Report on the Festival of Emerging Cinemas

Festival of Emerging Cinemas

Connecting Indias

August 8-12, 2011

Gulmohar, IHC, New Delhi

Organized by IAWRT

In association with India Habitat Centre

A Report

In August 2011, the International Association of Women in Radio and Television organized a new and unique film festival called the Festival of Emerging Cinemas at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi. The festival was a celebration of the diversity in creative expression of the cinemas that are emerging in the towns and villages of India. We wanted to showcase films that are made by people living in the communities they are speaking to and about. We were looking for films that have something to say, speak in a local idiom, and are rooted in the region.

‘Our films never get shown.’  ‘We won’t send the DVDs as they might get copied and for us our films are our survival.’ ‘It is amazing that the music video industry in the hills is a multi crore business!’ These comments made us curious and jolted us from our complacency of defining popular culture in pre conceived ways. We were intensely curious about what was out there and what insights we could gain from the various social, cultural, economic, political diversity in the films made in parts of the country without a long history of established film industries; hence the name ‘emerging cinemas’. We started exploring and decided to go beyond the notions of high and low art, and look at works that were made with honesty and passion, that were true to the lived experiences of people.

The idea got crystallised through the process of speaking to people, and finding and viewing films from different parts of the country. For example, through a couple of documentaries, we knew of a group in Malegaon, Maharashtra who had reworked Bollywood and Hollywood blockbusters and adapted them to their milieu. What we wanted to show in the Festival of Emerging Cinemas were not the films made on the Malegaon group, but a film made by them. Malegaon ke Sholay was made for the people of Malegaon; we wanted to see how a different audience, one in Delhi would respond to it.

The films we came across were concerned with identity, aspiration, ritual heritage, migration and assimilation, and were often done with humour and pathos. We discovered there is an audience for these films that aim to mediate the past with the present. We felt that these films redefine the concept of popular culture and need wider viewing and dissemination. Important to mention here are the films on tribal communities that represented adivasis as people dealing with an array of complex problems in today’s world, and not as ‘exotic’ and ‘primitive’ as has been the custom in the mainstream media.

Our final selection included features, short fiction, documentaries and music videos from Ranchi, Imphal, Leh, Niyamgiri, and Malegaon. Some of the filmmakers were social activists, some were bollywood buffs; some were trained in institutes, others were self taught practitioners. What they had in common was their love for cinema and irrepressible urge to talk about the lives and concerns of people amongst whom they lived and worked. Their films were different in identity, content, style and rhythm from what is generally seen in Delhi and other metros. The festival was envisioned as a platform for dialogues between the different Indias that coexist, but usually do not interact with each other.

 The festival was inaugurated on August 8 by Dr. Aruna Vasudev who shared her enthusiastic support towards this initiative, saying that this was a very different kind of festival and was offering a unique opportunity to viewers in Delhi who might not be aware of the range and depth of films being made in smaller towns and semi urban areas of the country. Festival Director, Jai Chandiram shared with the audience the concept of the festival and what they could look forward to over the five evenings.  This was followed by the screening of Baha, the film that had in fact sparked off the idea for this festival. Noted documentary filmmaker Shriprakash’s debut feature, the film is an exploration of the Jharkhand music industry, the film takes us through the struggle of a young tribal man to become a singer in a casteist and exploitative society. It gently documents the technological transition from audio cassettes to CDs, and the aesthetic movement from folk music to a more commercialised, hindi film music inspired genre. The audience was amazed to see a ‘hero’ who looked so unlike ones seen in mainstream and even alternate cinema. The film was greatly appreciated for its honesty and simplicity even as it brought the complexity of the situation to the fore.

The next evening, the packed house was thoroughly entertained by  Malegaon ke Sholay, an innovative take on the bollywood classic, made on a shoe string budget by Nasir Shaikh. A wedding videographer, Shaikh was driven by his love for hindi films to undertake this magnum venture. He shot the film himself on a VHS camera and edited it shot by shot through a VCR. The story is the same, and the casting stays true to the original, but with small changes in the dialogue, some clever touches in the shot taking and the frequent use of bicycles instead of horses, the film becomes much more than an imitation piece. 

Wednesday evening was dedicated to music, and the programme began with an interesting presentation on Garhwali music videos by filmmaker and Indian Ocean vocalist, Himanshu Joshi. He spoke about how coming from a purist background, he had initial reservations about this highly commercialised industry, and how he overcame his biases and tried to understand the reasons for the stupendous success of the music videos. He showed clips from some videos and said that by taking up diverse themes of environment, politics, religion, and romance in a single album, the producers were reaching out to all sections of society.

This was followed by two music videos by activist filmmaker Surya Shankar Dash based in Bhubaneswar. Surya used to make advertisement films in Delhi and later worked for a news channel. Then he gave it all up to move to Orissa where he is now making self funded films and training farmers to make their own films. The first video Lament of Niyamraja was set to a song of the Dongaria Kondh adivasi community about their mountain Niyamgiri that had been sold to a mining company by the government. Replete with visuals of the natural landscape, animals and people, the video and the haunting music was a moving experience for the viewers. The second film was a short piece called Zaroori Khwaab, that made a direct appeal to the audience to stand up and join the adivasis in their fight to save their land, forests, water and livelihoods.

As a tribute to Meghnath and Biju Toppo, filmmakers based in Ranchi who have been making films in the region for more than a decade and a half, two of their films were shown. The first was Sona Gahi Pinjara, a short fiction film, the first of its kind in Kurukh, the language of the Oraon adivasis. Through the medium of songs, the film reveals the plight of people from tribal communities who are unable to join their families during the traditional festivities because the official set up does not recognize their festival as a holiday. The evening came to a close with Gadi Lohardaga Mail a lyrical documentary that transported the viewers to another world with its songs of longing and nostalgia, intertwined with the pathos of the peoples’ struggle for survival and the end of a century old passenger train between Ranchi and Lohardaga.

On the fourth day of the festival, we screened Tokskal, a wonderful film from Ladhak based on a traditional folk tale. Written and directed by Jigmet Omachik, and shot, edited and produced by Tashi Dawa, this historical costume drama is a simple tale of a man who always speaks the truth, and the dilemma he faces when he falls in love. The inherent strength of the theme, and the honesty in the storytelling left the audience mesmerized.

The festival came to an end on 12 August with the screening of two films by Manipuri directors. Dr. Raj Liberhan, Director, India Habitat Centre graced the occasion and expressed the hope that the Festival of Emerging Cinemas will be back next year with an equally engaging selection of films. The first film of the evening was a short fiction The Sun is still not Setting by a young filmmaker, Suvas Elangbam. It beautifully captured the rhythm of the lives of a young girl and her grandfather in rural Manipur as it slowly unfolded to its heart breaking finish. (Below: Still from 'The Sun is still not Setting')

As the closing film we had an experimental documentary Brief Companion in a Capital City by Dorendra Waribam. Through out the festival we had been watching films whose defining quality was that they presented the gaze of an ‘insider’. They were made by filmmakers who are living in the community they are speaking about. The last film was a reversal of that idea. It is about a person from the northeast who visits Delhi and looks at it through the eyes of an outsider. With his handycam he explores this big, bizarre city and the many ‘outsiders’ that inhabit it, recording their little narratives of confusion, joy and sorrow.

The Festival of Emerging Cinemas was an experiment and turned out to be an amazing process of discovery for both the curators and the audience as it opened up a new way of looking at films. The viewing of the whole range of films raised many pertinent questions about popular culture, target audiences, activist filmmaking, market pressures etc even as it offered people in Delhi an opportunity to connect with and understand people from different parts of the country through the medium of cinema.

Acknowledgements

All the participating filmmakers, India Habitat Centre, Dr. Aruna Vasudev, Dr. Raj Liberhan, Renu Oberoi, Programmes team and technical staff of IHC, Himanshu Joshi, Maulee Senapati, Paban Haobam, Meghnath, Prof. Vir Bharat Talwar, Sanjay Joshi, Tashi Dawa, Shabani Hassanwala, Uday Bhatia, Subhash Rawat, Reena Mohan, T.N. Uma Devi

Curated by Jai Chandiram and Anupama Srinivasan

August 2011