Someone said, "These shoshun (Hindi for exploitation) films pompously uphold that documentary films are the only kind of serious activism in cinema". Often the audiences of documentary films have been known to get alienated or even fall asleep because many documentaries bombard the viewer with the filmmaker's point of view. Too often the filmmaker is as blinkered in his/her beliefs as the institution s/he protests against.
But breakthrough.tv's selection of documentaries brushed away all such biases with piece after piece of delightful storytelling. Initiated in Argentina in 2002, this was the Tri Continental Film Festival's third year in India and was curated by breakthrough.tv, an international human rights organisation committed to campaigning for issues ranging from immigrant rights, HIV-AIDS, women's rights, border conflicts, gay rights, to the issues of the subaltern; using multimedia educational material, performance, art, film and video and workshops to create a platform for pondering and communicating.
Held at the National Center for the Performing Arts (NCPA), Mumbai, each day of the three-day festival saw a healthy turnout. Most of the films, while presenting some of the most gruesome chapters in political and social strife across Africa, America and Asia, maintained calmness in narration.
Shake Hands With the Devil: The Journey of Romeo Dallaire is about the bloodiest 100 days in 1994 in Rwanda when the extremist Hutus massacred over 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. This documentary is an account of Canadian Lt. General Roméo Dallaire's return to Rwanda 10 years after the genocide. While the filmmaker Peter Raymont is Canadian, the film is in no way a white man's criticism of savagery in the third world. The film, in fact, focuses on the cruel hypocrisy of the western superpowers that control the UN and its elitist Security Council.
Two remarkable films, Between Midnight and the Rooster's Crow and Bushman's Secret, expose the mega-dollar worth of exploitation of villages and tribes at the hands of trans-national companies. Between Midnight and the Rooster's Crow is a film that reminded of 1000 Days and a Dream by P Baburaj and C Saratchandran, which documents the anti-Coca-Cola struggle in Plachimada, Kerala. Like the villagers of Plachimada, the Ecuadorians oppose the setting up of oil pipelines by Canadian oil giant EnCana, that leads to contamination and poisoning of water sources and the environment in the Amazon. The young and intrepid filmmaker, Nadja Drost, herself a Canadian, delves into the corruption, apathy and highhandedness of the government and corporate officials, and even confronts EnCana's CEO at a stockholders' meeting. She interviews people who have developed skin cancer, some of them children, and exposes the human rights violations in the region, talking to those who have been forcefully relocated, beaten, imprisoned, shot at and intimidated for their protests against Encana.
Bushman's Secret, a gentler voice though, is in no way less impactful. The camera romances the serene stretches of the Kalahari, and intimately acquaints the audience with the endearing personalities of Jan Van Der Westhuizen, a Khomani San traditional healer, and a wrinkled old lady, a firebrand activist and among the last remaining of her tribe who speaks the bushman language.
The film centres on the cactus Hoodia, a plant coveted by the western world for its sliming value. Rehad Desai gently exposes the cruel irony surrounding this plant. The San eat this plant when traversing the vast stretches of the desert, to stay alive… but the western consumers eat it as a pill to slim down their fat. Now thanks to the multi billion-dollar market, the Hoodia has become scarce in the Kalahari. The film reveals how Anglo-Dutch giant Unilever hoodwinks the Khomani San into losing their Intellectual Property Right over the medicinal plant… so relevant to Indian viewers who have seen trans-national giants attempt to gain patents over turmeric, neem and basmati in the recent past.
Among the comparatively mediocre films were Leila Khalid: Hijacker and the much-hyped John and Jane,both of which were disappointing to me as a viewer. Filmmaker Lina Makboul, a Palestinian, born and brought up in Sweden, has the delicious opportunity to meet Leila Khalid, who at 24 became the world's first woman hijacker of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). We learn briefly of the circumstances that led Leila to join the PFLP, narrated by the now 60-year-old Khalid living an ordinary life in Jordan with her family. But then the filmmaker's own nagging impressions of the subject start slackening the film. She wants to ask Leila if she realises that she has given the Palestinians a bad name (though Leila is sharp to point out that she never killed an innocent). The film almost reduces itself to a romantic fascination and indecision in the filmmaker's mind. She is tentative and undecided in front of the camera and the questions she asks the proud and fierce Leila are lame and boring.
John and Jane, on the other hand, do not live up to the curatorial promise of a "futuristic and tropical science fiction"…. It is a satirical glimpse into the lives of six call centre 'workers' and their aspirations, disillusionments and identity crises. Some have joined call centres lured by star spangled banner and hopes to become rich and suave. Others simply needed a place to switch off their minds, and to some it was a question of survival… but recurrent in the film is the 'Wannabe American' virus that is systematically injected into the workers through shocking class sessions on the enviable standards of living of the common American citizen. What the film lacked, I think, was the editing prowess. What was fascinating about the film, however, were the exterior night shots, which did a great deal of the story telling.
First Lesson in Peace explores the effects of a political divide on Jewish and Palestinian children. Shalom Kitaf Allef documents his daughters and their experience in a progressive bilingual Hebrew and Arabic school.
The Worst Job in the World takes a look at the lives of the workers who clean human excreta from dry latrines, with their bare hands. This job has traditionally been held by the Dalits, for whom there is no respite from it. An activist from the same community decides that the only way to make people sit up and take notice of this heinous practice is to go about demolishing the latrines.
On the other hand, Paromita Vohra's Q2P is an interesting take on the city's hollow understanding of progress. The scarcity of public toilets, especially for women is exposed as a failure in urban planning. There is an interesting interview with the caretaker of the toilet museum set up by Sulabh Sauchalay.
Venezuela Rising and Say Amen! were films made on a lighter note. Venezuela Rising is an unabashedly pro Hugo Chavez documentary on the 4 days before, during and after a public referendum, which would decide whether the Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez would continue in office or step down. It is a high spirited and vibrant film with an attitude, about Chavez's rise to power from an army soldier, to a rebel to president. It is about he campaigners who worked day and night to retain their knight in shining armour in office. We see the charming Chavez win over his supporters and their ecstasy at his/their victory. The film incorrigibly brushes aside the voice of the opposition and Chavez's critics among the citizens.
Say Amen! is a film that has the filmmaker turn camera on himself. A young member of an orthodox Jewish family that obsesses about getting him married to 'a nice Jewish girl', filmmaker David Deri is, in fact, a gay and is proud of it. His camera follows the difficult days, interspersed with humorous moments, when his large Jewish family comes to terms with his emergence from the closet.
The other queer film, and to me, among the most impressive selection in the festival, was Between The Lines - India's Third Gender. This film by Thomas Wartmann follows Anita Khemka, a Delhi-based photographer as she explores and discovers the Hijda community of Mumbai. This film manages to look at different aspects of the community through a smoothly winding narrative; the dichotomy of the hijda's existence in society. Even today they are called to important ceremonies like a baby's christening, where a hijda's blessings are considered indispensable. And yet the same hijda will go out begging or lift up her skirt and intimidate those who refuse to give alms. And by night s/he could be a prostitute. Khemka leads us to the Kuttandavar-Aravan festival in Koovagam where thousands of hijdas gather to marry men, and enact their own widowing the next morning. This is a crucial part in the films as it so plainly tells of a tradition that accepts and legitimises what modern law calls deviant and punishable behaviour.
The festival came to a close with the retrospective screening of the film Hearts and Minds by Peter Davis. This is a relentless documentation of America's role in Vietnam, and the sadistic machismo of the marines who killed and raped for sport. While the 112 minutes of depiction of cruelty did get overwhelming one could not deny the expose was complete when those very soldiers who bragged of their amusement at blowing a 'gook's' brain (slang term for a Vietnamese person), later, with a lost limb, realised what a sham it all was.
Interspersed among the screenings were breakthrough.tv's own media campaigns on HIV-AIDS, and the ostracising of a woman whose husband has contracted the disease.
That documentary films can be made so imaginatively and varyingly was a fact done full justice to with the festival selections. Intensive as they were, one doesn't come away thinking it's the end of the world.
TRI Continental Film Festival
February 2 – 4
NCPA, Mumbai |
