. This experiment succeeded. The new hybrid seeds started selling like hot cakes and the production of wheat doubled. I captured this story visually through
the newsreel and the final film certainly made an impact on the audience. There was another dramatic development during this period. The Tungabhadra dam in South India had been completed, and the canals had started flowing. Yet the land in Raichur district, next to the canals, continued to be parched. A big integrated publicity campaign was started with the Five Year Plan Department in the lead. More about the Five Year Plans and the trials associated with them later. For now it will suffice to say I went there with my team to cover the event in the newsreel. I investigated the reasons for the lack of access to canal water for the poor farmers who practically owned land next to the canals. I found out that they were so impoverished that they had no wherewithal to hire earthmoving machines to level the land, a necessary pre-requisite to irrigation. This left me wondering why the government, which was spending so much money in building dams and canals, could not invest a little more in leveling the land to enable irrigation. I went to Bangalore, the headquarters of the State of
The changes in the newsreel led to the genesis of the contemporary affairs documentary films. The first opportunity I got to make such a documentary was in 1967 during the Bihar famine, which had already been featured in the newsreel. I had read reports that this was as much a manmade famine as it was a natural calamity. For one thing, the dense forests of South Bihar were indiscriminately destroyed and denuded for valuable timber, especially for manufacturing railway track sleepers. For another, a number of Five-Year Plan projects, which were meant to repair and desilt local tanks and canals, were neglected.
Jehangir Bhownagary, then Chief Advisor, Films Division, brought about a sea change in the manner documentaries and newsreels were perceived. DOCUMENTARY TODAY
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Fortunately for me, the new Secretary to Government, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, was a resourceful ICS officer, Mr. Ashok Mitra. He was also a well-known demographer. He concurrently held the post of Director General of Census. During this period, we were fortunate at the Films Division in having an adviser from UNESCO, Mr. Jehangir Bhownagary. Mr. Bhownagary was the offspring of an Indian father and a French mother, who had met in London and settled in Paris. He was sent to India by his parents for a part of his education, and graduated with a degree in sociology from St. Xavier’s College, Bombay. As a young Xavier’s graduate, he had worked in Films Division for a little while, before returning to his home in Paris. When he became an adviser to the Films Division, he was concurrently appointed as Joint Secretary to the Government of India. Mr. Mitra and Mr. Bhownagary made a good team and introduced several innovative changes in the Films Division, including the revision of the manual, a traditional rule book. Mr. Bhownagary was a creative artist and to the end of his life was busy with pottery, which was his great hobby. While in Bombay he made many friends in Films Division and I was fortunate to be one of them. I also found an excellent friend in Mr. Ashok Mitra, with whom I shared my ideas that seemed utopian to many others. During their tenure, several outsiders, including filmmakers, were associated in one way or another with the activities of the Films Division. One of them was Sukhdev, who had begun his documentary filmmaking career by working with a German filmmaker in India. Later, he became an excellent documentary filmmaker in his own right. He had been commissioned to make a film about contemporary India in 1967. He called his film India 1967, and tried to show that India was really a Kaleidoscope with people living in many ages at the same time; from the 28
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bullock-cart age to the jet age. Many conservatives, including the Finance Minister, Morarji Desai, wanted the film to be banned because the film showed India in poor light. But thanks to the Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, the film was approved and shown the world over. It won high praise. In spite of showing Indian poverty, it left a lasting impression of India as a country on the march. Another film that was made during this period was by K.S. Chari and T.A. Abraham, and was titled Face to Face. Chari had been writing commentaries in English for documentary films and newsreels. This film, Face to Face was an attempt, and a very successful one at that, to get the reaction of ordinary people in India about how they felt living in India. There was one cab driver who said in Pidgin English, “When all is said and done, I value my freedom of speech the most because I can say anything I feel.” There were other films like I Am Twenty, made by S.N.S. Sastry and T.A. Abraham in 1967, recording the feelings of twenty-year-
olds, who were as old as free India then. Another film, Transition, made by Chari, brought out the problems in a country which was in transition from feudalism to democracy. In this environment, when I mooted the film on the 1967 famine of Bihar and suggested that the film should probe the reasons for this famine, Ashok Mitra readily agreed. He also supported me when I suggested getting this film directed by a young and up-coming English playwright, Partap Sharma, who had just graduated from St. Xavier’s College. He was a freelance commentary speaker in English for newsreels and documentary films. Ashok Mitra asked me to go ahead. Many of my senior colleagues did not like this idea because they felt that outside filmmakers were trespassing on their turf. Nevertheless I went ahead. I had no pre-conceived notions of the script for the film. I wanted to make it up as I got more facts about the famine. The well known filmmaker Sukhdev happened to be with me when I took Partap Sharma to Bihar to finalise the
Big dam projects were important to India in the 1960s. N.V.K. Murthy carries out an interview on the site of the Tungabhadra Dam.
outline of the script for the film. Fortunately, I ran into the Revenue Minister of the Bihar Government. Earlier, he was a teacher of political economy, and was an activist in the Kisaan (farmer’s) Movement in Bihar during the Forties. I had a long discussion with him, which Sukhdev recorded on a tape recorder. This gave me an excellent background on how famine conditions came about and my script took shape. When the film was made, Ashok Mitra was delighted, but the Food Ministry was not. To satisfy the Food Ministry, I had to put in a note at the end of my film suggesting that this film was made as a warning to prevent such famine-creating mistakes. I took over as chief of the newsreel in mid 1962. I was waiting for this day as I felt excited about purveying the news of the week to the people of India. I was obsessed with the idea that if India was to be successful as a democracy, it had to have people who were informed about what was going on in the country. Only an informed and intelligent people could run a successful democracy. In those days the audio-visual medium of the
newsreel was the ideal way to reach the public, which unfortunately was largely illiterate. Though the founding fathers had intended the Indian News Review to be a medium of information and education of the public, yet over the years it had become a chronicle of the doings of politicians in the national and state capitals. Perhaps, against this background, what I had in mind was a bit too idealistic and impractical. But the incorrigible optimist and idealist that I am, I persisted in my efforts, hoping that I would achieve what I wanted at least in a small measure. I coined the phrase, “News is history in the making”, for my colleagues and me. I created it in the form of a large banner and displayed it in my office. My intention in the sixties was to kindle the same excitement I had felt when I witnessed India’s becoming a free nation in 1947. I gradually attempted to make people distinguish between the print and audiovisual media. My first effort included concentrating on using the visual and the aural qualities of the newsreel to relate an event as opposed to merely imitating the written word.
Whether it was a village mela, a sort of rural fair, or a sophisticated art exhibition in a metropolitan gallery, I tried to bring alive the picture and sound of the event to the audiences who would be viewing it in distant places. So the third person all-knowing voice of the commentator was reduced and, instead, importance was given to local sounds taped on location. As I mentioned previously, due to the consequence of my efforts the ribboncutting ceremonies mostly performed by ministers and other functionaries were reduced and slowly went out of the newsreel. The process of change was slow, rather too slow for my taste, but I had to bear in mind that I was working within the confines of a government institution, and when all was said and done I was but a government servant. However, I disliked being called a government servant. I preferred to be called a public servant because I envisioned myself in the service of the people of India rather than the government of the day. I refused to be subservient to a handful of people who were elected and who in some cases behaved like proprietors of the country. I have already referred to the first hurdle I had to face when I featured an item pertaining to a petition that was submitted to parliament when the Compulsory Deposit Scheme (CDS) was promulgated by the Government. Even before India became independent, a national planning committee headed by the renowned economist KT Shah was set up by Jawaharlal Nehru when he became president of the Congress in the 1930’s. The purpose of the committee was to plan for the economic development of free India. This work was taken up in earnest by the planning commission after India became free. The guiding spirit behind the planning commission was a well known statistician Mahalnobis.
Framework of a Famine, a film made by Partap Sharma.
The first two Five Year plans concentrated on building giant irrigation and hydroelectric plants. In DOCUMENTARY TODAY
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and who was trying to be objective and professional. Despite these difficulties I tried to chart my way with my professional conscience unsullied.
The Armed Forces prepare themselves to defend India.
addition, they also focused on building heavy industries. The early Sixties was a period when the expectations of the people had been raised by the promises made in the Five Year plans. Perhaps the propaganda media of the Government of India had exaggerated claims for the Government plans. When the results on the ground fell far short of these expectations naturally there was lot of disillusionment and a degree of despondency. In fact, a committee of media experts appointed by the Government made a study and found the culprint, which they called pompously the “Credibility Gap”. It was mainly this credibility gap that I tried to tackle through the newsreel. To better understand what I was up against, I’d like to provide a backdrop of the times. We saw the death of two Prime Ministers one after the other; Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru in 1964 and Lal Bahadur Shastri in 1966. When Mrs. Indira Gandhi was elected Prime Minister in 1966 after Shastri’s death, the Congress party had lost in five important states. The achievement of freedom had raised the hopes of the people all over the country and they truly believed that their lives would be better in free India. Unfortunately, because of uneven development in several states, there were pockets where very little progress was made 30
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and separatist movements had sprung up in these areas. A war with China in 1962 had a traumatic effect all over the country, because India had looked upon China as a great friend. Also the country had to face two wars with its immediate neighbour, Pakistan; one in 1965 and another in 1971. To top this we had an “emergency rule” in the mid seventies during which time we saw censorship of the media. Given this backdrop, one can imagine the unenviable position of someone like me, who was in charge of a Government owned news medium
In 1971 India had to face a new threat, the fight for Bangladesh. When India was divided in 1947, Pakistan consisted of two parts, West and East, separated by the land-mass of India. Western Pakistan dominated Pakistani politics and this was hardly liked by East Pakistan where the people spoke a different language, Bengali, and their culture was entirely different from the dominantly Punjabi culture of Western Pakistan. When non-Bengali Pakistanis dominated the politics of East Pakistan and the Bengali Muslims were oppressed, they naturally moved across the border to India. The Hindu minority from East Pakistan were the first to be pushed into India. This led to a second partition-like condition and created crisis conditions in Bengal and other states of India bordering East Pakistan. India could not sit quiet and so it reacted. The result was the 1971 war with Pakistan. (Excerpted from Life in the Time of Turbulence by N.V.K. Murthy, published by Cinemaink.)
Soldiers pose with a Pakistani tank captured during the Indo-Pak War.
TRIBUTE
The Legacy of a Documentary Guru By Frances Hubbard Flaherty
Robert Flaherty surounded by admirers of his work.
The 125th anniversary of Robert Flaherty’s birth passed unheralded last year but the impact of his ground-breaking films remain. Nanook of the North was a deceptively simple drama of life in the Arctic but with it, Flaherty created the genre of the staged documentary, and Nanook’s success opened the way for all ‘nature’ films to follow, including his own Moana: A Romance of the Golden Age. The film also created an excitement and appetite for documentaries among filmgoers, filmmakers and studio heads. In the following article Flaherty’s wife Frances, his constant companion in the making of all his films, talks about his method. Written in 1960, the article is a valuable historical document which Documentary Today is pleased to reproduce here. DOCUMENTARY TODAY
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I shall speak to you of Robert Flaherty’s method, because this method and the way it came to be is, I believe, the important legacy he left us, and because for me it was the great experience of my life with him. And also because his films themselves do not give evidence of a method, that is of an apparatus of filmmaking and its devices. I remember Sir Carol Reed saying to me, “When I look at other people’s films I can usually tell exactly how they have arrived at their effects; in your husband’s films I cannot tell at all.”
Agriculture Department of the United States Government, he asks the question: “When will man learn to live with his machines? These miraculous machines! A new world stands before us, a world beyond our dreams. The great fact is the land, the Land itself and the People, and the Spirit of the People.” The power of our great machines to transform the world Robert Flaherty saw as an extension of our own spirit. The importance of the new machine, the motion-picture camera, was its power to change that spirit, to transform us in ourselves.
And a student writing her thesis on The Films of Robert Flaherty and Their Critics remarked that many critics had said much the same thing: that they found a “sort of magic” in the films and could not tell what that magic was. Magic, the thing we cannot understand, we tend to write off as “genius.” But what we write off, history in its own good time writes in again, no longer as magic, but as the science which it has become.
“When you talk about your husband’s work,” a good friend advised me, “don’t try to say too much, but hammer home the one thing you are really talking about, the one thing that really matters. Put it all into one word and keep to that, keep saying it. Make it clear that your talk is not a memorial to Robert Flaherty, but a call—his call, if you like—to one particular thing.”
To begin with a brief summary: Robert Flaherty made three biographies of peoples: Nanook of the North of the Eskimos, Moana of the Polynesians, and Man Of Aran of islanders living off the coast of Ireland. They have been called Films of the Spirit of Man. All have the same theme: the spirit with which these people come to terms with their environment. History from age to age has been written in the spirit of peoples, as it is being written now in our spirit. And what Robert Flaherty is saying in these three films he has told us himself in a talk he gave for the British Broadcasting Corporation: “Nanook’s problem was how to live with nature. Our problem is how to live with our machines. Nanook found the solution of the problem in his own spirit, as the Polynesians did in theirs. But we have made for ourselves an environment that is difficult for the spirit to come to terms with. Our problem still goes on.” In The Land, a film he made for the 32
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The word I have chosen is “nonpreconception,” an explorer’s word.
Non-preconception is the precondition to discovery, because it is a state of mind. When you do not preconceive, then you go about finding out. There is nothing else you can do. You begin to explore. “All art,” said Robert Flaherty, “is a kind of exploring. To discover and reveal is the way every artist sets about his business.” The explorers, the discoverers, are the transformers of the world. They are the scientist discovering a new fact, the philosopher discovering in new the fact a new idea. Above all, they are the artist, the poet, the seer, who out of the crucible of new fact and new idea bring new life, new power, new motive, and a deep refreshment. They discover for us the new image. “Discovery,” writes L.L. Whyte in his book, The Next Development in Man, “is the essence of social development, and a method of discovery its only possible guarantee.” Non-preconception, a method of discovery as a process of film-making, was Robert Flaherty’s contribution to the motion
Robert Flaherty in deep conversation with film directors Pierre Antre and Jean Renoir (centre)
Hudson, and became, as his friend and fellow-explorer, Peter Freuchen, said of him, “The great name in Canadian subarctic exploration.” These years of exploration in the North with the Eskimos were Robert Flaherty’s motion-picture school. From the Eskimos he learned to see as he had not seen before. Robert Flaherty had himself the keen eyes of an explorer, trained to read the signs in a landscape, but the Eskimo has eyes keener still, for on that great white screen which is his world the Eskimo must be instantly aware of every movement, every least shadow of movement that might mean game, food, life. And if visibility is blotted out, as it so often is, his other senses must take over, for his commitment to life is total, and his orientation must be total. The passing moment becomes the fullness of fife and its fulfillment becomes, as on the motionpicture screen, the moment of truth.
Robert Flaherty with his wife and constant companion Frances. The photograph was taken by internationally famous photographer Margaret Bourke-White
picture. From that method everything there is in his films flows. Robert Flaherty is known as “The Father of Documentary,” and it is true that he was the first to fashion his films from real life and real people. But a Flaherty film must not be confused with the documentary movement that has spread all over the world, for the reason that the documentary movement (fathered not by Robert Flaherty but by a Scotsman, John Grierson) was from its beginning all preconceived for social and educational purposes, just as many of our most famous films have been preconceived for political purposes, for propaganda, and, as Hollywood preconceives, for the box office. These films are timely, and they serve, often powerfully and with distinction, the timely purposes for which they were made. But there are other films, and the Flaherty films are among these, that are timeless. They are timeless in
the sense that they do not argue, they celebrate. And what they celebrate, freely and spontaneously, simply and purely, is the thing itself for its own sake. They are timeless in the sense of the Mohammedan prayer which says, “O, God, if I worship Thee in fear of Hell, burn me in Hell; or if I worship Thee in hope of Paradise, exclude me from Paradise; but if I worship Thee for Thine Own Sake, withhold not Thine Everlasting Beauty.” It was as an explorer that Robert Flaherty came into films, and not until he was forty years old. As he said, “I was an explorer first and a motion picture maker a long way after.” His explorations took him into the North, into Hudson Bay. On four expeditions over a period of six years he made two crossings of the largest unknown land mass left in that part of the world, rediscovered islands in the Bay that had been lost since the time of Henry
The teaching of the North was its immensity, its vast simplicity, its emptiness, unclutteredness, its clarity and purity, and its elemental strength, wind and snow endlessly carving new worlds of hazard and beauty—of a mysterious, mystical beauty. I once asked Bob why he wanted to go back and back again to that country and its hardships. For a long moment he was thoughtful. I was waiting for him to counter with something about its beauty. He said simply, “I go to come back.” In that life up there, there was something he found that was for him a deep refreshment, a profound renewal. On his third expedition into the Bay his chief, Sir William Mackenzie, said to him, “Why don’t you take up with you one of those newfangled things called a motion-picture camera?” Why not indeed? He could make a film of these remarkable people, the Eskimos. If he showed them on the screen just as they were, perhaps others would feel about them as he felt, see as he saw their fine spirit. Eagerly he shot off 70,000 feet of film, DOCUMENTARY TODAY
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took it to Toronto to edit, and then, “Amateur that I was,” he said, “I dropped a lighted cigarette on it and it went up in flame. But I wasn’t sorry. It was a bad film; it was dull—it was little more than a travelogue. I had learned to explore, I had not learned to reveal.” His subject he knew and loved; no one could have known and loved it better. What he did not know yet was his instrument, his camera. He was determined to go back. With a partial print of the burned film under his arm, for two years Robert Flaherty trudged the streets of New York. Finally persuading Revillon Freres, the French furriers, to finance him, he went again into the Bay, met Nanook, mighty hunter of the Itivimuit tribe of Eskimos, and there on the bleak, barren coast of the Bay, halfway to the North Pole, in a one-room hut snow-walled to the eaves in winter, he began his thirty years’ research of the motion-picture camera. For, this time, he took up with him, besides his camera and film, a developing, printing, and projecting outfit, so that he could see what he was getting as he went along, what his camera was doing, what it could do, what the capacities were of this new machine. He had the Eskimos to help him, Nanook and three others: Wetaltook, Tookalook, and Little Tommy. They did everything for him. They brought water for developing the film, chiseling six feet down through river ice and bringing it in barrels sloshing with ice and deer hair that fell into it from their fur clothing. They strained it and heated it. They built a drying reel out of driftwood, combing the coastline for miles to pick up enough wood to finish it. When Bob’s little electric light plant failed to give a light steady enough for printing, they blacked out a window all but a bit the size of a single motion-picture frame, and through this slot Bob printed his film, frame by frame, by the light of the low arctic sun. The cameras fell into the sea and had to be taken apart, cleaned, 34
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and put together again. Fortunately, the Eskimo has, naturally, an exceptional mechanical gift. When Bob couldn’t put his Graflex together (it has a complicated shutter) he turned all the scattered parts of it over to Tommy, and Little Tommy put them together for him. But the Eskimos had no idea what all this they were doing was about. They had never seen a film. Give them a still picture to look at, and, like as not, they would hold it upside-down. So one day Bob threaded his projector, pinned a Hudson’s Bay blanket on the wall, and invited them all in, men, women, and children. He had taken a picture of Nanook spearing a walrus, the walrus fighting in the surf to get away, and Nanook on shore struggling to drag him in while the cow walrus came and locked tusks with her mate in a desperate effort to pull him free. The projector light shone out. There was complete silence in the hut. They saw Nanook. But Nanook was there in the hut with them, and they couldn’t understand. Then they saw the walrus, and then, said Bob, pandemonium broke loose. “Hold him!” they screamed. “Hold him!” and they scrambled over the chairs and
each other to get to the screen and help Nanook hold that walrus! From then on there was no talk of anything but more hunting scenes for the “aggie,” as they called the picture. There was one scene particularly which became an obsession with Nanook, and that was a bear hunt. He knew where the bears were denning, giving birth to their young. It was easy, he said, to find a den by its vent with the steam coming out. With his snow knife he would cut the vent open, the enraged mother would rush out rearing, the dogs would engage her, she would toss them hurtling through the air, and then, said Nanook, “With my spear I will close in. Wouldn’t that make a fine ‘aggie’?” Bob said it would, and they started off for the bear country. It was an ill-fated journey. Bad weather set in, and there was no game, no seal, no food for the dogs and the men. The dogs grew weak; one dog died. They stopped, built an igloo, and while Bob huddled in his sleeping bag and the dogs huddled in the igloo tunnel, the men went off to hunt. Day after day passed, and still there was no game. Even the sea-birds were dying, lying frozen on the ice. The men themselves were losing strength.
Robert Flaherty and F.W.Murnau during the filming of Tabu in the South Seas.
Every morning Bob would offer them what was left of the last of his own food, but Nanook wouldn’t touch it. At last one night the men came back, and by the crunch of their feet on the snow Bob knew that they were bringing something. Behind them they were dragging a seal, and it was a big square-flipper. The dogs were fed; the men gorged and then slept. Through the night, said Bob, from their warm bodies curlicues of steam spiralled up into the cold air. In the morning they were able to travel again. It was cold work, filming, so cold that sometimes the film, when threaded into the camera, shattered like so much glass. Nanook would have to carry it inside his fur clothing next to his warm body, the same place where he warmed Bob’s feet when they were cold. The coldest time of all, Bob remembered, was after the long day’s sledging, waiting in the bitter wind and drifting snow for Nanook to build the igloo. One night, caught by a blizzard, that hour of waiting was almost more than he could bear. At
last, the final block of the igloo in place, on the heels of Nanook he crawled in Nanook lit a candle. Around and above them the snow dome “sparkled and glittered and glistened like the dust of diamonds.” Nanook’s face broke into a smile. He turned to Bob. “Surely,” he said, no house of the Kablunak (the white man) could be so wonderful.” After a year in the North and almost as many months in New York editing his film, Bob brought it to the distributors. A distributor must now be found to buy it or the public would never see it, never know that there was such a film. He took it to them all, one after the other, and one after another they all turned it down. Not by the farthest stretch of the imagination, said they, could such a film ever be box-office. They didn’t even trouble to return the print, and
Bob had humbly to rummage for it and salvage it from a scrap heap. Often Nanook had laughed at Bob— how foolish he was to take so much trouble to make a film of them who were certainly the commonest people in the world! But Bob had a prescience about his film. Up there in the Bay, sitting with Nanook on the cobbled shore waiting for the Hudson’s Bay steamer that was to take him out. Nanook very sad because now there would be no more hunting for the film and there were so many more wonderful hunting scenes they still could make. Bob comforted him, saying, “You see these pebbles? As many kablunat (white men) as there are pebbles on this beach will see Nanook and his family.” Nanook was finally taken for distribution by a French newsreel company, Pathe Freres. Two French firms, Pathe Freres and Revillon Freres, got together and made a deal. Pathe wanted to cut the film up into newsreels. Revillon prevailed upon them to take it whole.
Surviving in the bitter cold ... Nanook
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fying with Eskimos in that sense. I think they meant that our identification is with life itself, with universal life of which we and these people are a part. When Nanook and Nyla and little Allegoo smile out at us from the screen, so simple, so genuine and true, we, too, become simple, genuine, true. They are themselves: we, in turn, become ourselves. Everything that might separate us from these people falls away.
The film which brought renown to Flaherty... Nanook of the North
Two years later Nanook was dead— as so many of his people die—of starvation. Storm-bound while hunting in the interior, he had not been able to reach the coast and its lifegiving seal in time. But by that time Nanook, the film, had gone around the world, and Nanook, the Eskimo hunter, had become a world character, worldbeloved. News of his death came out in the press as far away as China and Japan. In Malaya there was a new word for “strong man,” and it was “Nanuk.” Ten years later in Berlin, in the Tiergarten, I bought an Eskimo pie. It was called a “Nanuk,” and Nanook’s face smiled up at me from the wrapper.
I met two young German film directors a year or so ago, and when they told me that Nanook was still playing in Germany, I asked them, “Why do you think this is? How do you explain it?” One of them spoke up quickly, “It is because we can identify with these people on the screen.” Now, Hollywood wants us to identify with its stars: that is what the stars are for. But I do not think that is what those Germans meant—not identi-
In spite of all our differences, indeed the more because of them, we are one with these people. And that feeling of oneness can deepen and become a feeling of oneness with all peoples and all things. It can become that profound and profoundly liberating experience we call “participation mystique.” But—and this is the point—let one false gesture, one least unnatural movement, the slightest hint of artificiality, appear, and separateness comes back. Again we are just looking at the people on the screen, and the whole experience of identity, of oneness, of participation, becomes impossible, could not happen, could never be. The secret of Nanook lies, I believe, in those two words, “being themselves.” Not Acting, but Being.
Such was the impact of this first film of its kind, made without actors, without studio, story, or stars, just of everyday people doing everyday things, being themselves. That was in 1922, and now in 1959 the film is still being shown. Where I live in Vermont I do not have television, but my neighbors do. Twice last year they called me up. “You’d better come over,” they said. “They’re showing Nanook.” What is the secret of the life of this very simple film? What is there about it that makes it endure? For commercially it is probably the most long-lived film that has ever been made. 36
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Tabu ... a little known masterpiece by Flaherty and Murnau.
MAMI 2009
THE REAL REEL By Amrit Gangar Dominated generally by the fiction films and glamour attached to them, the Mumbai Film Festival (October 29 – November 5, 2009) hosted by the Mumbai Academy of the Moving Image (MAMI) showed over twenty films from about a dozen countries of the world, or the 34-hour TRR program was quite substantial in a festival such as MFF. Made in 2008-2009, these were all long documentaries- – the shortest was 54-minute from Israel, followed by Pakistan’s 56 minutes. Surprisingly there was no film from India in this section. Though apparently this was not a curated program, I could see some interesting patterns emerging from these films, namely, mankind going wrong somewhere in treating nature and being aware of that; taking nonviolent means of resistance, e.g. music and songs; the Palestine-Israel conflict (as many as four films); politics of food (three films); internal contradictions within a country, e.g. China; introspection on genocide and how the world still remains fractured physically and emotionally in the age of so-called globalization.
Soundtrack for a Revolution
What was also significant that most of these films selected by the filmmaker V. Packirisamy were coproductions between two or more countries, interestingly USA and France occupying the largest space. It was also interesting to note how the West is returning to the continents of Africa, Asia and the Middle East to examine histories – contemporary and past. Among other films, I was eager to see one of the modern cinema’s postneorealist masters, 78-year-old Ermanno Olmi’s documentary called Terra Madre (2009, 78 mins). His Palmed’Or winner feature film, The Tree of Wooden Clogs at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival was shown in India through the film society circuit. He still retains his rhythmic and philosophical ethos even in his documentary film Terra Madre, and the way it takes an Olmiesque turn in its second half. It sets out to cover the well known Terra Madre conference about the Slow Food movement very fact-like manner, getting sound bytes from the speakers and participants and you wonder how the film was going
to evolve. But quietly it gets into a deeply contemplative mould, as if the âlâp had followed the mukhra in a bandish. Without being loud, he breaks the myth of the human-centric arrogant world. Another leading poet-filmmaker in this section was Terence Davies (b.1945) whose documentary Of Time and the City (2008, 74 mins), a personal portrait of the city of Liverpool firmly retains is cinematographic laya. Beyond its well known Beatles and its football clubs, the Liverpool that Davies weaves with his own story is a contemporary city, while creating a visual poem and sustaining it throughout. In its dispensation, he uses a fascinating found footage and counter-pointing soundscape. Such structural poetic verve I found in yet another evocative documentary called Soundtrack for a Revolution by Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman. The film traces music’s essential role in the civil rights movement in the USA, using found footage of histories of unjust discrimination. The film features performances by John Legend, Joss Stone, The Roots, Blind Boys of Alabama, Richie Havens and Wyclef Jean. This documentary had its international premiere at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, its US premiere at the Tribecca Film Festival and its Asian Premiere at the Mumbai Film Festival, 2009. Between Hiphop and Kalashnikov (Lebanon-West Bank-Germany, 2009, 110 mins) provides an example of how young Palestinians use theatrical performances, videos, dance and rap music as an answer to exile and occupation. These young girls and boys choose to protest with DOCUMENTARY TODAY
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microphones instead of guns. During the 1980s the film directors Stefanie Landgraf and Johannes Guide had shot several documentaries in the Middle East about Palestinians living in refugee camps. Thirty years later, Yasmin, the daughter of Johannes Guide and ENZ, a Hip-Hop artist, take a trip to Lebanon and the West Bank with clips from the old films and their laptop. The film evolves an interesting form between the spoken and sung words without losing the seriousness of war and human casualties. Besides the length of the films, what was also significant in these documentaries was their unhurried and contemplative pace – in our age of restless remote control. My reference here is to Anne Aghion’s USA-France co-production, My Neighbor, My Killer (USA-France, 2009, 80 mins) about the genocide in Rwanda where hundreds of thousands of Rwandan Hutus were incited to wipe out the country’s Tutsi minority. Winner of the Human Rights Watch 2009 Nestor Almendros Prize for courage in filmmaking and an official selection at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, My Neighbor, My Killer is an epic journey in search of nonviolent co-existence in Rwanda. In this genocide, 800,000 lives were wiped out in 100 days. In 1999, the government began the Gacaca (gaCHA-cha) or open-air hearings with citizen-judges trying their neighbors and making an effort to rebuild the nation. Aghion creates a chilling under-the-skin atmosphere in her quiet visual and verbal dispositions without becoming sensational or shocking. But the film keeps haunting you for a long time. Gacaca literally means ‘justice on the grass’. Nasir Khan’s Made in Pakistan (Pakistan, 2009, 56 mins) rather adopts a usual documentary form with his four talking-acting ‘protagonist’ heads, presenting their stories lived in the present-day Pakistan. They are: Tara, a PR woman and one of the modern faces of Pakistan, she divides 38
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Of Time and The City.
her time between acting and event management; Mohsin, a young politician and the son of a member of the National Parliament of Pakistan; Rabia, a married woman who works as the chief editor of a monthly journal called The Fourth Article, and Waleed, who is a lawyer and a practicing Muslim. They are deliberately chosen members of the upper elite class of Pakistan, since they are supposed to break the stereotypical representation of Pakistani people. As the filmmaker said in an interview, “Foreign news channels repeatedly present Pakistani people in an extremely myopic and stereotypical way. The Pakistan they cover is only showing a part of the story. Pakistan and Pakistanis are often labeled as dangerous pariahs who should be secluded from the world stage. As Pakistani filmmakers, we felt that their conclusions were amateurish and racist. We felt we could easily negate them even if we showed a glimpse of Pakistan through the eyes of Pakistanis. Thus began the journey for making Made in Pakistan.” As a documentary, the film provides quite a different picture of Pakistan – a liberal, outspoken, even atheist, fashionable, middle-classy as anywhere else in the world; it is the Pakistan that supports no totalitarian
political or theological hegemony or dictatorship. Shot during Pakistan’s state of emergency under Gen. Musharraf in 2007, the film has been shown in Pakistan in metropolises. In a nutshell, the documentaries shown at Mumbai Film Festival, 2009 in its TRR section broadly familiarized us with the present trends in the long documentary filmmaking. What, however, remains a perennial question is how to promote them by creating a market-platform? How could they be shown to wider sections of public across India? While talking to the Festival Director, Srinivasan Narayanan, he seemed sensitive to this issue. He said, “I believe some of the best documentaries should be shown to the Indian public and the Film Festival is the best forum bringing together serious and informed minds. I would have been happy if some of the television channels showed interest in acquiring these documentaries along some of the best non-English feature films presented by MAMI. From now on, we will work to create a proper market for the best films from all over the world, including documentaries.” Through this initiative, along with that of the forthcoming MIFF (3-9 February 2010); hopefully an earnest and sustained effort will be made to help our documentary filmmakers.
IFFI 2009
Panorama 2009: A Mirror of the Best The Indian Panorama, a part of the International Film Festival of India, since its inception in 1970 has been the mirror of the best in Indian cinema. Over the years foreign filmmakers and critics have found it convenient to catch up with the Indian Panorama since it has become a benchmark for the best feature and short films made in India. This year eighteen short films were selected by a jury comprising Aribam Syam Sharma (chairperson) Paromita Vohra, Dr. Pushpesh Pant, Sameer Hanchate and Kapilas Bhuyan.The following films were screened at the IFFI 2009 in Goa this year: BILAL Bengali- Hindi/88minutes Producer, Director, Editing, Camera: Sourav Sarangi The story begins inside an 8X10 feet partitioned room in central Kolkata. Almost nothing is visible inside. Bilal’s parents don’t need any light to see things around; they are blind. Bilal is just three-year-old and he has an infant brother. Both can see. So together they live as if in a game of seeing and not seeing. Though young, Bilal is fully aware of his parents’ handicap. He knows how to communicate with them through sound and touch, can guide them through traffic. Bilal’s upbringing and care seems to be a collective responsibility of all the neighbours. The film tells his unique story by observing the little boy over a year and capturing rare moments of love, sharing, fun, cruelty and hope.
There are four central charactersJeevni, the widow, her son Manka, Thakur and the well. It’s a square well, fenced from all sides, with a locked door so that noone can take water from it. The most precious resource in the village water-comes from this well dug by Jeevni’s husband who had been killed by Thakur. Jeevni and Manka are a reflection of the vast humanity that survives on the hope that someday they will be powerful enough to avenge the injustice done to them. But in doing so will they also become oppressors themselves? CHILIKA BANKS Hindi/58 minutes Direction, Editing and Camera: Akanksha Joshi Chilika Banks tells the stories from India’s largest coastal lake (1970-2007), from the times when there was no export bazaar to a time when there may be no lake at all. In a canvas spread over four decades, a banyan tree, on the banks of the lake Chilika, silently whispers tales of the lake and her fisher folk and traces 40 years of ecological changes in the lake.
DOT IN FOR MOTION English/59 minutes Direction and Screenplay: Anirban Datta Dot in for motion traces India’s recent growth after economic liberalisation and the information revolution and its effect on the lives of the vast Indian populace. Does globalisation really usher in liberty? Does the open market mean a more open society? Does it really foster democracy? Or is it a process of homogenisation slowly taking over this nation of enormous diversity? The film neutrally records the voice of people, from a lounge of the silicon city to a remote tribal village that never heard of electricity. EKTI KAKTALIYO GOLPO (A Coincidental Tale) Bengali/10 minutes Director: Tathagata Singha The narrative revolves around a 13year-old boy, Babai. He is given a magic marble (which apparently has the power to summon the king of fish) by an old man who stays in the ground floor flat of his apartment. His teacher (who stays in the same building) takes it away asking him to
BOOND (Drop) Hindi/26minutes Director: Abhishek Pathak The film is set in a remote, parched Indian village. Here power rests with those who control the resources.
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concentrate on his studies than on fantasies. The boy’s dreams are crushed as he sits by his window with a handmade fishing rod. However, coincidences bring about an unusual turn of events. THE FIRST LEAP English/28 minutes Director: Haobam Paban Kumar The artistes of the first feature film of Manipur Matangee Manipur meet after a gap of 37 years. They have lunch and watch the film together, recollect the past, what they went through to achieve the impossible. It’s a journey made by the present to know their past to better their future. I’M THE VERY BEAUTIFUL Bengali/64 minutes Director: Shyamal Kumar Karmakar The film follows a quaint man-woman friendship-between bar dancer Ranu and Shyamal, the director of the film. With an extremely modest upbringing in a refugee family and an abduction, a child, a few suicide attempts and many failed relationships behind her, Ranu is a total contrast to Shyamal who is well-educated and well-to-do. The relationship grows through the film as the two accept each other despite moral archetypes and trust and respect each other as human beings. The film is a compassionate view of the struggles and dreams of a woman on the margins of the society and a filmmaker’s own dilemmas. ILISA AMAGI MAHAO (The Taste of A Hilsa) Manipuri/25 minutes Director-Camera: N. Lancha It is not dawn yet. Only the father and the son in a boat can be seen stirring the river. After casting their net once or twice they move down southwards. Drifting a little further they hit on luck. A big, silvery white hilsa is rolling in the net. Father decides not to sell it off. He hopes to invite his pregnant daughter for a meal. He wishes to share the taste of hilsa with his family. But he comes to know that they have no rice to cook… 40
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Kya Main Qafir Hoon.
KELKKUNNUNDO? (Are You Listening) Malayalam/ 22 minutes Script, Direction: Geetu Mohan Das In a sleepy Kerala village lies a garage overlooking River Periyar. Hasna is a four-year-old blind girl. During her Christmas break her mother who works as a maid in the town drops her off at the local garage in the care of workers Vellapan and Chacko. Her only source of entertainment is the sounds of children at play. In a globalised, urbanised and fastchanging world, little Hasna sees things in a whole new way. She learns to accept the inevitable changes around her and makes us question the KYA MAIN QAFIR HOON (Am I A Non-Believer) Hindi/56 minutes Script, Direction: Sandhir Flora After escaping death in the Taj hotelfiring incident, an American NRI Muslim called Abraham goes to Dharampura, his native place. His long cherished dream is to set up a madrassa to provide education to poor Muslim children. City’s SP Suleiman Shaikh brings him to his own home, as the town is brimming with communal tension. His wife Salima, a housewife who has a very liberal view, sees a brotherly figure in Abraham and she extends her whole-hearted hospitality. In order to help Abraham, SP Shaikh makes arrangement for his meeting with TV journalist Maria.
Maria also wishes to open a madrassa for the education and upliftment of backward Muslims. But when Maria and Abraham meet for the common goal, they find they have very different ideologies and this gives rise to a strong clash of opinions. THE LATENT CITY English/58 minutes Director: Krishnendu Bose The film explores this context and celebrates the confluence of art, ecology, the city and its citizenry. Selected artists are invited to this city in its transformative moment, to create art, in the everyday. 48 degrees Celsius, the first public art ecology project in India held for 10 days in December 2008 to raise consciousness towards Delhi’s ecological concerns and that of the world. The film reconstructs the art using snatches of artists’ conversations and splicing their politics and performance. A video representation is sliced in between the chronicle of the disappearing city. It nudges us to re-examine the latent citizenry and urges to re- imagine the future of our cities. NAANUM ORU PENN (I Am A Woman Too) Tamil and English/10 minutes Script, Direction: V. Ramanathan It’s the story of a transgender person and her struggle for recognition and acceptance at her work place. The film
needed to make a film, from film stock to camera. Beyond this the three narrators take the stories in different directions. All stories conclude with the filmmaker not making the film but the how and why differ. The film is a magical, dark journey into the possibilities of fate and the survival of true talent in the business that Indian popular cinema has been reduced to. VITTHAL Marathi/24 minutes Direction, Editing: Vinoo Choliparambil The Prince and The Crown of Stones.
brings out the common prejudices against people who are differently oriented, sexually. Selvi, who is transgender, gets a job in a software company. She feels the job has come to her on sympathetic grounds than merit. She has been appointed under corporate social responsibility programme. Her immediate superior, Bhaskar, doesn’t accept her as part of his team. Her colleagues also keep a distance. Unable to bear the humiliations Selvi decides to quit. Her friend Jaya, another transgender, convinces her to fight it out. Selvi gets an opportunity to prove her worth which she grabs with both hands. She eventually gets appreciation, her confirmation letter and acceptance from colleagues. THE PRINCE AND THE CROWN OF STONES English/60 minutes Director: Gautam Benegal Spoilt prince Hironmoy of Hirokpur has run away from his father, the powerful King Rudrapratap. A wise teacher’s stories about good kinship inspire the little prince and he leaves his palace determined to dispense justice among his people. But things take an ominous turn when he is captured and mistaken for an ordinary boy, taken down to diamond mines owned by none other than his own cruel father and put to work there with
the other helpless subjects. Now the teacher, who is himself enslaved in the mines, must save the little prince and, in the process, open the pitiless King’s eyes to reality. SUPERMEN OF MALEGAON Hindi-Urdu/79 minutes Director: Faiza Ahmad Khan Malegaon is a small town just 300 odd kilometres from Mumbai. It is fraught with communal tension and under severe economic depression. To escape the harsh reality of their world its people seek refuge in the fantastical world of cinema. The passion for cinema has also spurred a group of film enthusiasts to make their own quirky, low budget, spoofs of Bollywood films. Now they are ready to take on Hollywood with their own Malegaon Ka Superman. We follow them in this funny, tragic, warm and engaging journey, their ingenious modes of shooting and bizarre, indigenous special effects. SWAYAMBHU SEN FORESEES HIS END Hindi-Malayalam-English/ 19 minutes Direction, Script: Debashish Medhekar It’s 26 July 2005. Three narrators atop a bus entertain the stranded with an urban legend of an extraordinary filmmaker who stole everything he
Vitthal is very angry. Following the death of his grandfather, according to the Hindu death rituals, Vitthal’s parents have shaved off his head. For Vitthal, his world has shattered. Nothing can pacify the mind of this 12year-old and stop him from feeling humiliated, isolated WHAT IF… English/3 minutes Director: V.K. Prakash The story deals with the vision of a young boy in a remote village. His father is a station master and he himself notices the trains passing by. One evening, on returning home from school he sees the train and a small idea strikes his mind-taking a small coin, keeping it under train wheels and flattening it out to make a larger, lustrous coin. It doesn’t change the value of the coin but we can interpret it as the boy envisioning himself as an entrepreneur who invests to make more and see his money grow. WHEN THIS MAN DIES Hindi, English/22 minutes Script, Direction: Arun Sukumar The monotony of an officer worker’s life is disrupted when he receives a letter offering him the money bequeathed to him by a dead man. As these letters and the promised money get delivered regularly, his daily life patterns start to alter and so does his lifestyle. DOCUMENTARY TODAY
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IFFI 2009 MOMENTS WITH THE MAESTROS
A Musical Week in Goa By Anil Kumar N. It is becoming a habit – I mean, doing something different and special at every occasion! Three years ago, in 2007, Films Division organized Behind The Frames an expo on the technical evolution of cinema through the ages. The collection of cameras, lights and sound equipment caught the fancy of every technician and filmmaker in the film industry. Even the likes of Govind Nihalani and Gautam Ghose “who have been there and done that” were struck by what could be done once the will was made to work. Why not make a permanent exhibit, asked many, and that exactly was the idea with which MOMI was proposed. But then that’s another story for another time! And then for its Diamond Jubilee, Films Division hosted a week-long festival of documentaries made by it
between 1948 and 2008. Initially held at IFFI 2008 and titled Framing Time, the event was another huge hit. After all, the collection of the best documentaries made by the most celebrated filmmakers was bound to catch audience attention. So when the year 2009 breezed in people all around began to ask: “What is it that Films Division will do this year?” So, to keep the tempo, Films Division decided to host a week-long festival of music and music makers: Moments with the Maestros. The original idea was mooted by Mr. V. B. Pyarelal, Joint Secretary (Films), Ministry of Information & Broadcasting. This thematic presentation of films on Indian classical and film music and its exponents was organized at the Black
Box, Kala Academy, Panaji from November 24 to 30, 2009. In all, 39 films were screened during the festival and biggest of music icons were felicitated. Panel discussions with celebrities were also held during the week-long event. Need we say that it was another big hit? Moments With The Maestros got off to a musical start, with a cross section of eminent personalities from the field of classical and film music attending the inauguration at 3.30 pm on November 24 at the Black Box theatre, Kala Academy. Mr Digambar Kamat, Chief Minister, Goa, inaugurated the Classic section in the presence of Santoor maestro Pandit Shivkumar Sharma, music composers Ravi and Anandji, film star Biswajit, Nirmala Devi (wife of late Pandit Husanlal).
Lighting the auspicious lamp to signal the start of the musical festival is Nirmala Devi and Mr. Digambar Kamat, Chief Minister, Goa. Applauding them are, from left, Kuldeep Sinha, Pandit Shivkumar Sharma, Ravi, Biswajeet, and Guests of Honour Nagarjuna and Amla. 42
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guests of honour, celebrities, dignitaries and the delegates. Dinesh Kumar Prabhakar, Director (Music), FD proposed vote of thanks while Anil Kumar N, OCD conducted the proceedings. The inauguration was followed by the screening of the inaugural film, Rafi, We Remember You, directed by Kuldeep Sinha and Antardhwani (on Pandit Shivkumar Sharma) and Khayal to full house. Mr Sinha introduced his film by dwelling into his experiences while making the biopic on the great singer. Guests of Honour Nagarjuna and Amla are felicitated with mementoes by Kuldeep Sinha.
Among the officials present were Mr Raghu Menon, Secretary, Mr. V. B. Pyarelal, Joint Secretary (Films), both from the I&B Ministry, Mr Sanjay Srivastava, Chief Secretary, Goa, Mr Kuldeep Sinha, Chief Producer, Films Division, Mr S M Khan, Director, IFFI and Mr Manoj Srivastava, CEO, Entertainment Society of Goa. The star attraction of the event were the Guests of Honour, the Telugu film star Nagarjuna and his charming wife Amla also a star in her own right. They had flown down from Hyderabad especially to attend the inaugural ceremony. Mr Digambar Kamat, in his inaugural speech, lauded the efforts of the Films
Division in organising Moments With The Maestros and added that it was the best gift for not only the film delegates but also for Goans, known for their love for music. He desired that such kinds of exclusive screenings may be organised every year by FD in the IFFI and also in the Kala Academy. The Chief Minister praised Films Division for inviting to Goa celebrities like Pt Shivkumar Sharma, Pt Jasraj, Ustad Amjad Ali Khan and Gulzar and for felicitating them. On the occasion, all the celebrity guests present were felicitated by the Chief Minister, the Secretary, I&B and the Director, IFFI. Earlier, Kuldeep Sinha welcomed the chief guests,
The next day (November 25) began with a panel discussion on Changing Trends in Film Music. Pandit Shivkumar Sharma, Ravi, Anandji, Bisawjit and Pandit Jasraj participated in the session which attracted music lovers, critics and delegates. The music celebrities spoke at length lamenting the waning influence of meaningful music and melody in film music today. The session, initially planned for an hour went on for more than two hours as the listeners were keen on hearing more from the doyens of music. Later in the afternoon, Pandit Jasraj and Madhura Jasraj were felicitated by Kuldeep Sinha followed by the screening of films Sangeet Martand -Pandit Jasra (directed by Madhura Jasraj), Jibaner Jalsaghorey
An illustrious line-up of celebrities ‌ Dinesh Prabhakar (extreme left) moderates a discussion with Anandji, Pandit Shivkumar Sharma, Ravi, Pandit Jasraj and Biswajeet. DOCUMENTARY TODAY
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Talking music are, from left, Dr Jabbar Patel, Gulzar, Pandit Amjad Ali Khan, Mrs. Subalaxmi (Amjad Ali) Khan and Pandit Ramnarayan.
(Manna De),The Melody Man - Dr Balamurali Krishna, Singh Bandhu, Pandit Bhimsen Joshi and Begum Akhtar. A two-minute silence was observed on the third day (November 26) as a mark of respect to the victims of 26/11. Then began the actual programme: Women Directors Talk. The first speaker was Madhura Jasraj, director-author and daughter of the legendary V Shantaram, spoke at length about her life and works, both as the daughter of an icon of Indian cinema and as the wife of a legend of Hindustani music. I had the honour of moderating the session, which attracted a number of young women filmmakers who posed a number of questions about Madhuraji’s dual role as a home maker and a filmmaker which she replied with characteristic élan. In the afternoon, Dr Jabbar Patel, eminent filmmaker and theatre personality was felicitated by Kuldeep Sinha. Dr Patel thanked the Films Division for allowing him to make films on the subjects dear to his heart. He hoped that FD would continue to make meaningful films on the life and works of great personalities in 44
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different fields. He also presented the film, Hans Akela, an insightful journey in to the life and muse of the great vocalist, Kumar Gandharv. This was followed by the screening of Dhrupad, Sanchaika (on composers Husanlal Bhagatram), Siddheswari and Ustad Alla Rakha. All the films attracted a large number of music lovers, the more famous ones being Anandji and Nana Patekar who requested the Chief Producer, FD to organize such screenings in other parts of the country as well, for the benefit of music aficionados. As the days went by and word-ofmouth spread the news of this section of IFFI more and more people were attracted to it. Many of those who had gathered said that they had cancelled their bookings for the regular shows in order to be present there. They preferred to listen to the music, watch the films and hear the music maestros speak. The topic for the fourth day (November 27) was the making of biographical films. The main speakers were Dr Jabbar Patel and Kuldeep Sinha. Noted filmmaker Gulzar, who was in the audience, also joined the
panel and spoke about his experiences while making films on Mirza Ghalib, Pt Bhimsen Joshi and Ustad Amjad Ali Khan. Once again I was given the honour of moderating the session. Later, Sarangi maestro Pandit Ramnarayan, Sarod virtuoso Ustad Amjad Ali Khan, and eminent filmmaker-poet-lyricist Gulzar were felicitated by Kuldeep Sinha. Accepting the felicitations, they lauded FD for introducing a section on music at the IFFI. Films like Ustad Amjad Ali Khan, Pandit Ramnarayan, Sarod, Shruti and Graces in Indian Music, Tarana and Semmangudi Sreenivasa Iyer were screened. The fifth day (November 28)’s programme started on a bright note with Ustad Amjad Ali Khan, Pt Ramnarayan, Shri Gulzar, Dr. Jabbar Patel and Kuldeep Sinha speaking at length on the topic of the day Classical Music In Modern Indian Cinema. Gulzar spoke about the changes that had taken place in Indian film music in the last seven decades. He felt that since classical music stood on a high pedestal, we did not have to worry about its varying
influence on film scores. He said that if film music needed a classical touch, it was for the filmmakers, lyrirists and composers to create such music. Pandit Ramnarayan and Ustad Amjad Ali Khan agreed that classical music lovers need not be worried about the non-use of ragas in creating film melodies since the taste of cine-goers had decidedly undergone a changes in the last so many years. The celebrity speakers including Dr Jabbar Patel stressed the need for a television channel devoted to music and other art forms. Kuldeep Sinha informed that a proposal had already been sent to the I&B Ministry in this regard. Composer-filmmaker Dinesh Prabhakar who moderated the earlier session was felicitated in the afternoon for making films like Naushad – A Musical Journey and Ustad Bismillah Khan. The felicitation was followed by the screening of Salil Chowdhury, Naushad, Anil Biswas, Teejanbai, Gangubai Hangal and Girija Devi. The sixth and seventh day (November 29 and 30) were a bit slower after the hectic pace of the first five days.
The event generated a lot of interest amongst the local media. Here Kuldeep Sinha is being interviewed for a local television channel.
Everyone got a chance to catch their breath and concentrate on the films. However, the films continued to light up the screen. The films included: Setu-The Bridge, Pt Krishnarao Shankar Pandit, Mubarak Begum, K L Saigal, Amir Khan and Sheikh Chinna Moulana. The films on the seventh day included: Pt. Mallikarjun Mansur, Thyaga Brahmam (on Saint Thyagaraja), Baba (on Ustad Allaudin
Khan), Ahmad Jaan Thirakwa, Ravi Shankar, Dr Gulam Rasool and Ustad Bismillah Khan.. When the week came to an end everyone agreed that it was the best (and not to say, the most musical) time they had had in a long long time. The event was extensively covered in the local media. And more importantly, the celebrity guests, delegates and music lovers were all praise for the entire event – but more particularly for the films that Films Division had produced on the life and works of the music icons. Another hit with them were the discussions on various musical topics which brought them closer to the music makers. Now that the programme has become such a huge success we know that there will be a demand for it to be staged in other part of the country. Like the other successful programmes curated by Films Division this one, too, will have be hosted in other parts of the country. To end on a more commercial note: the marketing counter, both at the Black Box and at the INOX courtyard, registered good sale of CDs of these films.
The marketing counters at both the theatres were a big hit. Here Nana Patekar goes through Films Division’s rare collection of CDs and DVDs for sale.
All in all a very satisfying event – the third hit in a row!! DOCUMENTARY TODAY
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AWARDS NEWS Defamation bags Grierson award at London Fest
Prix Arte for The Sound of Insects
Yoav Shamir’s bold irreverent documentary Defamation bagged the prestigious Grierson Award for Best Documentary at the 2009 London Film Festival, hosted by the British Film Institute. Defamation not only dares to raise serious issues but also presents arguments with wit and balance, Shamir’s irreverent sense of humour making it as entertaining as it is provocative. Shamir is a documentary maker who specialises in films about modern Israeli life. His latest deals with antiSemitism, which he claims never to have experienced personally, yet he hears the term used everyday. His quest leads him to explore whether anti-Semitism has become an excusable prejudice in some civilised societies, or whether it is used as a spectre to drum up support for right wing Zionism. He garners a broad range of opinions, including those of Abraham Foxman, director of the American AntiDefamation League, which collects evidence of anti-Semitism, and controversial academic Norman Finkelstein, author of The Holocaust Industry, who has argued that the Nazis’ treatment of the Jews is used as justification of Israel’s conduct toward Palestinians.
NBR Chooses The Cove National Board of Review, one of the oldest organizations devoted to motion pictures as art and entertainment.and which completeda full century in 2009, voted The Cove as the Best Documentary of the year. Other contenders for the top slot included Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country, Crude, Food Inc., Good Hair and The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and The Pentagon papers. 46
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The European Film Academy’s prestigious Prix Arte for the Best Documentary of 2009 was awarded to the Swiss documentary Das Summen der Insekten – Bericht einer Mumie (The Sound of Insects – Record of a Mummy), directed by Peter Liechti “for its skillful exploration of minimalistic means to create an extraordinary visual story between life and death”. The film tells the incredible story of how the mummified corpse of a 40year-old man was discovered by a hunter in one of the most remote parts of the country. The dead man’s detailed notes reveal that he actually committed suicide through selfimposed starvation only the summer before. Liechti’s film is a stunning rapprochement of a fictional text. The award is given by the European Film Academy in association with the European culture channel ARTE. The award was given away at the 22 nd Eiropean Films Awards ceremony held in Bochum, Germany on December 12, 2009. The members of this year’s jury comprised: documentary filmmaker Nino Kirtadzé from France/Georgia, Austrian producer and ORF editor Franz Grabner and Russian documentary filmmaker Viktor Kossakovsky.
The ten non-fiction documentaries nominated for the award were: The Beaches Of Agnes (Les Plages d’Agnès), directed by Agnès Varda (France); Below Sea Leve, directed by Gianfranco Rosi (Italy / USA); Burma VJ, directed by Anders Østergaard (Denmark); Cooking History (Ako Sa Varia Dejiny), directed by Peter Kerekes (Slovakia / Austria / Czech Republic); The Damned of The Sea (Les Damnés de la Mer), directed by Jawad Rhalib (Belgium); Defamation, directed by Yoav Shamir (Denmark / Austria / Israel / USA): The Heart of Jenin (Das Herz von Jenin), directed by Leon Geller & Marcus Vetter (Germany); Pianomania, directed by Lilian Franck & Robert Cibis (Germany / Austria); The Woman With The 5 Elephants (Die Frau mit den 5 Elefanten), directed by Vadim Jendreyko (Switzerland / Germany).
Independent Spirit Awards The nominations for the 25th Anniversary Spirit Awards, to be presented on Friday, March 5, 2010, are: Anvil! The Story of Anvil (Sacha Gervasii); Food, Inc. (Robert Kenner); More Than a Game (Kristopher Belman); October Country (Donal Mosher, Michael Palmieri) and Which Way Home (Rebecca Cammisa)
AWARDS NEWS Last Train Home bags top IDFA 2009 honour their lives and work under horrific conditions to earn meager wages which they send home to support families they’ve left behind in impoverished rural villages. We see Bilal, a 21 year old worker, narrowly escape being crushed by a collapsing metal framework and later, returning home for a visit, weeping about his new baby’s blindness, a product of his wife’s malnutrition during pregnancy. Back at the shipyard, boys no more than 12 years old slog through knee-deep mud to pull ships ashore for dismantling and are rewarded with oil-tainted rice for dinner. Yet everyone celebrates the arrival of a new ship for demolition because they desperately need the wages.
Best Short Film (Under 30 Minutes) (with a cash prize of 5,000 Euros)
The Yes Men Fix The World
The International Documentaries Film Festival (IDFA), Amsterdam, is the largest and arguably most important documentaries film festival in the world. Held annually in November, it draws filmmakers, industry people and audiences from around the world for ten days of film viewing, discussions and networking. At the end of it all, IDFA awards the best in each category.
Best Feature Length Film (with a cash prize of 12,000 Euros) The Last Train Home ( China/Canada) Director: Fan Lixin The film addresses the issue of Chinese migrant workers who move from rural village to the country’s newly developed industrial zones to toil in factories so they can support families who remain at home. The film follows one family for two years, and culminates with their heart-wrenching and harrowing efforts to get home to celebrate the new year. They persist, but face incalculable pressures in
trying to keep their family together and ensure an education for their children.
Special Jury Award to A Film Not in Competition The Most Dangerous Man In America (USA) Directors: Judith Erlich, Rick Goldsmith The story of Daniel Ellsberg, the US Department of Defense analyst who, during the 1960s, blew the whistle on the American government’s lies to the American people concerning their country’s actions in Vietnam. Ellsberg released his confidential 7,000-page Pentagon Papers to The New York Times in 1971, bringing about a change in US policy.
Best Mid-Length Film (30 to 60 minutes) (with a cash prize of 10,000 Euros) Iron Crows (South Korea) Director: Bong-Nam Park Workers in Bangladesh’s dangerous Chittagong ship demolition yards risk
Six Weeks (Poland) Director: Marcin Janos Krawczyk The film covers the first six weeks of a baby’s life in a Polish orphanage, showing that the mother cannot keep the child because of her economic situation and that adoptive parents can quickly step in to assume their loving responsibilities. But the focus is on the baby, who seems helpless, lonely and terrified during the time between abandonment and adoption. 18 minutes.
Best First Appearance (with a cash prize of 5,000 Euros) Colony (Ireland/USA) Directors: Carter Gunn, Ross McDonnell Extreme close-ups of bees, flowers, trees and beekeepers form the visual grid for this investigation of the importance of bees and current concerns about diminishing bee populations world wide. DOCUMENTARY TODAY
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Best Dutch Documentary (with a cash prize of 5,000 Euros) The Player (The Netherlands) Director: John Appel Tracing his own attraction to gambling to his father’s addiction to playing the horses, the director pursues an intensely personal and often amusing investigation of the compulsions that have influenced his and other addicts’ lives.
Best Student Documentary (with a cash prize of 2,500 Euros) Redemption (Germany) Director: Sabrina Wulff The stories of three US Army soldiers who, having served in Iraq, became deserters and moved to Canada. They speak out against pressuring recruitment and training techniques, and their nightmarish experiences in Iraq.
Youth Jury Award (Presented by a panel of Dutch high school students) (with a cash prize of 1,500 Euros) The Yes Men Fix The World (USA/ France) Directors: Andy Bichlbaum, Mike Bonanno Two well-dressed American radicals impersonate corporate leaders, infiltrate company meetings and make presentations that reveal and undermine corporate greed and antisocial policies.
Audience Award - Tallied from post-screening viewer ballots The Cove (USA) Director: Louie Psihoyos Richard O’Barry, the animal trainer behind the phenomenal success of the television show, Flipper leads animal rights activist Louie Psihoyos on a mission to save dolphins. They recruit an A Team-like crew of filmmakers and environmentalists to expose Japanese fishermen’s annual dolphin roundup and the slaughter of thousands of dolphins. 48
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Master Filmmaker Frederick Wiseman Honored At IDFA Noted documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman was presented with IDFA’s first-ever lifetime achievement award on November 19, 2009, the opening night of IDFA 2009. Festival founder Ally Derks presented Wiseman with an award statuette, a gold lapel pin and huge bouquet of flowers, and praised not only his cinematic accomplishments, but his generosity towards his subjects, other filmmakers and IDFA — where he has presented his films, headed juries and given masterclasses, as well. Wiseman celebrates his 80th birthday on January 1, 2010 and is currently engaged in the production on a new film. Wiseman has directed and produced dozens of documentaries, which often focused on social relations within American institutions. He is regarded as one of the major exponents of Direct Cinema. His most recent documentary, La danse - Le ballet de l’Opéra de Paris premiered in 2009 and is being shown as one of ten films in IDFA 2009’s Wiseman Retrospective, which also includes screenings of eight of the filmmakers other classics, including Titicut Follies (1967), High School (1968), Hospital (1969), Basic Training (1971), Welfare (1975), Model (1980), Missile (1987), Near Death (1989) and Belfast, Maine (1999). The selection of films for the retrospective was made by Wiseman, himself. In addition to the films in the Wiseman Retrospective, IDFA 2009 is presented some 50 American-made documentaries, including two Mchael Moore films (Capitalism: A Love Story and Bowling For Columbine), as well as Crude, We Live in Public and several of the American-made documentaries on the 2010 Oscars short list, including The Cove and Food, Inc.. In all, about 300 documentares were screened during the 10 day festival.
The Grierson Documentary Awards for 2009 Dower, back to the most hyped boxing match in history. Frazier, now 63, takes British filmmaker, John Dower, back 33 years to the most hyped boxing match in history, and beyond. Frazier has never forgiven Ali for the racial taunting leading up to the fight in which he called Frazier ‘gorilla’ and ‘uncle Tom’ - the worst possible insult for a fellow black man.
Best Science Documentary
The Grierson Awards commemorate the pioneering Scottish documentary filmmaker John Grierson (1898 – 1972), famous for Drifters and Night Mail and the man widely regarded as the father of the documentary. Established in 1972, the Grierson Awards recognise and celebrate documentaries from Britain and abroad that have made a significant contribution to the genre and that demonstrate quality, integrity, creativity, originality and overall excellence. Awards are given in a number of categories, including Arts, History, Science and Contemporary Issue, as well as to a first time filmmaker.
Best Arts Documentary category The Mona Lisa Curse (Mandy Chang) The Mona Lisa Curse is a timely polemic by internationally renowned art critic Robert Hughes which examines how the world’s most famous painting came to influence the art world. With his trademark style, Hughes explores how museums, the production of art and the way we experience it, have radically changed in the last 50 years.
Best Historical Documentary Thriller in Manila (John Dower) Joe Frazier takes British filmmaker, John
Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life (Sacha Mirzoeff) David Attenborough asks three key questions: how and why did Darwin come up with his theory of evolution? Why do we think he was right? And why is it more important now than ever before?
Most Entertaining Documentary The Yes Men: Fix the World (Andy Bichibaum, Mike Bonnano) Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno are two guys who just can’t take “no” for an answer. They have an unusual hobby, posing as top executives of Corporations they hate. Armed with nothing but thrift-store suits, they lie their way into business conferences and parody their corporate nemeses in ever more extreme ways - basically doing everything they can to wake up Afghan Star
Shell International Best Documentary on a Contemporary Issue Afghan Star (Havana Marking) Afghan Star was watched by a third of the population of Afghanistan. Over 11 million people, in voting for their favourites, experienced a taste of democracy.Afghan Star is a small but significant unifying force for the country’s diverse ethnic groups; as the programme’s presenter Daod Sediqi says, ‘the aim is to take the people’s hand from weapons to music’. DOCUMENTARY TODAY
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their audiences to the danger of letting greed run our world.
Best Drama Documentary House of Saddam (Alex Holmes, Jim O’Hanlon) House Of Saddam is a gripping drama series about one of the world’s most terrifying regimes and its subsequent downfall. This BBC/HBO coproduction tells the story of the opulent lifestyle of Saddam Hussein and his inner circle, set against a backdrop of war and the tragedies of the Iraqi people.
NORMA PERCY For outstanding contribution to the art of documentary film making:
Best Documentary Series Iran and the West (Dai Richards, Delphine Jaudeau, Paul Mitchell ) Jimmy Carter talks on television for the first time about the episode that, more than any other, led American voters to eject him from the presidency: Iran’s seizure of the US embassy in Tehran. Exclusive interviews with two exPresidents of Iran – Hashemi Rafsanjani (1989 to 1997) and Mohammad Khatami (1997 to 2005) – give this programme unique authority. The series tells the inside stories of struggles, in their own government and with the West.
Best Cinema Documentary Burma VJ (Anders Ostergaard) Going beyond the occasional news clip from Burma, the acclaimed filmmaker, Anders Østergaard, brings us close to Burma’s video journalists who insist on keeping up the flow of news from their closed country despite risking torture and life in jail. Armed with small handycams they make their undercover reportages, smuggle the material out of the country, have it broadcast back into Burma via satellite and offered as free usage for international media.
Best Newcomer Storyville: I’m Not Dead Yet (Elizabeth Stopford) A unique and personal film about the inheritance of a Gothic home and a family’s unspoken past. 50
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“Her documentaries stand out ...most of all for the extraordinary range of political leaders who agree to appear on them ...Every significant international story seems to have its Percy film. The Second Russian Revolution (1991) followed the fall of the Soviet Union. The Death of Yugoslavia (1995) traced the causes and consequences of the Balkan wars. Two series, The 50 Years War (1998) and Elusive Peace (2005) examined the Israeli-Arab conflict, and the peace process that approached success but never achieved it, while Endgame in Ireland (2001) explained how a conflict was resolved. And now Iran and the West, produced by Percy, working with executive producer Lapping, their company sustains the gold standard of documentary making.” These series for BBC Two - and Avenging Terror (2001) and Playing the China Card (1999) for Channel 4 have won dozens of major awards including a prime time Emmy for Watergate in 1994, two BAFTA’s, four Royal Television Society awards, three Columbia University duPont journalism awards, and three US Peabody awards. She was awarded an honorary
doctorate from City University in 2004, the James Cameron prize for the year’s outstanding journalism (print and broadcast) in 2000 and in 2003, and is a fellow of the Royal Television Society; Percy and Lapping jointly received the BAFTA Alan Clarke award in 2003 and the RTS Judges award in 1996. Brought up in New York, she studied politics at Oberlin College, before coming to England to do a postgraduate degree at the London School of Economics. She then spent six years as a researcher in the House of Commons where she really began to learn about politics (mainly in the Strangers’ Bar). It was this expertise that brought her to television; Brian Lapping offered her a job at Granada on a series about what was wrong with Parliament - for one year only. She stayed for 15 years, working with him on various ways to depict politics on television: She went with Lapping when he set up as an independent in 1988 and was a founding director of Brook Lapping in 1997. Norma Percy is married to Steve Jones, broadcaster, author, journalist and Professor of Genetics at University College London.
FORTHCOMING AWARDS
The Cove tops Cinema Eye Nominations
The Cove once again emerged as the leading contender at the nominations for the prestigious 2010 Cinema Eye Awards. The documentary was nominated for seven awards, including Outstanding Achievement for Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking, Cinematography, Production, Editing, Original Musical Score, Debut Feature Film and Audience Choice. Also nominated for Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking are Burma VJ, Food, Inc, Loot and October Country. The nominations were announced at the Sheffield Documentaries Festival in the U.K. 98 films were eligible for consideration. The Cinema Eye Awards will be presented on January 15, 2010 at the Times Center in New York City, with the sponsorship of IndiePix The Cinema Eye nominating committee comprises film festival and film society programmers. This year, committee members included Meira Blaustein (Woodstock Film Festival), Heather Croall (Sheffield Documentaries Festival), Sean Farnel (Hot Docs), Ben Fowlie (Camden), Tom Hall (Sarasota/Newport), Doug Jones (Los Angeles), David Kwok (Tribeca), Caroline Libresco (Sundance), Janet Pierson (SXSW), Thom Powers (Toronto International Film Festival), Rachel Rosen (San Francisco Film Society), Sky Sitney (Silverdocs), Sadie Tillery (Full Frame) and David Wilson (True/False). Introduced in 2008, the Cinema Eye Awards are unique in that they recognize specific skills in nonfiction filmmaking. The categories include Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking, Direction, Cinematography, Graphics and Animation, Editing and Music, among others. This is the full list of documentaries nominated for the 2010 Cinema Eye Awards, presented on January 15, 2010 in the Times Center in New York City.
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Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking Burma VJ - Directed by Anders Østergaard -Produced by LiseLense Møller The Cove - Directed by Louie Psihoyos - Produced by Paula DuPre Pesman and Fisher Stevens Food, Inc. - Directed by Robert Kenner - Produced by Robert Kenner and Elise Pearlstein Loot - Directed and Produced by Darius Marder October Country - Directed and Produced by Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher[/link]
Outstanding Achievement in Direction Agnès Varda - The Beaches Of Agnes John Maringouin - Big River Man Anders Østergaard - Burma VJ Darius Marder - Loot Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher - October Country Terence Davies - Of Time And The City
Outstanding Achievement in Original Music Score Rich Ragsdale - Big River Man Joshua Ralph - The Cove Mark Adler - Food, Inc. Danny Grody, Donal Mosher, Michael Palmieri and Kenric Taylor - October Country Joel Goodman - Valentino: The Last Emperor Ben Decter and Marco d’Ambrosio - We Live In Public
Outstanding Achievement in Production Maria Florio, Molly Hassell and Molly Lynch - Big River Man Richard Parry and Vaughan Smith Blood Trail Lise-Lense Møller - Burma VJ Paula DuPre Pesman and Fisher Stevens - The Cove RJ Cutler, Eliza Hindmarch and Sadia Shepard - The September Issue Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography Bill Ross and Turner Ross - 45365 Brook Aitken - The Cove Michael Palmieri - October Country Deborah Stratman - O’er The Land Yaron Orbach - Unmistaken Child Outstanding Achievement in Editing Bill Ross - 45365 Janus Billeskov-Jansen and Thomas Papapetros - Burma VJ Geoff Richman - The Cove 52
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Brad Fuller and Fernando Villena Every Little Step David Smith - Soul Power Josh Altman and Ondi Timoner We Live In Public
Outstanding Achievement in Graphic Design and Animation Christophe Vallaux - The Beaches Of Agnes The Team at Bigstar - Food, Inc. Kate Anderson - It Might Get Loud Nominees TBD - RIP – A Remix Manifesto Patrick Lichty - The Yes Men Fix The World
Outstanding Achievement in an International Feature Film Burma VJ - Directed by Anders Østergaard - Produced by LiseLense Møller Mugabe And The White African Directed by Lucy Bailey and Andrew Thompson - Produced by Elizabeth Morgan Hemlock and David Pearson Of Time And The City - Directed by Terence Davies - Produced by Roy Boulter and Sol Papadopoulos Old Partner - Directed by Chungryoul Lee - Produced by Young-jae Goh Rough Aunties - Directed by Kim Longinotto - Produced by Teddy Liefer and Paul Taylor Those Who Remain - Directed by Carlos Hagerman and Juan Carlos Rulfo - Produced by Carlos Hagerman, Juan Carlos Rulfo and Nicolas Vale
Outstanding Achievement in a Debut Feature Film 45365 - Directed by Bill Ross and Turner Ross The Cove - Directed by Louie Psihoyos Loot - Directed by Darius Marder October Country - Directed by Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher The Way We Get By - Directed by Aron Gaudet Spotlight Award Because We Were Born - Directed by Jean-Pierre Duret and Andrea Santana Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo Directed by Jessica Oreck Episode 3: Enjoy Poverty - Directed by Renzo Martens The Sound Of Insects: Record Of a Mummy - Directed by Peter Liechti Trimpin: The Sound Of Invention Directed by Peter Esmonde Audience Choice Prize Anvil! The Story of Anvil - Directed by Sascha Gervasi The Cove - Directed by Louie Psihoyos Every Little Step - Directed by Adam del Deo and James D. Stern Food, Inc. - Directed by Robert Kenner Good Hair - Directed by Jeff Stilson The September Issue - Directed by RJ Cutler Tyson - Directed by James Toback Valentino: The Last Emperor Directed by Matt Tyrnauer Valentino
16 US and 12 World Documentaries selected for Sundance Festival 2010 Sixteen documentaries were selected from 862 submissions for the US Documentary Film Competition and 12 documentaries were selected from 782 submissions for the World Documentaries Competition for the forthcoming 2010 Sundance Film Festival to be held at Park City, Utah from January 21 to 31, 2010. Included in the world line up are films from Cambodia, Germany, France, Canada, Ireland, Switzerland, Denmark, Brazil, Argentina and the U.K.
U.S. Documentary
Bhutto (Directors: Duane Baughman and Johnny O’Hara): Following the life and work of Benazir Bhutto, the recently assassinated former Pakistani prime minister. Casino Jack & The United States of Money (Director: Alex Gibney): An investigation of D.C. lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his cronies, and the lies, greed and corruption surrounding them. Family Affair (Director: Chico Colvard): A look at the resilience, survival and capacity to accommodate a parent’s past crimes in order to satisfy the longing for family.
Freedom Riders (Director: Stanley Nelson): The story of the Freedom Riders, a group of courageous civil rights activists who challenged segregation in the American South during the early 1960s. Gas Land (Director: Josh Fox): A cross-country journey reveals polluted waterways, dying livestock, flammable sinks and endangered health of citizens in areas subjected to drilling for natural gas. Jean-Michel Basquiat The Radiant Child (Director: Tamra Davis): A profile of Jean-Michel Basquiat, the hard living New York artist who died at age 27, and has since become a cultural icon.
Bhutto
Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (Directors: Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg): An intimate look at the life and career of the popular comedian. Lucky (Director: Jeffrey Blitz): An investigation of what happens to ordinary people who win the lottery jackpot. My Perestroika (Director: Robin Hessman): Showing Russia in transition by following five Muscovites who came of age as the USSR collapsed and are adjusting to post-Soviet reality. The Oath (Director: Laura Poitras): The story of two men whose meeting in 1996 set them on a course of events that led to Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden, 9/ 11, Guantanamo, and the U.S. Supreme Court. Restrepo (Directed by: Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington): The record of the directors’ year with the Second Platoon in Afghanistan provides a rare look at the lives of American soldiers - the firefights, physical labor and camaraderie who are trying to defeat the Taliban. A Small Act (Director: Jennifer Arnold): A Kenyan, whose life was changed when his education was sponsored by a Swedish stranger, creates a scholarship program to pass along the kindness and support he received. Smash His Camera (Director: Leon Gast): look at the reviled paparazzo Ron Galella and issues raised by his professional behavior, including the right to privacy vs. freedom of the press, and the invasive aspects of celebrity culture. 12th & Delaware (Directors: Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing): A look at the ongoing abortion battle that continues to manifest itself in DOCUMENTARY TODAY
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unexpected ways on an ordinary American street corner. I’m Pat Tillman (Director: Amir Bar-Lev): The story of professional football star and decorated U.S. soldier Pat Tillman, whose family takes on the U.S. government when their beloved son dies in a “friendly fire” incident in Afghanistan in 2004. Waiting for Superman (Director: Davis Guggenheim): An investigation of the crisis in U.S. public education, as told through the stories of several students and their families and educators who are trying to find solutions to restore the dysfunctional system.
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A Film Unfinished Germany (Israel/Director: Yael Hersonski): Archival Nazi footage reveals Warsaw Ghetto life with staged images that have influenced our view of history. Enemies of the People (CambodiaUnited Kingdom/Directors: Rob Lemkin and Thet Sambath): A young journalist whose family was killed by the Khmer Rouge befriends the perpetrators of the genocide in the Killing Fields to get to the truth. Fix ME (France-Palestinian Territories-Switzerland/Director: Raed Andoni): Palestinian filmmaker Raed Andoni seeks various remedies in his hometown of Ramallah for his ongoing headaches. His & Hers (Ireland/Director: Ken Wardrop): Seventy Irish women reflect on the relationships between women and men. Kick in Iran (Germany/Director: Fatima Geza Abdollahyan): The film follows the first female professional Taekwondo fighter from Iran to qualify for the Olympic Games, as she struggles for recognition in her country where women play a subordinate role. DOCUMENTARY TODAY
Sins of My Father
Last Train Home (Canada/ Director: Lixin Fan): Getting a train ticket in China is a harrowing experience for a family of migrant workers who, along with 200 million other peasants, are trying to reunite with their relatives for the new year celebrations. The Red Chapel (Det Røde Kapel) (Denmark/Director:Mads Brügger): An unscrupulous journalist, selfproclaimed spastic and comedian travel to North Korea and, under the guise of a cultural exchange visit, challenge the repressive regimes. Russian Lessons (GeorgiaGermany-Norway/Directors: Olga Konskaya and Andrei Nekrasov): An investigation into the 2008 war in Georgia reveal the little known story of ethnic cleansing in the region by Russians after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Secrets of the Tribe (Brazil/ Director: José Padilha): Reveals the scandalous infighting amongst Anthropology academicians regarding exploitation of indigenous peoples in the Amazon Basin. Sins of My Father (ArgentinaColombia/Director: Nicolas Entel):
The life and times of Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar are revealed by his son, who fled Colombia to move beyond his father’s influence. Space Tourists (Switzerland/ Director: Christian Frei): A look at how billionaires buy their way into exotic outer space travel for fun. Waste Land (United Kingdom/ Director: Lucy Walker): International artist Vik Muniz collaborates with garbage pickers in the world’s largest landfill in Rio de Janeiro.
IFP honour for Food Inc. Filmmaker Robert Kenner’s searing expose of the food industry’s unhealthy and unholy practices Food, Inc. received the 2009 Gotham Independent Film Award for Best Documentary Film on November 30, 2009 in New York. The award is presented by IFP, the oldest and largest organization of independent filmmakers in the U.S. Other documentaries nominated for the award include My Neighbor My Killer, Good Hair, Paradise and Tyson.
2010 Oscar Awards
Best Documentary Feature Nominees
Mugabe and the White African
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today announced the 15 films in the Documentary Feature category that will advance in the voting process for the 82nd Academy Awards. Eighty-nine pictures had originally qualified in the category. The 15 short-listed film are: The Beaches of Agnes, Agnès Varda, director (Cine-Tamaris) Burma VJ, Anders Østergaard, director (Magic Hour Films) The Cove, Louie Psihoyos, director (Oceanic Preservation Society) Every Little Step, James D. Stern and Adam Del Deo, directors (Endgame Entertainment) Facing Ali, Pete McCormack, director (Network Films Inc.) Food, Inc., Robert Kenner, director (Robert Kenner Films) Garbage Dreams, Mai Iskander, director (Iskander Films, Inc.) Living in Emergency: Stories of Doctors Without Borders, Mark N. Hopkins, director (Red Floor Pictures LLC) The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith, directors (Kovno Communications) Mugabe and the White African, Andrew Thompson and Lucy Bailey, directors (Arturi Films Limited) Sergio, Greg Barker, director (Passion Pictures and Silverbridge Productions) Soundtrack for a Revolution, Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman, directors (Freedom Song Productions) Under Our Skin, Andy Abrahams Wilson, director (Open Eye Pictures) Valentino The Last Emperor, Matt Tyrnauer, director (Acolyte Films) Which Way Home, Rebecca Cammisa, director (Mr. Mudd) The Documentary Branch Screening Committee viewed all the eligible documentaries for the preliminary round of voting. Documentary Branch members will now select the five nominees from among the 15 titles on the shortlist. The 82nd Academy Awards nominations will be announced on Tuesday, February 2, 2010, at 5:30 a.m. PT in the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater.
Liv Ullman Prize for Indian film Noted documentary and children’s filmmaker Vinod Ganatra was awarded the prestigious Liv Ullmann Peace Prize at the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival for his latest film Harun Arun produced by directed by the Children’s Film Society. The Liv Ullmann Peace Prize is given to the film which positively addresses to children’s difficult topics, such as racism, prejudice and abuse, conservation of the planet; alternative dispute resolution (of individuals, organizations, and or countries) or the exploration of any topic which brings children closer with an understanding of the global culture in which they function. Harun Arun is a cross over film pertaining to the Indo-Pak Border and fully shot at Kutchchh border. This film explores the story of Harun, a young Pakistani boy who is extremely fond of Indian films and songs. By chance he strays on to the Indian side where he comes across three Indian children who take him under their wings hiding and protecting him from the world.
The film has also been invited by Dhaka International Film Festival, Bangladesh to be held from14th to 22nd January, 2010. It will be screened in both Adult and Children sections of the festival. DOCUMENTARY TODAY
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THE M.I.F.F. DOSSIER The Mumbai International Film Festival for Documentary, Short and Animation Films is today – after ten editions in twenty years – one of the more important documentary film festivals in the world. Right from the beginning it was meant to be an informal festival so that all kinds of films would be able to participate. A shloka from the Rigveda proved to be the right motto for the festival: “Come Together, Speak in Harmony”. The eye was chosen as the logo of the festival since it would represent several themes: seeing is believing, the candid eye, points of view, search for the truth, the eye that probes, insight and finally, the creative eye of the filmmaker. With such an inclusive approach it is but natural that some of the most respected names in cinema have chosen to grace the festival. The eleventh edition of the festival which unspools at the National Centre for the Performing Arts from February 3, 2010 also has its share of great filmmakers. What makes the festival fare varied is that it also includes films made by students and first-timers – all being shown cheekby-jowl with the more practiced art of the veterans. It is going to be a veritable cornucopia of cinema. The following pages contain interviews with filmmakers talking about their films which will be shown at the festival. 56
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M.I.F.F. 2010 Reconstructing the Reality of Burma By Alison Willmore
It’s easy to overlook Burma VJ — a documentary about Burmese reporters risking their lives to report on the conditions within their closed country sounds like the type of earnest, pedagogic film that offers up a pressing issue for audiences to ask about and then forget after leaving the theater. But to preemptively classify it as so is to do Burma VJ a terrible disservice. The film, assembled by Danish director Anders Østergaard primarily from handheld camera footage shot during the 2007 anti-government protests, is an astounding journey through the exhilaration and terrible danger of the first major protests in the country since the 1988 pro-democracy demonstrations that ended in thousands being killed by the military junta. Burma VJ is filtered through the perspective of a young journalist given the pseudonym “Joshua,” who is part of the Democratic Voice of Burma, a media organization that circumvents the government-controlled news by smuggling their footage out of the country to Oslo, where it’s broadcast via satellite. In 2007, it was the DVB’s coverage of the protests that reached international outlets like the BBC and brought global attention to a nation in which traditional media coverage has long been impossible. I had a chance to talk with Østergaard and Joshua about the conditions in Burma and the difference between filmmaking and journalism.
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How did “Burma VJ” begin? Anders Østergaard: I was invited to do a film on Burma three or four years ago. We had some early thoughts of trying to portray this closed country from life on the borderline — people going in and out — to reflect what was going on in there. It was maybe too conceptual. I was looking for more concrete people, so to speak, and during that process, we became aware that a lot of people are trying to shoot inside the country, many of them regular citizens. We realized that next door to us in Norway there was actually a TV station broadcasting reports that were smuggled out of the country. For me, it seemed like a perfect platform to make a film about the country: not just the footage, but also the people who were actually doing this: why, how and what went through their head. I went to see a group of reporters who came out to be trained in Thailand. Through the course of that, I met Joshua, who understood intuitively what we were trying to do and was very generous about trying to describe how life as a secret reporter really is. That got us started, way before the uprising. I was planning to do a short documentary, a human interest, intimate thing about his life and thoughts and then it exploded into a much bigger story in all respects. When did the decision come about for the majority of the film to be footage that was shot by the reporters? AO:That was born into the project from the beginning, even in the small format. My approach was that the film should be based on the footage, but with an audio soundtrack that would give more insight. That survived into the ultimate film, as we developed these reconstructed conversations, telephone conversations. That’s really the spinal cord of the film when you look at it, the understanding of dramatic developments. And the choice to filter the point of view through Joshua, even as he’s removed from the main setting of the action and forced to stay in Thailand? AO: Of course, first we thought, “Well, 58
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our main character has left the scene,” which was a bit awkward. [laughs] We really had no choice. [to Joshua] You did, as you said yourself, take a little bit too much of a risk and had to escape. But we slowly realized that it was actually quite a gift, that we had this guy who was trying to follow what was happening inside because we could hold his hand, trying to understand what was going on. And I learned that this distance had some tremendous suspense value, that we are with him trying to find out what’s happening over there, which became the dynamic of the film. Joshua, how long ago did you first get involved with the DVB? Joshua: I first worked with the DVB during 2003, and I became one of the first cameramen on the ground. But I got my first professional training as a cameraman in Bangkok, in 2005, I first met with [the “Burma VJ” filmmakers]. I didn’t really know at the time how big this project was, and what I had to do at the time. [It was] just an assignment from my college. They just introduced me to these people, and I talked with them. That’s all I knew about, at the time. But after I’d seen their demo about what they had done on the project, I thought I really had to go on... I mean, I need to talk for everybody, not only
for me, not only for our group, but also for everybody in Burma. I’m sure for anyone who sees the film, the major question is one of where things are now, given that at the end, everyone has had to scatter and contact has been lost with a lot of the reporters you worked with. Joshua: I got into Burma again to build a new network, and now we have an even stronger one than before. I believe that we sacrificed a lot during September 2007, and it was not a waste. You express in the film a fear that people outside are forgetting what the situation is in Burma. What do you hope of people who see this documentary? Joshua: Yeah, it’s all about news. Because I am working with the news, I understand that people will focus on something happening, but when everything is quiet, they have chance to forget. They have chance to forget about what happened. So this documentary is one that can make people remember, and I believe that people will know we are still there and we still need help. A documentary is different than the news. Documentaries are things that makes people think, so they will have more understanding after this, I believe.
M.I.F.F. 2010 Somehow the monks, I think, realized they could open a new front by applying themselves to politics. I think that a lot of these monk leaders are quite politically aware, have been for a long while, and are also looking for the moment to do their bit. J: Yeah, I mean the small groups, they intended to do something like this. They were very organized at the time and just waiting for the spark.
Anders, I suppose have the same question for you, what would you hope of people who are watching this film, experiencing that difference between immediate news footage that has made it onto the networks and the more measured experience of a documentary? AO: It’s all about relating, that you can relate to Burma’s conditions somehow, that we can make the things, the thoughts these guys have and what they’re going through universal rather than being exotic, rather than being about a remote place where some monks are walking about, finding some generals. We get empathy with what it is like to be a freedom fighter, if you like, and also to maybe develop the thought that “Hey, maybe I would do that same thing if I was in the same situation.” It’s not a special breed of people doing this. Normal human beings need freedom so much that they will do these things eventually if conditions force them to it. So I was anxious to make it universal thing and a thing you can relate to. I apologize for this ignorance on my part, but the monks, who played a major role in the uprising, first became involved in the protests, was there a particular incident that
brought them in or had they just decided that it was time to join the political fight? J: There was a case in central Burma [in which] some monks got out on the street to protest against the military because they wanted to represent the people of that area who were suffering and starving, and they were beaten up by military. They demanded an apology, according to the Buddhist rule. So it was the religious thing in the beginning, but at the time, there were some small groupings already all over the country, so later they organized [made] it to a political move. They knew they really needed to do it because they were getting less and less food. Buddhist monks are the people who get the best things in Burma, but even they were receiving not enough food and other donations, so they realized the country’s situation was getting worse and worse and decided it was the time for them to do something. AO: Also, they’re the only organization of any kind to articulate opposition. Of course, we have the NLD, which was the official opposition organization spearheaded by Aung San Suu Kyi, but they were out of the game for a good while and have really not many ways to make progress.
Anders, you’d mentioned that audiences have been asking more about the situation documented in the film than the film itself. It’s often the great debate of documentary film: Is it filmmaking or is it journalism? Where does that meet for you and where does craft come in versus subject matter? AO: The first thing I would say is [“Burma VJ”] is not journalism because we’re not serving those criteria of objectivity. I couldn’t do the reconstruction thing if I was on a journalistic contract with the audience. To me, creative documentary is there to offer a different kind of insight on top of the news. It’s somewhere in between dramatic film and journalism. I’m a trained journalist myself and I have a journalistic drive, but I really...I try to get as much freedom as I can to take documentary material from the real world from the sort of footage, the kind you saw, to reconstruct how it was to be a reporter at the time, taking the liberties I need in order to offer you that insight. So I’m quite far away from journalism in that respect, because of those liberties I need to take in order to offer you a cinematic experience. I’ve seen a lot of documentaries lately that end with “For more, visit www... to see how you can help.” Do you see this film as that kind of direct tool? AO: I don’t know. I didn’t go into this project because I was a Burma activist or even a political activist. It’s not really in my blood really, to be an activist. I was interested in it almost existentially, at least in the fact that these guys are doing it. Why do we need to do stuff like that in order to DOCUMENTARY TODAY
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Fokiya Akhtar: All Alone And Lonely is close to my heart Megna Kalvani Besides being a faculty in the Media and communication department, Ms. Fokiya Akhtar is also a passionate and dedicated filmmaker. She has made more than 20-odd documentaries, also primed current affair programs, game shows, live shows and discussion boards. Here’s a tête-à-tête with Ms. Fokiya Akhtar, director, scriptwriter and research analyst for her latest 25-minute documentary All Alone and Lonely, a film about the hardships experienced by widows and displaced children who are left insecure and helpless because their sole bread winners were killed either due to the suspicion of being an agent or insurgent operations How did the idea of making this documentary- All Alone and Lonely come about? Being a passionate filmmaker, I constantly toss with a variety of ideas. This particular idea came about when I was in Kashmir. I had gone to this orphanage to give charity, when I came across these orphan boys playing, I felt sad for them as I realized there wasn’t anyone to voice their thoughts, and emotions. So, I went forward to make this documentary, in order to create awareness on widows and orphans and their sufferings. How long did the documentary take to complete? I started my research in the year 2005. It took time meeting officials from NGO’s, orphanages as well as interviewing widows and orphans. The script was written in 2006, while the shooting was completed in 2007. But if I have to be precise, during each year only 2 months in Kashmir were dedicated to making this documentary, making a total of six months. Were there any hardships/challenges you faced while making this documentary? Yes, many times I was found faced with a challenge. It was not easy making friends with the orphans, as I found it very difficult talking and getting to know these small boys and girls, as they are at an emotional level and when they see someone has come to meet 60
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them they are filled with hope as they see a saviour in that person. When I left, it really hurt me because they saw that person in me. How many widowed women and displaced children did you meet? I must have met a total of 550 widowed women and 850 orphans in Srinagar, Dardpora in Kupwara District and Ganderdal altogether. Would you be making a follow up on this documentary, as we have an audience who wish to know what happens to the children? I might, this is just the beginning. I was thinking of going a little deeper into the problem and bring out who is responsible for making them orphans in the first place. There is more to it
than just blaming each other. The leadership and Society needs to address the issue and make sure that we don’t see the number of orphans increasing in the valley. Among all your documentaries, which one would you consider your best? Honestly, “ All Alone and Lonely” would be the one, as it is close to my heart. I have worked very hard for it. Being a Kashmiri, myself I was emotionally attached to it. I was also very passionately involved, as I understood the psyche of the people. Also, my Ostrich film, because at that point nobody was there to help me, it was practically a 3-man show with my husband, my daughter and me. So, considering the circumstances, I think the product of the documentary was my best. Have you planned any upcoming documentaries or films? Of course, I am an ardent filmmaker. Currently, I am thinking of doing a documentary on the Multi-culturism in Dubai, how people of different nationalities relate to each other, how they live away from their homes. My dream is to make a movie, preferably in Bollywood. I have written the script for it, but it lacks finance, but I am working on it.
M.I.F.F. 2010
Capturing the Birth of a Nation For filmmakers Luigi Acquisto and Stella Zammataro, making Rosa’s Journey has taken them on a personal journey of their own. The filmmakers began their love affair with East Timor soon after the United Nations supervised referendum in 1999 that restored the nation’s independence after 24 years of Indonesian occupation. During more than 15 visits to East Timor over eight years, the filmmakers have developed a strong bond with their subject, Rosa Martins, and her family, and fallen in love with the tiny Southeast Asian nation. In the film they follow Rosa’s personal struggle to raise her large brood in the most challenging of circumstances, capturing her frustration when they fail to respond to discipline or understand the importance of school. This is made harder because the schools have been closed and the teachers regularly fail to attend. In the following interview Luigi Acquisto answers a few questions:
Rosa’s Journey is a sequel to an earlier film? Yes! The earlier film East Timor - Birth of a Nation was about how East Timor was born from the ashes of its freedom struggle. East Timor has had a violent birth. A mere ten days after the country had gained independence in 1975 after 460 years of Portuguese rule, it was invaded by Indonesia and the resistance movement fought the Indonesians for 24 years. A quarter of the population—more than 200,000 people—died as a result of the occupation. But when Indonesia withdrew after the 1999 referendum, its army and the local militias it created razed the country to the ground, burning, looting and killing as they went. I was there to film it and also how its people worked to build their future. It was then that I met Rosa Martins, a young widow eking out a living selling food she cooked in her tiny Dili home. When did the idea of a sequel come about? I had spoken to people about doing a follow-up film but at that stage it was a purely sociological piece. We didn’t expect it to be as dramatic as it turned out to be. In the years since that first documentary, I made numerous personal visits to East Timor, returning with my camera seven years later to see how Rosa had fared. I found her living in a new home with her growing family. I found her struggling to maintain hope for the future of her country, she was determined to give her children the education and opportunities denied to her by war and poverty. As the subject of the film, Rosa revealed herself to be a great storyteller and a natural talent in front of the camera. How long did it take to make the sequel? I spent eight months filming life in Dili, capturing tumultuous events such as the outbreak of violence and DOCUMENTARY TODAY
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challenges of a living fledgling democracy. Rosa’s journey becomes the journey of East Timor, and her struggle an echo of her fragile nation.”
riots in early 2006, government elections in June 2007, and an assassination attempt on President Jose Ramos-Horta by rebel leader Major Alfredo Reinado in February 2008. He attended Reinado’s funeral after the militia leader was shot dead by presidential bodyguards.
was also difficult as was getting approval to film. There may be demands for bribes or confusion about who is responsible because the infrastructure has not yet been set up. Then there is the demarcation between the local bodies and the UN. There’s a lot of conflict and corruption.
Was it dangerous to film in East Timor at such a time? I filmed the funeral but felt in no danger. There were lots of media there and members of the Catholic Church. It was like a state funeral of sorts, however strange that may seem, so people were not aggressive, just grieving. But filming during the crisis in 2006, however, was less safe. There were often gunshots near where I was filming, gunshots through the hotel grounds where I was staying and threatening behaviour from local gangs. Actually filming violence was fine as the gangs liked the publicity, but travelling around Dili was risky— lots of rock throwing as well which continued for months.”
What do you think is special about the film? The first film was about the birth of a nation, filmed from a social point of view but the strength of Rosa’s Journey is the way it blends the personal with the political, painting a picture of a developing nation as seen through the eyes of an extraordinarily resilient woman. Rosa really is a ‘Mother Courage’ figure even though her story is shared by many women in her country. East Timor is wrestling with more challenging and complex issues than existed in the celebratory climate of independence seven years ago. This film gives a rare insiders view of the
Did you face any other difficulties? Basic conditions were similarly tough. As well as tension and the geographical hardships of working in rain, heat and extreme humidity, simple requirements such as transport and power were far from assured. And it’s always hard if you have to deal with bureaucracy or anyone in an official position. Sourcing archival footage 62
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Why do you keep returning to East Timor? Yes! In fact, both of us do! We are committed to spending a part of each year living in East Timor. In fact, we both returned to work on the Australian feature film Balibo (directed by Robert Connolly and starring Anthony LaPaglia) about the fate of five journalists killed there in 1975. Personally I feel very comfortable there, it’s just like going home. East Timorese culture is comparable to my own Italian heritage. Culturally there are a lot of similarities with my own background; it resonates with what I have been told post-war Europe was like. That whole history of conflict and displacement resonates strongly with my own family’s history. And the East Timorese are just very welcoming. So that is not the end of Rosa’s Journey? We are keen to extend the story. We plan to revisit Rosa’s story—and that of East Timor ’s developing democracy—in a new documentary in seven years time.
M.I.F.F. 2010 Anand Ramayya: Reconciling the Contradiction
Anand Ramayya’s Mad Cow Sacred Cow is a universal story that connects the food we eat to the environmental, cultural, economic and health crises we are currently facing on a global level. The documentary is the filmmaker’s personal journey which reveals shocking connections between the mad cow crisis, farm crisis and global food crisis. He realizes that the cow is not only his favourite meal but also the God of his Hindu ancestors and the livelihood of his Canadian in-laws, who are small farmers. With a sense of humour and curiosity, he embarks on a journey to learn more about the modern Mad Cow and ancient Sacred Cow in hopes that their stories will reveal a solution to his fear of food. Anand Ramayya is a 4 time Gemini Award winning producer and filmmaker. He grew up in a film family and has been working on dramatic films since the age of 15. He completed his Bachelor of Commerce degree and began working full time in the film industry. Ramayya’s projects have ranged from independent feature length films to stop motion animation and documentary films. In the following interview he talks about how his latest project Mad Cow Sacred Cow got going. What inspired you to make Mad Cow Sacred Cow? I had just come back from working on a documentary in India where I had reconnected to my Indian heritage in a profound way for the first time. The trip also made me realize that I was completely in love and possibly ready to settle down with a wonderful Canadian farm girl who is now my wife. I was about to marry into a proud farm
family with a long history of living on the land. We were feeding her parents’ cattle, and the Mad Cow crisis was all over the news. Farmers were going bankrupt, the public was in a state of hysteria over the controversy and for the first time I was questioning the safety of my food, specifically my beloved burgers. I started doing research into how my food was being produced and came across one of my
wife’s books called “Stolen Harvest” written by Dr. Vandana Shiva and in it was a chapter called Mad Cows and Sacred Cows. That chapter provided the framework for a 4 year investigation into food, culture, agriculture, the environment and cows that would result in Mad Cow Sacred Cow. Along the way a lot of things happened that continued to inspire the DOCUMENTARY TODAY
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journey: my in-laws announced they were going to slowly sell off the farm and get out of agriculture, the Mad Cow Crisis continued to sporadically rear its ugly head and the word “Crisis” would soon be common in our media – food crisis, agriculture crisis, economic crisis, energy crisis, environmental crisis. In my personal life, Teresa and I married and became parents to a baby boy named Owen, heightening not only my sense of fear but also my sense of purpose to make this film. We started shooting one and a half months after Owen was born. How long did production take? Production officially started in February 2007 and continued off and on until July of 2008. The entire process took much longer, researching the story, finding our subjects in Canada and India, financing, shooting and editing took 4 years. How did you decide on what direction to take? The Mad Cow or BSE Crisis was a departure point for this film; in a way it is my response to the BSE Crisis and because so much had been done about the BSE crisis – the science, politics and scandal of it, I realised early on that I didn’t want to retread that material. I wanted to connect this crisis to some of the bigger issues that affect our day to day lives, and I wanted to make that connection between food, agriculture, culture and ecology. (though oddly, I didn’t actually know that’s what I was doing until someone told me!) Why be a character in your film? The issues in Mad Cow Sacred Cow are all topical and timely but the thing that inspired me and really interested my supporters was the personal connections I had to this project. I am in a unique situation to be married into a Canadian farm family but having strong Hindu roots in Southern India. Both sides of my family have profound connections to the cow. As strange as that sounds, its true! And the more I learned about the Cow and its 64
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economic as well as cultural significance, the more I felt it was necessary to include my personal story to connect the dots. How did the diversity of your crew influence the film? My crew is the untold story of this film. My cinematographer Thomas Hale is a filmmaker, historian and philosopher who brought keen insight and saw things I only discovered in the editing room. My fixer in India was a young Muslim academic, filmmaker and journalist named Farhatullah Beig. His insight and passion really brought a new dimension to the film and helped me understand the complexities of India and its relationship with the Sacred Cow. My co-producer in Canada, Ryan Lockwood, is a farm boy, raised on a farm with a large cattle operation. He brought a really unique insight into
the world of the beef industry. His personal reactions to the farm crisis in India also made me truly realize that the plight of small farmers everywhere was common. In the editing room the final and crucial crew member was Chris Bizzocchi. He came in with a fresh set of eyes and really made this film his own. Food is important to him and his family, having grown up in Vancouver and living there now. I feel he brought a sensitive, conscious urban perspective to the film. He really helped find the stories that would resonate.
To what extent was your story in place when you started to edit? We had amassed a lot of material, (over 60 hours) and cutting that down was no small task. Our first assembly was four hours long and we thought all of it was interesting but you have to decide what’s essential and I had to go back to what my motivation was to make this film and stay focused on that, namely food, culture, and ecology. The farm crisis and global food crisis are top of mind and sparking debate worldwide. How would you like Mad Cow Sacred Cow to contribute to the discussion? I read this quote and felt this really summed up what I’m hoping people will think about after watching this film: “How we eat determines how the world is used.” Wendell Berry I wanted to make this film about big issues but it’s also very personal, and if the people who watch the film can have a personal experience that helps them think about how their own lives are connected to food, culture, and the environment, then we’ll have done something worthwhile. Nettie Wiebe said “its about food but its also about how we live within our environment.” Again, I think its about making connections, recognizing interdependence between humankind and our life supporting systems, food, water, air, culture. I think that juxtaposing the Sacred Cow and the Mad Cow really allowed me to explore Hindu culture and modern corporate culture to show why these connections are important and how disastrous it can be when we ignore them. These are things we’ve taken for granted but our kids won’t be able to if we continue to behave the way we’re behaving. Every week there is a new “CRISIS” in the news; it feels like everything is reaching critical mass and on the verge of breakdown. I’m trying to make some small changes in my life and I’m hoping the story of Mad Cow Sacred Cow can connect with other normal likeminded people who just want to try and live more sustainably.
M.I.F.F. 2010
The Poster Story “O you chaps come up with the same boring designs for your posters: a strip of film … the globe … and the ubiquitous eye. Can’t you think of anything new?.”
encouraged her to continue sketching. The college has, of course, given her “a sense of direction and confidence”.
This has been the constant refrain – rather, complaint – in the last few editions of the Mumbai Festival. And the poor “chaps” in the Cartoon Film Unit of the Films Division, who are given the task of coming up with new designs every festival, have no defence except to murmur what else can best represent a festival of world (“the globe”) cinema (“a strip of film”) which has the gogo of the all-seeing eye..
Ankita V. Sawant’s design combines the film reel with the number 11, both of which together give the feel of the forthcoming festival. As she says, “It is an attempt to approach the target audience in a direct way.” She is grateful to her college for the support and guidance it gave it. For her, creativity was a way of life from the very beginning and so the choice of designing as a career was a natural choice.
And so, this year, in the midst of the meeting to decide poster design, Nandu Sadamate, who has the unenviable task of overseeing the designs, came up with an idea which at once met the approval of the ever-innovative Chief Producer Kuldeep Sinha. The idea was simple: get the students of the various art schools in Mumbai to come up with fresh designs. The idea found instant approval because Mr Sinha, for the last two festivals, has been keen on involving students as active participants in the festival.
Rushikesh Mehere has “played with colours from his childhood”.which makes his poster the most unusual and eye-catching of the lot, particularly for the use of the oldfashioned theatrical masks. He says, “I wanted to compose the poster graphically using elements like masks and film reel with the help of Photoshop brushes.” Designing the poster was “a great learning experience” for him. The arts and the crafts were always of special interest to him.
Letters were promptly dispatched and as many as 64 poster designs from various art schools were received. An informal committee comprising Mr Sinha, Mr Sadamate, noted animator V.G.Samant and Mr Anil Kumar, OCD, Films Division was formed to select the most appropriate designs for the forthcoming festival. So, what was the criteria that was used to select something which would reflect the personality of the festival (which is now an International brand) and yet be innovative? Actually a tall order given the fact that every conceivable design has been tried out in the last 20 years by our own designers at Films Division. Six designs were finally selected – co-incidentally from the same art school, the L.S.Raheja School of Art at Worli in Mumbai, which is tribute to their teacher Nandini Narvekar who has been teaching there for over a dozeb years and is now the head of the department. Geetanjali Advait Patil’s design uses a “filmy background” with a prominent candle which according to her represents “the efforts put in by ‘Films Division’ to present to people films and movies which give out various social messages and touch people’s lives in some way or the other just like a candle keeps burning itself to spread its light”. We do appreciate the thought! Geetanjali gives credit to her parents and friends who first
Aditya Prafulla Patil was never interested in “regular academics” but had an interest in the Arts. With no one to help or guide him left him “confused” but hungry for more. His approach to the task of designing the poster was different from the others. “I made this poster in grayscale with a hint of color rather than opting for the regular colorful thoughts. I tried to pay more attention to typography to enhance my poster hence trying to imply the importance of good typography in any poster design. Thinking more objectively, I further used a film roll to symbolize the film part and a red bug to represent animation,” he says describing his approach. Ketaki Sabnis had an interest in Commercial Art “right from her childhood”. She feels that the task of designing the poster was “a great opportunity to show her creativity. It is like a dream come true.” She says, “Through the poster I have tried to approach the target audience in a direct way. The film negative in it denotes the various itineraries that are conducted in the Festival.” Pooja Doshi is a diehard Harry Potter fan – so much so that the character has inspired her right from her schooldays. She comes from a family which has no background of the Arts but nevertheless she was certain she wanted to make a career in that field. Animation has always been of great interest and that is what guided her artwork on the poster. DOCUMENTARY TODAY
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