Making of the Nation and Political Documentaries
Thanks to the centenary celebration of cinema, everybody knows that the Lumier brothers show was held in India within a year of its world premier in 1895, that the first Indian feature film Raja Harishchandra was made in 1913. But do we know that documentary filmmaking developed in India almost simultaneously with the Europe, that our visual memory of politics got shaped forever by the European jingoism of the ’40s?
In 1939 the Second World War broke. An era of ideological upheaval that was: radical nationalism, capitalist imperialism, totalitarian states of socialism, ultra-xenophobia, independence for European colonies in Asia and of course, fascism. The documentary filmmaking never had it better (notwithstanding the films around first world war). Generous state patronage came, new technology was developed, young professionals were encouraged - all to propagate the cause of war through the hair-raising war footage. Leni Reifinstahl was discovered by publicity office of Hitler - Arriflex camera was developed according to her requirement and 60 cinematographers (in 1936) were made available to her to shoot Olympics. She shot some of the most effective military footage: the mother of political documentary genre. To counter her work, ideology and her footage were the Russians and other East European filmmakers. But the grammar book was already written. Political documentary means- fearless men in files cut to their feet conquering/freeing the earth for the mother/fatherland, top angle of thousands of files rendering geometrical patterns cut to track shot of erect shoulders cut to a beautiful child waving at them, at their courage and martyrdom cut to close shot of rifles on the shoulder of the men passing the frame, threatening to destroy anybody or anything which dares to touch the smile of that child cut to rough terrain of the battle field and so on and so forth.
During the war, which also coincided with India’s freedom struggle, lot of British war personnel, including scientists, medical professionals etc. were drawn from the subject country of India. But the subjects could not be forever kept in dark about the cause of the war. In 1943 the British Raj set up two establishments: The Information Films of India and the India News Parade with the sole objective of propagating the cause of the war. At the end of the war, in April 1946, the central legislative council was constituted as a precursor of exchanging power to the Indian Government. The council demanded to close down the two production houses as they were mainly tools of British interest. But by then enough skilled men were trained in the style of world war documentary making of ’40s.
In 1947, the new government of the independent India had a tough task in hand. One was to make the citizens aware of the actual expanse of their new country, the variety of its people. And the other was to make them familiar to the structure and functioning of a democratic country, introducing them even to the basics of the system of governance. Prime minister Nehru realised the need for a mass media and the role of documentary filmmaking in the making of his new nation, especially when faced with very low level of literacy. He took personal interest in pulling up the personnel and resources left by the abovementioned British enterprises. Personnel trained in the Indian-British enterprises during the Second World War and in Army Public Relations Film Unit were traced down and employed to start Films Divisions of India in 1948.
The FD crews, true to their war time training, started venturing into the hazardous border terrain of India, shooting the exotic ‘Indians’ from unheard of lands. The early documentaries were all about a ‘happy’ country, a ‘happy’ family with many odd but cute creatures within it, mostly shot within the grammar of war footage, guided by one-line briefings. The other part of the FD productions covered the government functions, making the faces and forms of the state agencies known to the citizens. These films were compulsorily screened before every feature film in every film house. It was a state mandate. The citizens of the independent India grew up associating documentaries as some kind forced moral classes before consuming the unadulterated fun of feature narratives.
In the `70s Indira Gandhi, the then prime minister emerged as a junior candidate for the eminent position of a fascist ruler. Those were the days of USSR and ChinaRepublic, Cuba and Nicaragua making history, Eastern Europe being looked up to as dream for many poorer countries and the communist party of India consolidating its base in the industrial belts. Indira Gandhi declared emergency, a constitutional suspension of all democratic rights of citizens, in the name of internal security. Students, trade unionists, intellectuals, artists were all harassed and silenced and many were imprisoned. History recorded an extremely high number of deaths and killing of political activists in Indian jails. Many activists and political groups went underground. And the independent filmmaking, political-underground filmmaking made its debut. For the first time instead of exotic people, hungry and tortured humans came up as protagonists; instead of ritualistic song and dance, the minority people of the lands beyond the central India voiced their anger, fear and frustration common to minorities in any totalitarian country; instead of plastic gloss of national pride, the basic formation of the modern state was questioned. Indian documentary films came of age. But still the language and form was largely dependant on the war propaganda style. The real of the cinema varite, the god’s voice of the commentary, the agenda driven representation of people were still the basic ingredients.
There was another problem. As far as the private screening was concerned, the opportunities were rare and far between. Besides, the ordinary people, after being exposed to compulsory viewing of inane documentaries of FD, got allergic to the word documentary. Hence the documentaries of 70’s and 80’s were viewed only by a privileged/elite/politicised audience. Some filmmakers, though, traveled around the country with a film projector and cans of films on their shoulders. But every filmmaker could not be that militant and thus got lost in the oblivion. By `80s film society movement became very popular in India. But even their members strongly resented documentary films for being lesser in aesthetics and didactic and moralistic. But the damage was done. The general documentary filmmaking lacked the enthusiasm to think about form and style of representation as part of the politics. The aesthetics and the gaze of war films still prevailed.
Then came the waves of gender consciousness and women’s movement in ‘80s. The movement, though initially viewed as antagonistic, creatively opened up many social places. It questioned, taught its activists to re-examine every text, every form and every structure. It helped making the borders of all kinds more fluid, all identities less rigid, all expressions more multi-cultural and thus more layered. It cannot be an accident that in the 80’s came a large no. of women into documentary filmmaking. All of them were not associated with the movement, some were even antagonistic towards feminism- but they all brought a different style to documentary films, rather broke the old style of god’s voiced, definite, correct, linear documentaries. These filmmakers, both women and men, not necessarily were better than their predecessors, but definitely were different and distinct. Their style was more interactive, more transparent and definitely less polemic.
In ‘90s two more twists came to be. One was the rapid expansion of satellite culture that created a need for different kinds of programmes, even if only to maintain a variety in the narrative style. Political programmes like current affairs programmes, talk shows, public debates and various other forms of interfaces started jostling with the soap operas for audience attention. Info-tainment: the war footage, the real of cinema-varite, the rugged terrain, the ethnic non-mainlanders, the quick-wit anchors, all became as adored as the stars in soaps. The ‘truth’ had been hijacked, so were the faces of the ‘real people’ and the sting of the `real issues’. No, it is not campaign or propaganda, which traditionally documentaries are always accused of. It is almost like a wrestling arena, where the audience gets all the thrill of the Big Fight (pun intended) without having the responsibility of taking side or getting wounded, if only morally.
The second twist came in the form of the patronage from international funding agencies. The documentary productions and the number of professionals who live entirely on documentary filmmaking (believe it or not) have increased dramatically in last ten years. Popularly known as NGO filmmaking these documentaries are also, at least formally, made about people, on real issues and from the horses’ mouth. Well, unlike the channelwalas they are expressive about their position in the discourse. But the funding has its own ground rule, agencies have their own agendas. The funding is not coming for the development of documentary filmmaking, but for using documentary genre for the broader purpose of its producers, as campaign for their programmes. Hence we are back again to the didactic-predetermined destiny of political documentary. Only this time even the polemic is absent and the politics is reduced to some development programmes. No war styled footage anymore, as the funding agencies and FCRA holder NGOs cannot risk their relationship with the states. Rather the look of the rushes would be closer to the non-linear, fluid and interactive school of `80s new era, though the interaction would be restricted to the beneficiaries of the programmes. By nature these films are closer to the genre of corporate films and by form to the women’s issue films of `80s.
Well, these categories are extremely broad and essentially generic. There have been some exceptions, some brilliant transgressions in each of these eras- but that only proves the basic rule. And thus the politics of documentary and the history of political documentary got entangled in a complicated mesh where the choice of forms have constantly influenced the ethics of the content/issue and the modes of productions have decided the choice of form, however old fashioned the argument may sound!