The Filmmaker Activist

Anand Patwardhan is the best of the investigative, consciousness-raising, activist documentary filmmakers who are making a mark in India today. In fact, it is said, he helped fashion the very genre. The following interview with Patwardhan was taken by Mitu Varna.

What do you perceive as the predominant trends and themes in South Asian documentary cinema today?

Unfortunately I can´t speak for South Asian cinema as a whole as we have so little South-South cultural exchange that filmmaking and filmviewing neighbours are largely unaware of what is happening across the border. We normally only meet and see each other´s films on rare occasions when invited to a festival organised by first world countries like Japan or Germany or Australia. That is why documentary festivals like the Bombay, Dhaka and now Kathmandu are so welcome. I really hope that such festivals begin in Pakistan and Sri Lanka and other countries of the region as well since I have enjoyed and learnt a lot from the few exchanges that have taken place so far.

Which country in the region according to you has the most exciting documentaries on offer and why?

Speaking largely out of ignorance I would say India, for the only reason that it is the largest country; it is culturally and economically diverse and despite dictatorial episodes like the Emergency it has remained more or less democratic. The consequence is that while critical cinema has not been encouraged or nurtured it has at least been allowed to emerge.

 Have financial constraints, lack of distribution outlets and minimum profitability reduced documentary filmmaking to a marginal activity?

Undoubtedly financial constraints exist but these cannot be directly correlated to the emergence or non-emergence of meaningful cinema. Terrible films have been made from huge budgets and great films from minuscule ones. The reduced "profitability" of documentary filmmaking has ensured that many of those who gravitate towards it do so with a motivation other than money. In my own case, after more than 20 years of making films in 16mm, I have begun of necessity to make films in an amateur Hi-8 video format. Film, as any form of expression, is defined by its limits and so whatever these limits are, financial, technical or political, the challenge is to continue producing something of value.

Lack of distribution outlets, on the other hand, is a much more damaging constraint and forces the documentary filmmaker to either accept his or her fate in the margins or else move into the arena of political activism. Filmmakers who believe in the value of their work must take to the streets if need be in order that people see and discuss what they have made. They must see that their films have local language versions so that they are accessible to the audiences that the films are about. Distribution has to be by any means necessary. Otherwise, the time and money spent on production is surely unjustified, except perhaps as a means of personal therapy.

How do you market your films, and how do you get across to the larger audience?

From the very beginning, the films I made were related to and, in a sense, a part of the people´s movements that I filmed. So the distribution of these films was integrally related to the health of the movement, but on occasion it has continued beyond the scope of the movement itself. Waves of Revolution on the JP Movement in Bihar went underground during the Emergency and was used widely by advocates of democracy in India and abroad. Prisoners of Conscience on political prisoners in India was used by the newly emergent post-Emergency civil liberties movement to lobby for the release of Naxalite prisoners still languishing in jails. A Time to Rise is still used by the Canadian Farmworkers Union, Bombay Our City by the movement for the Right to Shelter, the trilogy on religion and communalism by those who are fighting for a secular and democratic India, and A Narmada Diary by those who believe in sustainable development.

While the use of these films by the movements they describe should have been an obvious and natural phenomenon, unfortunately this did not happen automatically, and required serious effort on our part. Very often movements have severe financial and manpower constraints and their plea to us is: "You are the experts in this field. You take care of showing the films to the people." So over the years I´ve got into this activity. Some years ago we created the Samvaad Trust, buying 16mm projectors, recently acquiring a video projector as well, learning about sound systems, renting power generators when necessary, travelling all over the country doing screenings and having discussions.

Simultaneously, as film prints grew to be too expensive to distribute we started to sell video copies of the films by mail order and by keeping them at certain progressive bookstores, and by word of mouth. Several thousand copies of these films are in circulation all over India, not counting the pirate tapes of which we know that thousands exist (many activists not feeling the necessity of buying an official copy).

As for reaching really large audiences, nothing can compete with television. So, along with the grassroots screenings and video sales, we have fought and won three court cases so far to get my films, Bombay Our City, In Memory of Friends and Ram Ke Naam shown on Indian (Doordarshan) TV´s national network. In the UK until Channel 4 took an abrupt turn towards the commercial, several of my films were shown, albeit at a late night slot. As for income generation, some of the films have won cash prizes at film festivals, some royalties from previous work continue to trickle in, and in the US many of these films circulate in the universities.

You did go to court to get Ram Ke Naam shown on Doordarshan, but they telecast it without prior information to the viewers.

Actually, because of the experience I had with Bombay Our City, which was shown at midnight following a court order to telecast it, we subsequently argued in court that the films must be screened at prime time in order that they reach the largest viewership. Following the court order to this effect, both In Memory of Friends and Raam Ke Naam were shown at prime time, just before and after the national news. It is true that Doordarshan did not publicise the screening but sections of the press wrote about the controversy. Indeed the right-wing Hindutva forces were so incensed by the telecast that they lodged a protest in Parliament. This was also widely reported. Ratings later published showed that 18 percent of the viewership had watched Ram Ke Naam, which is a huge number in a population as large as India´s. For almost the first time I felt that one of my films had made a real political impact.

Do you think satellite TV will have a beneficial effect in this regard?

To hope that privatised, multinational and consumer-controlled TV will bring relief to thinking and concerned individuals or to a public force-fed on inanity is like hoping for Murdoch to become Guevara or Ambani to become Gandhi. Surely the writing is already on the wall, or more appropriately, on your TV set.

At least while we had a state-run television I could argue in court that my constitutional right to freedom of expression was being violated as was the public´s right to information. Now I will be politely informed that "market forces" have determined that there is no slot for my films.

By the way, not only does the same conservative, smooth talking right-wing mentality that existed in Doordarshan persist in the world of private TV, the same personnel also do. The same Mr Basu who blocked my films on DD now sits at the head of Star TV and the same Mr B. Ghosh likewise.

Do you agree with the view that your Prisoners of Conscience and Utpalendu Chakraborty´s Mukti Chai set off a whole new movement in documentary filmmaking in India? Since these films, left-of-centre, anti-establishment, consciousness-raising films seem to have become the mainstay of most independent documentary filmmakers?

Our films were the product of our times. I think that the trend in cinema in India has little to do with individual films and more to do with felt needs.

Your films are highly political anti-establishment indictments. Do you see your art as a means of making a political statement?

Obviously, but I see Amitabh Bachhan and Nana Patekar films as also making political statements. It´s just that their politics are opposed to mine. It´s curious though that the right-wing agenda even when it openly advocates fascism is seen as legitimate entertainment while the mildest advocacy of the democratic principle is immediately branded as ´political´.

Could you elaborate on the process of creation for you?

Being born lazy, it is only when something strikes me as horrendous or as breathtakingly beautiful that I start putting pen to paper or eye to lens. So the strong point of view is both cause and effect. Yet, I don´t want to close myself from reality or to set out to create my own reality but instead prefer to be shaped by it. So I write no script at the initial stage and the films take shape at the editing table over a long period of time.

What films are you currently working on?

Curiously, at a time when I have absolutely no source of funding I have fallen into making four films – all being shot on Hi-8 video. The camera I own and tapes are relatively cheap but finding the means to edit all this is a nightmare. Ideally, I would like to acquire a low-end Avid type of home computer-based system. Then things will become viable. The films are on: 1. beauty and the multinationals, 2. fisherpeople, deep sea trawlers and aquaculture, 3. Enron and the privatisation of power, and 4. the life and death of Vilas Ghogre, a friend and dalit singer and poet who hanged himself in protest against the police killing of 10 dalits in Ghatkopar recently.