THE INDIAN DOCUMENTARY (4)

The sixties turned out to be an exciting decade. At last, the documentary idea had caught on. Its tremendous potential, range and effectiveness as a medium of communication was becoming apparent to the policy-makers and intellectuals alike. It is not without some significance that India's leading art magazine Marg devoted an entire issue to documentary films. So did the prestigious political monthly Seminar. Abroad, a new type of documentary film was taking shape. Aided by lightweight cameras and synchronous sound tape-recorders, filmmakers in France (Jean Rouch, Ruspoli) and the United States (Richard Leacock, Al Maysles, Pennebaker) had given their films (Yanki No!, Primary, Crisis, The Chair) a depth of detail and a sense of urgency unknown to cinema earlier. The filmmaker was no longer the promoter of ideas or ideals that Grierson had ordained him to be, his credo (the cinéma verité or direct cinema practitioner) was to bear witness, to observe a situation as faithfully as humanly possible, without his own prejudices intruding upon it.

The Indian filmmaker could not remain untouched by these stirrings. Commenting on films like Face to Face, I am Twenty, Report on Drought, India '67 and Explorer, the noted film critic Bikram Singh said that they reveal "a degree of sophistication which was rarely to be seen before the sixties.. there is today greater willingness to face facts and, occasionally, even to stick the neck out (and) say an oblique 'boo' to the establishment". Before I come to avant garde filmmakers like Sukhdev, Pati, Sastry and Chari, it is necessary to discuss the work of Fali Bilimoria, Clement Baptista, Shanti Chowdhury and some others, which had the necessary innovative edge and a healthy regard for craftsmanship. No one epitomises these qualities better than Fali Bilimoria.       

Fali Bilimoria started his film career with Paul Zils in the late forties and later became his partner. He was trained as a cameraman under Dr. P.V. Pathy, an early associate of Zils. Bilimoria was to later direct a large number of films including such well-known ones as A Village in Travancore, The Vanishing Tribe, The Call and Water, but the film that brought Bilimoria much critical acclaim (and a nomination for an Oscar in 1967) was The House that Ananda Built. A quiet film about a vaishya peasant family in Nadpur village, Orissa, it examines the farmer's traditional way of life and changing relationships with his sons who have migrated to different parts of the country and are living at varying levels of modernity. In the Indian context, it was a very interesting theme, but unfortunately the 20-minute format within which this was sought to be examined defeated its purpose. In the process it became a well researched, well written, long essay illustrated with portraits of the family and other inhabitants of the village.

The House that Ananda Built
Fali Billimoria

It's a pity, because Bilimoria had the necessary expertise and his writer K.S. Chari, a keen exploratory sense. Despite all this, it remains a landmark film. Bilimoria followed this up with two other films the Last Rajah - a film on the ruler of a small state who had to change his lifestyle with the dissolution of the princely system -  and another film on theAnglo-lndian community.

Clement Baptista had come to films after securing a diploma in Fine Arts and mural painting. He had also taught at J.J. School of Arts. During the War he joined the Army Film Unit as an art director. After the War, together with his friend and co-officer in the army, V.M. Vijaykar, he formed his company Hunnar Films. Clement Baptista made films on a vast variety of subjects but his natural inclination was for art and animation films. This came out strongly in Kailash at  Ellora, on the famous rock-hewn temples. Baptista's approach was uncommon in the sense that he used architectural designs to bring  out the fact that carving out a  temple of this size and dimension from solid rock was a unique accomplishment of man and his endeavour at artistic creation. A film in an entirely different mood and genre was Dubbawalla (Tiffin carrier). It examines the daily collection, transport and distribution of hot lunches to tens and thousands of Bombay's workers from suburban homes to metropolitan offices. The dubbawalla is a unique institution in  the life of Bombay's citizens. Baptista  covers not only the journey of the dubbawalla but also shows the housewives bargaining at vegetable markets. This unique enterprise is  run by totally illiterate people who  have an amazing capacity to remember which dabbah belongs to which person.

Shanti Chowdhury came to film making via civil engineering which he had studied in England. It is no wonder then, that his work was marked by a certain precision and a good deal of concern for detail. This was clearly evident in his film To Light a Candle about Dr. Welthy Fisher, the renowned adult educator who had set up the Literacy House in Lucknow in 1953. This was followed by Entertainers of Rajasthan  which concerned the itinerant minstrels and entertainers of the desert. These ranged from puppeteers to acrobats to singers, actors  and dancers. Chowdhury was able to capture not only the colour and spectacle of these traditional artistes but he closely observed with compassion their lives, their sorrows and frustrations.

Shanti Chowdhury made several films on Indian painters. Starting with Tagore's Paintings, a film designed as a grand tour of the Master's disquieting yet utterly fascinating private world. Without any guiding comments, Chowdhury used Tagore's own words which I thought was a very clever, and perhaps, a pure way. Another film was on the modern Bengali painter Paritosh Sen. Though he was clearly influenced by Clauzot's The Picasso Mystery, the film was not without its originality. For instance, when the painter attacks a canvas with an amazing, almost beastly energy in front of our very eyes, the process of creation begins-lines, sensitive colours, new shapes and fresh forms emerge. Something of the same quality was evident in a more finished form in his film on M.F. Husain, A Painter of Our Time.

Sukhdev, who had served a long period of apprenticeship with Paul Zils and later became his assistant, is generally regarded as one of India's best documentary filmmakers. He showed an early promise with films like And Miles to Go and After the Eclipse, both of which had a socio-political content. However, he came to the fore with an hour-long documentary India '67. This was followed by another monumental work Nine Months to Freedom on the emergence of Bangladesh. And Miles to Go, Sukhdev's first angry documentary showed us the inequalities of Indian society. While a lady applies perfume, a slum dweller is shown taking out lice from her hair. In a similar vein contrasts are juxtaposed at every level of urban living. Unfortunately while the visual impact, as in most of Sukhdev's films, was stunning, the film lacked depth and analysis. It created a sensation but did not set the mind thinking. After the Eclipse, much of which was shot inside a prison with Sukhdev himself playing an inmate, was a compassionate dramatisation of jail life. It is the essential humanity, even among murderers, that Sukhdev brought out with considerable success.

His earlier two films could be said to be a preparation for Sukhdev's most mature work India '67. The film was a highly cinematic perusal of the contrasts and contradictions that abound in Indian life. In the film the filmmaker takes us on a countrywide tour and provides a kaleidoscopic view of the new with the old, western ways encroaching upon tradition, technological advances and age-old methods. All this is familiar stuff but what gave the film its uniqueness were the keenly observed small details. I think Satyajit Ray was entirely right when he remarked: "I like India '67 but not for its broad and percussive contrasts of poverty and influence, beauty and squalor, modernity and primitivity - however well shot and cut they might be. I like it for its details - for the black beetle that crawls along the hot sand, for the street dog that pees on the parked bicycle, for the bead of perspiration that dangles on the nose tip of the begrimed musician".

Nonetheless, India '67 is a film of extraordinary visual beauty and unfailing compassion. It is a film charged with passion. With its rather loose structure and occasional self-indulgence (it is by no means a flawless work) but these are the excesses of a brilliant talent. That it aroused diverse and extreme reactions was a tribute to its maker who despised neutrality in art.

When the Bangladesh pogrom began, Sukhdev was one of the very few Indian filmmakers who was in ngladesh pogrom began, Sukhdev was one of the very few Indian filmmakers who was in the thick of the action at considerable physical risk. The result was Nine Months to Freedom, a work of compelling power. The Bangladesh story is placed in historical perspective from the emergence of Pakistan upto the return of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman to his people. The basic conflict that arose between the two wings of Pakistan - the language problem, the riots, the demands for freedom from exploitation and for self rule, the crackdown by the Pakistan Army, the exodus of refugees, the nine-month-long struggle, the genocide and the rapes and mass destruction - Sukhdev's camera shows it all. Here I must mention that the young Dacca filmmaker Zahir Raihan gave Sukhdev some of the grisly footage personally shot by him, of the atrocities, including a view of a corpse with its innards being ripped open by a dog. Later Raihan was killed by Pakistani forces .

One man had enlivened the documentary scene and some of this excitement spilled over even to 24 Peddar Road, the headquarters of Films Division in Bombay. There is no doubt that filmmakers like S.N.S. Sastry, T.A. Abraham, Chari, Prem Vaidya and Pramod Pati were greatly influenced by Sukhdev, not so much in style as in spirit.

Pramod Pati who died of cancer at a young age, was probably the most original talent working in the Films Division. He made a number of films on a variety of subjects including, This Our lndia, Ravi Shankar, Hamara Rashtragan, which were all competently made, but it was in his very short films lasting sometimes one or two minutes such as Klaxplosion, Perspectives, Trip, Violence and Explorer (seven minutes) that Pati came into his own. Here it is well to mention that Pati had his early training in animation filmmaking under the celebrated Jiri Trinka, the Czech master. With work ranging from folklore (Czech Legends, 1953) and national literature (The Good Soldier Schweik, 1954) to Shakespeare (A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1959) Hans Anderson and haunting visions of present and future, Trinka made the puppet film into a new and important genre. His example was of inestirnable importance to other filmmakers working in the same genre.

Pati's work evoked extreme reactions. Explorer which lasts just seven minutes but whose visual and aural impact is felt a long time after, is a probe into the young urban Indian mind. Pati contrasts and juxtaposes Tantric symbols, images of meditating sadhus collide with teenagers doing the twist, computers are cut with the chanting of prayers. But the camera always returns to the young people in labs, libraries, fields - all of them searching, seeking, exploring. The film had no narration. When it was shown in theatres the audience reaction was extreme. Used as they were to the didactic 'narrated' documentary, the film came as a shock. At a seminar in the Films Division after the film was shown, the noted film critic and filmmaker K.A. Abbas called it a waste of public money. K. Subrahmanyam, the veteran Tamil filmmaker, compared Pati to Norman MacLaren. James Beveridge was so impressed as to say that the film "as well done as one could find anywhere, in any country no matter what its resources".

That Pati was not given to gimmickry but had a genuine urge for experimentation was clear in a much shorter film Perspectives which lasted under a minute and had no commentary. It is virtually a oneshot film in which the camera follows a jet plane taking off and pans down to show a little girl and a wrinkled old woman sitting close together in front of a hut, saying the letters of the Hindi alphabet aloud together. The film was produced to mark International Adult Literacy Year and won Pati a well-deserved international award. Pati's early death was a tragic loss to experimental cinema.

For too long the Indian audience had been "informed and educated" through didactic narrated documerltaries, it was about time - and 20 years after Independence, the right time - that the Indian citizen would speak from the screen. Two films that started the trend were K.S. Chari/T.A. Abraham co-directed Face to Face and S.N.S. Sastry's I am Twenty. Face to Face showed a cross section of people - students, workers, taxi drivers, intellectuals and peasants (and the distinguished journalist Frank Moraes) - airing their opinions on democracy and India 20 years after Independence. These expressions of criticisms, frustrations or optimism are placed in the context of the sharp, distressing contrasts of life in contemporary India. This was probably the first film which gave a sense of feedback. Chari, who had started his career as a senior commentary writer in the Films Division, went on to make two more films, Transition and Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan.

S.N.S. Sastry, whowas a diploma holder in cinematography from the Bangalore Polytechnic, had joined Films Division as a cameraman and started directing films in 1956. Sastry had made a large number of films but it was with I am Twenty that he made his mark. I am Twenty was structured around interviews with young people who were born in 1947 when India attained her freedom. The film made a tremendous impact because the young people whom Sastry interviewed on camera came out with force and pungency. They looked credible and convincing and expressed their feelings with candour. Young men with uncertain future questioned bitterly:

"Is it freedom to starve and go naked?"

"Well I don't love my country... and even if I did, to whom should I speak of my love."

This note of dissonance, an element of doubt was something new to Indian documentary, at least the official documentary. The value of the film lay in the fact that it provided a basis for discussion. This is what a good documentary is all about.

Sastry later made several other notable films like And I Make Short Films, On the Move, Yes It's on, Burning Sun. Like Pati he too died tragically young. While driving his daughter to school he suffered a fatal heart attack.

The interview film initiated by Chari and Sastry was put to effective use in Report on Drought which was factual, terse, stark. A film that created something of a commotion was O.P. Arora's Actual Experience, on family planning. Arora who had earlier made films like Kulu Manali and Narmada revealed remarkable aptitude for interviewing people. In Actual Experience Arora's concern was to find out if the new methods like loop were favoured by women. Most women came out forcefully against the use of loop for various reasons. As expected, the film was held back from release. This was significant as the interview film had irritated the authorities and startled the smug.