Gender and the Documentary Film: Capturing a Sensed Reality

Paromita Vohra

An odd lady who haunted film festivals led Paromita Vohra to look more closely at the evolution of the Indian documentary film and to ask an apparently frivolous question: Why do so many male documentary filmmakers grow a beard? Between the anecdote and the question lies an unwritten story—of new artistic forms that have broken away from the agit-prop template. Vohra says that these new films, many of them by women, consist of layered individual narratives that explore meaning through what is said between the lines. A gendered awareness and questions about truth and reality have led to myriad explorations of form that have reinvigorated documentary film culture in India. 17

kamlabai Gokhale acting in a play. She and her mother Durgabai kamat, who acted in Dadasaheb Phalke’s mohini Bhasmasur (1914), are acknowledged as the first ladies of the Indian screen. Photograph courtesy Lalji Gokhale’s private collection. ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 6, Number 2

t was February 1992 and the was and they shrugged. I never went second edition of the Bombay to see the film. I(now Mumbai) International Film Festival of Documentaries, Nevertheless I kept bumping into this Animations and Shorts (BIFF, now woman over the many years that MIFF) was underway at the National followed, mostly at film events. Centre for the Performing Arts. I had Almost always she would tell me, “You been working as an assistant to the know, I have made a brilliant film. well-known filmmaker Anand And I made it all that time ago, in the Patwardhan for eighteen months. It 1970s.” Each time I would respond was a job with a view. As a pioneering with awkward politeness and flee. It figure of Indian independent even became something of a jokey documentary, Patwardhan was anecdote for me. God alone knew someone who independent what this film was about, because no documentarians of all ages contacted one I knew had heard of it. or visited. For a young person, it was an exceptional way to be directly And that was the operative phrase: ‘no 18 plugged into ‘the scene’: what was one I knew’. No formal written history going on, who was making what, and of the Indian documentary film what filmmakers were arguing about. I existed. You haphazardly absorbed a would eagerly go to every screening, sort of oral history of remembered devour every videotape I could find. It films and ongoing occurrences just by is fair to say that for a twenty-two- being ‘in the scene’. year-old I was uncommonly aware of the current documentary scene. In 2004 Shai Heredia curated the second edition of her film festival That year, at the festival, a woman Experimenta. Featured in it was with a wild shock of hair came up to Chhatrabhang by Nina Shivdasani me and gave me a flyer. She said, Rovshen and I thought, “Oh good “Come and see my film, I’ve made a grief! Let me go see what this is all brilliant film long ago, it is showing at about.” the festival.” Taken aback at how someone could unabashedly sing her All I can say is that Nina Shivdasani own praises, I stammered acceptance was right. She had indeed made a and fled. Her name was Nina striking film and she had made it “all Shivdasani. I asked someone who she that time ago”, in 1975. Gender and the Documentary Film – Paromita Vohra

Chhatrabhang is a narrative based on spontaneity would take over. a true story, set in a village with This was very interesting…a separate wells for lower and upper true-life incident combined with castes. One hot, arid summer, the as much of the reality of that lower-caste well runs dry. Despite incident along with a certain their trepidation, the lower-caste amount of fiction to supplement communities are so driven to anger where it needed it. So this and despair that they storm the complex play of real and fiction upper-caste well and draw water is what turned it into a really from it. It is a moment of great strong work. I went on a research triumph. But the higher castes in trip, took photographs, did a lot collusion with the police extract a of taping and then wrote a script violent retribution, and whole outline with minimal dialogue families are wiped out in the and narration—all the rest is massacre. free-form, dehati language which 1 the villagers spoke themselves. The film is shot in a village similar to the one on which it is based, with This is the most notable thing about 19 its residents as the actors. Here is an the film: the drama hovers in a strange excerpt from an interview Shai space where you strongly feel it’s a Heredia did with Nina Shivdasani documentary and yet you know it is during Experimenta 2004, which not ‘real’. An almost parallel sense of talks about the methods she used in fiction and non-fiction co-exist and the film: inter-play, an effect achieved with artistic intent—through dramatic shot Heredia: So were the villagers compositions and precise rhythm, drawing from their own real which produce a blurred space where experiences in a way? past and present, fiction and reality together arrive at a certain truth. One Shivdasani: Yes. They knew their might say it is not so much testimony own truth. Most of what they as evidence of experience. were saying was in their minds already. I would just give them a I had found the most incredible end to gist or a line or the idea and then my jokey anecdote. Over fifteen years their own improvisation and I would repeatedly meet a strange lady ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 6, Number 2

and she’d tell me how she’d made a such as freedom fighter Lala Lajpat brilliant film long ago. And guess Rai’s funeral and the devastating what? She had! The film shared the Quetta earthquake of 1935, and these FIPRESCI prize at the Berlin were exhibited through the same International Film Festival 1976. In channels that fiction films were. From the Q&A session at Experimenta 1940, when the Film Advisory Board 2004, Shivdasani said that when she was established, the colonial ran into censor trouble, she wangled a government took complete control of meeting with (then Prime Minister) raw stock distribution and began Indira Gandhi and told her that it was producing war propaganda films. Films impossible for her film to be censored Division (FD) was established post because the Berlin festival authorities Independence, in 1948. Its mandate forbade changes in any film they had was to transmit the idea of India to the given a prize to. How this was people and make them aware of how believed is anyone’s guess, but it the government was carrying out its worked. She had her censor certificate, Five-Year Plans. Peace propaganda albeit through strategy, not films, you could call them. 20 confrontation with the State. Although ‘Films Division’ is often used The anecdote may be over but it as shorthand for ‘tedious and boring’, opens up many questions: Why is FD did make some interesting films Nina Shivdasani not famous? Why until the late 1960s, most famously was no one working in the 1970s and under the stewardship of chief producer 1980s familiar with her name or her Jehangir Bhownagary; some of the film? Why was she completely missing leading lights were Sukhdev, S.N.S. from the history of the Indian Sastry, Pramod Pati and K.S. Chari. independent documentary? When the Emergency was imposed by the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi A Sensed History in June 1975, censorship robbed FD films of much of their experimentation. A formal history of the Indian It was a time of tremendous political documentary film would go something injustice and social uprising against the like this: In British-ruled India in the State. A series of films linked to people’s 1930s, a few companies produced non- movements began to be made in the fiction accounts of important events independent space. Gender and the Documentary Film – Paromita Vohra

This point marks the end of the told, isn’t it—inside the ‘main’ edifice of formal history—a good example being history, a women’s room? documentary filmmaker B.D. Garga’s excellent book From Raj to Swaraj: There is no account of female The Non-Fiction Film in India directors in non-fiction film until the (Penguin Books, 2007)—but later 1970s. In 1974 Vijaya Mulay made an documentary practice was little animation film Ek, Anek aur Ekta recorded or observed except in the about unity in diversity, for the more informal space of dialogue at Government of India’s Centre of documentary screenings or occasional Educational Technology (CET). The conferences. It is commonly accepted film, and the song it features, “Suraj ek, that the pioneering films of the chanda ek”, are now nostalgically much independent movement are Anand shared on YouTube. Mulay went on to 2 Patwardhan’s Waves of Revolution direct several films for CET as well as 3 (1975) and Prisoners of Conscience FD and some of them won National (1978). They display a passionate Awards, but frankly, none of them are commitment to resisting political remembered in the way Ek, Anek aur injustice and are strongly centred on Ekta is. Mulay, fondly called Akka by 21 the idea of the testimony—of both the many, has been a significant part of filmmaker and the filmed, perhaps. State initiatives around media and They are direct, with no artistic education and has represented the digression, and in the agit-prop mode. idea of the Indian documentary at They are the base from which film festivals abroad. Her book From Patwardhan developed his unique Rajas and Yogis to Gandhi and Beyond: style of the political essay-cum- Images of India in International Films in mobilisational film. Others too began the Twentieth Century (Seagull Books, making films related to people’s 2008) details how Indian culture is movements: for example Voices from represented in international cinema. Baliapal (Ranjan Palit and Vasudha But she has been more an institutional Joshi, 1989), Aar Koto Din (Shashi figure than a filmmaker. Anand, 1989) and Something Like a War (Deepa Dhanraj, 1991). Now we have this odd conundrum. Two women make their first film Was there a women’s history inside this around the same time (1974-75): one, history? Because that’s how it’s usually an indictment of the caste system ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 6, Number 2

made with artistic power; the other, an documentary being creatively shot animation film for children, reality and primarily a tool to convey exemplifying the Constitutional ideal democracy to the masses, and his of equality and unity, which is nice discomfort with favouring the enough but not extraordinary in ideas individual over the collective—these or execution. were central to the Indian independent documentary experience. Why does one woman make it to the sensed history and not the other? During my initial research for a project on the evolution of the Indian But let’s not take up the women’s-room documentary film, for which I got a approach. Let’s put it another way. grant from India Foundation for the Arts in 2009-10, I was struck by how Two people make independent films many people had arrived at in 1975: Shivdasani, a powerful documentary not through a desire to exploration of caste inequality and make films but through an violence, and Patwardhan, a involvement with organised political 22 cinematically naïve but passionate and work and discussion. The reigning committed record of a mass notion was that since films were made movement. Why is the latter so for ‘the people’, to show the social prominent, and the other, a strange conditions that led to their oppression lady I run into at events who is and help bring about systemic and compelled to tell me time and again social change, they would not focus on that she made a brilliant film, perhaps individual narratives. The filmmaker’s because no one else will? task was to give voice to the truth revealed by this ‘unvarnished’ The answer may or may not rest in sociological reality, a truth that was gender. We will come back to it shortly. marginalised in mainstream and government-sponsored media. Nothing but the Truth Deepa Dhanraj, a filmmaker from I have discussed John Grierson’s Hyderabad who had been radicalised influence on the Indian documentary by her experience of the Emergency, in an essay co-written with Dr Arvind had been working with a feminist 4 Rajagopal. Grierson’s idea of the group, Yugantar. I interviewed her in Gender and the Documentary Film – Paromita Vohra

2010 and she described how they been that we picked women as functioned: protagonists, that we wanted some of their personal I remember coming to stories....And you have to meetings...in those days, and it understand that it was very would start at twelve and [we collaborative, so you can’t go would] leave at ten. We were— against the politics of other what?—like twenty-four, twenty- people in the group. You have to five, many of us were single. You have consensual decisions....It had the kind of mental space in wasn’t just a film we were doing your life to get obsessed with and moving on, you were living these...things. It was a completely this stuff, you know...in Nipani, different kind of way of entering we went and stayed in that slum, politics. And at that moment was in one room over there to shoot. when I felt, okay, why not make And it was actually the women films? [We felt] that there are who got us the access to make exciting things that women’s that film. They showed us. Take groups are doing in various parts a shot of this, now show this, 23 of the country and how do you this person suffers this....It’s share this...how do you convey the enough if women speak, because power of what they were doing they really had not spoken. You’d and can you convey it with...our never heard stories like this. That newfound feminist theory which just may seem naïve...but I was in its infancy? Like we wanted remember at that time thinking to do a film on tobacco workers in that it’s such an amazing thing. Nipani. You could do it as a labour politics film, around wages The explosive power of these early and conditions of work etc. but records remains meaningful even the idea was to say, what does it today. Dhanraj’s Something Like A mean? War, on government family-planning policies and what it meant for women What is the feminist to be ‘targets’ and to lose autonomy understanding? I couldn’t tell over their own bodies, is a feminist you. But it was there, like a sort classic with good reason. It was a film of inchoate thing, it may have made, as Dhanraj said to me, “in a ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 6, Number 2

white-hot rage”. The relentless initiated the Video SEWA experiment uncovering of appalling facts and the in 1984. SEWA is an Ahmedabad- ironic juxtapositions of quotes from based trade union of women working the authorities about the “war against in the unorganised sector. As part of population” coalesced into a tight and its media project, the women used resonant work. relatively cheap and portable U-matic video equipment to make films about Meanwhile, there was an interesting issues important to them, in their development within the feminist own, unmediated voice. context in the 1980s. Several film collectives emerged, the most noted An interesting iteration of this was the being Mediastorm, formed in 1986 by community video work by the women six women—Shohini Ghosh, Sabeena of the Deccan Development Society Gadihoke, Shikha Jhingan, Ranjini (DDS) in Andhra Pradesh, where Mazumdar, Sabina Kidwai and Charu rural Dalit women began shooting Gargi—who had graduated from the activist films around their own Mass Communication Research Centre concerns as labourers and farmers. 24 at Jamia Millia Islamia. They made In this process they arrived at an several films on the important political intriguing critical taxonomy of shot issues of the time. Not to put too fine a types. For example: Patel (landlord) point on it, many more women than shot = Low-angle shot (which makes men got into collective filmmaking, the subject look like a towering though there were exceptions like the figure); Gayadolla (bonded labourer) Drishti Media Collective started in shot = Top-angle shot (which dwarfs a 1993 by Shabnam Virmani and K.S. person); Sangham (the collective) shot Stalin in Ahmedabad. = Eye-level shot.

With the advent of video, community Cast in a Template video projects mushroomed. ‘Media access’ became the buzzword; the idea An initiative that had evolved from a that putting a camera in the hands of powerful urge to express, explore, ‘the people’ would give them the tools understand and mirror a set of to articulate their concerns gained experiences turned into a template for currency after the Self-Employed the political documentary. The ‘issue’ Women’s Association (SEWA) became the film’s guiding force. There Gender and the Documentary Film – Paromita Vohra

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Women with tags on their foreheads waiting to be sterilised at a camp in maharashtra where operations are conducted assembly-line style. From Deepa Dhanraj's 1991 film Something Like a War. Still by Navroze Contractor. ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 6, Number 2

was an almost conscious attempt to not merely in being able to speak. And dissociate what was considered while technology was given to the ‘political’ from the filmmaker’s people it was often not accompanied individual sensibility or artistic by education in the film language that engagement with a political question. the elites were conversant with. Among these ‘issue-based’ films, a large number were on ‘women’s issues’. There were some who criticised or Owing their allegiance to the idea of critiqued the turn that documentary the women’s collective, they recorded was taking. Partha Chatterjee, in an the women’s oral testimonies and essay on Indian documentaries in captured their feistiness, but not Cinemaya, dismissed activist films as through new narrative forms or strong signalling the death of Form, praising individual styles. The term instead the documentary work of ‘documentary’ came to mean an fiction filmmakers such as Satyajit amalgam of the ‘educational’ thrust of Ray, Shyam Benegal and Kumar 5 the government, the ‘uplifting the Shahani. His opinion is debatable. marginalised’ slogan of the political The best activist films were not 26 elite and the ‘giving voice to the lacking in form, even if their makers voiceless’ endeavour of activists. chose not to discuss form; some of their early work, in fact, evoked a Despite its exciting beginnings, vibrant sense of showing you the community video projects often world anew, as most art does. It was followed a set pattern, and to this day just that, over time, a single Form they are funded on the basis of what I had become paramount and even will call a ‘noble savage’ understanding: hegemonic. As Deepa Dhanraj said that all you need to do is put a camera in an interview with Madhu in the hands of untrained people and Bhushan in Deep Focus, “The reason by sheer virtue of their marginalised I feel for not many individual condition they will be able to filmmakers breaking from the communicate through this new standardised mode is the insidious medium. Equating technology with peer pressure from the Left which is 6 empowerment is a Soviet-era view, still a strong reference point.” which increasingly ignores a seminal feminist understanding—that power Nevertheless, or perhaps therefore, by resides in language and syntax, and the end of the 1990s, when video was Gender and the Documentary Film – Paromita Vohra no longer new and the industry of the funders, they decide their developmental, ‘issue-based’ films had mandate, you write your proposal expanded so much that it almost according to that....They were the became a substitute for the old FD, ones funding your films, some filmmakers started questioning documentary screenings at that their own practice in a changing time use to happen through NGO political landscape. circuits, women’s groups, so they were all praises for your work. I Saba Dewan described some of these think for me there was a certain troubling questions in an interview I disillusionment....It was somehow did with her in 2011: not the truth. They were making me question my ideas as a woman. What might have attracted me to Since being a filmmaker, being a take up a commissioned film, say woman, both the things are on Mahila Samakhya [a enmeshed... questions arose of— government programme for what is my politics? What am I empowerment of rural women saying...what is my form? initiated in 1989]...is the politics of 27 Samakhya till then. Samakhya was Women were not the only ones asking not just a literacy programme. these questions. In an interview I did There was hope, there was in 2011 with Amar Kanwar, who is optimism, there was politics...and well known today for his documentary some independent women’s groups films and installations in the poetic- too were working there. Most of visual-essay mode, he recalled the the NGO culture in India comes discomfort he used to feel: in after the Emergency, so they were still young and very I found that every film I was political....But I think through the making I had to hone my skills [19]90s... [there] was a certain co- of minimising [the filmmaker’s] option of NGO politics in presence. And [I] had therefore becoming systems of distributions collected a whole bag of tricks of for the state....Once you get used how to minimise this and... to huge amount of money, then devise a space where my audience terms like ‘mandate’ become feels that it is actually face to face important. Mandate is always from with the territory of my film and ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 6, Number 2

that I am not in between. Now The filmmaker Madhusree Dutta the more skilled I got at this...the narrates an interesting story in an more people liked the film. And I interview with Bhaskar Sarkar and 7 had also started to feel a little Nicole Wolf in BioScope. She and uncomfortable with this skill feminist lawyer Flavia Agnes co- that I was acquiring, and also founded the Mumbai-based what I was getting...from the organisation Majlis, which has both a documentary community, cultural and a legal centre, and which particularly...those who has the mission statement ‘Culture as appreciate...those who approve, Right, Rights as Culture’. A woman peer groups, clients, teachers. arrived at the Majlis legal centre along with her daughter who had been in a Said Between the Lines violent marriage. In speaking for her daughter she blamed herself for Orality was central to the Indian raising her daughter “in an ambience of political documentary, which was fear”. Dutta reports that the woman founded on testimonies. In the classic said, “I gave her fear as an inheritance 28 political film there was an assumption and that is why she could not cope that once people spoke, they and the with her own life. Punish me but film had said everything there was to please help her.” Dutta says in the say. It was all about giving people an BioScope interview: opportunity to speak, not about what is hidden in the speech of those who That became the synopsis of the are often not allowed to speak. film [Memories of Fear]. [In that woman’s story] there was also a Feminist theory had a different take separation between law and on oral history. It recognised a non- rights. The mother’s testimony literalism within orality, a ‘sense’ of a could not be a part of the meaning that opened up entirely new daughter’s legal case as memories ways of looking. The act of listening are not considered evidence…. to accounts of people was also the act Formally, Memories of Fear of listening to what was being said needed an overlap between the between the lines, what remained woman’s memory of her own life unsaid and how things were said. and the legal case of the daughter’s domestic violence.… Gender and the Documentary Film – Paromita Vohra

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Sagira Begum doing zardozi embroidery in Sameera Jain's 1997 film Sagira Begum.

For the first time I attempted to theatre: Scribbles on Akka (2000) and place contrived narratives 7 Islands and a Metro (2006). [stylised performances, embellished re-enactments] back Similarly, other films which worked to back with standard with protracted testimonies, or 8 testimonies. biographies, expanded the understanding of the documentary Although criticised at the time for form and its political nature. Notable “mutilating the integrity of the among these were Kamlabai (1992), testimony”, the film led Dutta to an Reena Mohan’s film about Kamlabai exploration of this form, which Gokhale, the first woman to act on the resulted in significant films that used Indian screen; and Sagira Begum elements of performance strongly (1997), Sameera Jain’s film about a inflected by her background in seventy-five-year-old zardozi worker ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 6, Number 2

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Family group portrait of kamlabai Gokhale (extreme left), her mother Durgabai kamat (centre, holding baby), and her sons Lalji Gokhale (second from left), an accomplished tabla player and Chandrakant Gokhale (second from right), a veteran actor of the marathi stage and Indian screen, seen next to his wife. Photograph courtesy Lalji Gokhale's private collection.

in Old Delhi. Neither film inserted cinema. Their personal stories were a any material that was not testimony. type of record of that history. In a way the biographies of these women were ‘performed’ via their The evolution of these cinematic individual stories and their unique forms is almost visible in this way of comporting themselves. These story that Reena Mohan told me in women had lived through and been 2010, about the making of Kamlabai: part of major historical events: Sagira Begum had seen the Partition of India We entered her flat and she was and Pakistan and the subsequent sitting in her choli and petticoat ghettoisation of Delhi’s old city, and that you see her in, [in] the film, Kamlabai, the growth of Indian but I said, you are sitting like Gender and the Documentary Film – Paromita Vohra

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Replicating the poses in the old family group portrait, kamlabai Gokhale (centre) with her son Chandrakant (second from right) and his family. Still by k.u. mohanan.

this! Aren’t you going to get Ranjan [Palit] said the frame is ready? And she said why? What’s looking very empty and bare. So wrong? This is what I wear. So I we pulled out this rack from the said you’ve got to wear a sari and second bedroom, brought it proper blouse you know, this is a within the frame and her film and...so she changed. Oh it’s background, brought all the terrible, actually. Then I said you trophies from the top of the can’t be sitting on the bed all the cupboard. And soon Rekha said time, you’ve got to sit in different ‘bara aaji...’ you know in a formal parts of the house. We had these way, and she was pitching her plastic chairs and she sat in one voice a certain way. and Rekha [the Marathi interviewer] sat in one and I kept getting the feeling this is ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 6, Number 2

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kamlabai Gokhale, first lady of Indian cinema, still going strong. Stills by k.u. mohanan. Gender and the Documentary Film – Paromita Vohra

not right. Mohan [K.U. which continues to reshape how we Mohanan] and Suresh see history. [Rajamani] and Ranjan and me and Rekha sat down and I said Reena Mohan eventually shook free of what’s going wrong?...you are this idea of a reconstructed putting her in a chair and documentation, following only the bringing down these trophies and way in which Kamlabai spoke and making her change clothes and how she presented herself as a person that doesn’t feel like who she is. while she remembered the experience, The notion that I am talking to and not the milestones, of her life. this first lady of the Indian screen Considered a classic, Kamlabai is a and I am going to get... facts was beautifully shot, forty-minute film very strong somewhere. So it was made up of one woman speaking, or very structured interviews, now performing herself. we’ve done the childhood, now we’ve done the marriage, now we Redefining the Political talk about her first male role....Every time she was being With the making of such biographical 33 cute and jokey, we were switching films, which recognised non-literal off the camera and I was saying meaning and evoked a ‘sensed’ reality, that now she’ll settle down and the idea of the political had to be re- we’ll switch on the camera, then negotiated. Madhusree Dutta we’ll get on with it. comments on these films in her essay “In Defence of the Political The idea that a documentary is a Documentary”: public record that must be about public achievements, and that it These films are distinct among the requires a certain type of performance sea of films that were produced in from the subject, is palpable in this the South Asian subcontinent story. This notion is influenced, in during this period. They are turn, by the idea that there is a biographical films with an agenda consistent arc of history into which related to nationalism. They are one just fits the ‘women’s experience’, a non-linear, with sublime women’s room in the bigger house of aesthetics, and yet are political. history, rather than an experience The number of films produced in ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 6, Number 2

this genre is growing by leaps and to the very act of filmmaking. bounds. Encouraged by easily available digital technology, Rahul Roy spoke of this in an filmmakers today can afford to interview I did in 2011: spend more time with the protagonists, developing layered Since Saba [Dewan] and I used engagements, also altering their to work together and lot of our 9 own agenda in the process. films were on gender and on women, over a period of time I It is hard to say if the many new just felt that...it was an extremely explorations of form in documentary comfortable position to be in are specific to women, although, as the and...[also that] it was limiting. I researcher Nicole Wolf points out in started questioning my own role her unpublished dissertation, “...there in those films and I felt that if I is a wide range of prolific explorations am interested in gender then I of documentary mode filmmaking should be looking at men’s lives that has been and is continuously [too]. So that was the starting 34 happening in India by women point and after that it was more filmmakers…Namely there is a thing of hurtling down a commitment to filmmaking practices certain path and I keep engaging which is deeply invested in with that theme in different ways contemporary political questions… in different circumstances and that takes multiple cinematic forms, situations. But eventually it [the (and) is thus inextricably linked to gendered awareness] blurs the reflections on, negotiations of and the lines....So I think in filmmaking 10 working upon notions of the real.” I am less and less interested in The presence of the filmmaker as making masculinity the object....I audience, as interlocutor and not find it extremely limiting and rapporteur, is implied in the also problematic to make just performances of subjects such as that into an object. What’s more Kamlabai and Sagira Begum. The interesting is actually how do you personal space in which this encounter implicate gender in other happens imparts a gendered quality to situations and then read off the intimacy and interaction between those situations. subjects and filmmakers, and indeed Gender and the Documentary Film – Paromita Vohra

Gendered awareness and questions itself as a movement with a about truth and reality had led to politico-cultural identity of its myriad explorations of form. These own. It stands by itself, its head filmmakers were wrestling with the bloody, but unbowed, under the weight of a certain type of inherited pressure of bureaucratic history of documentary form and suffocation and suppression, practice. In the process they were also official red-tapism and a compelled to acknowledge the ideas of dictatorial, even fascist, 11 performance that are inherent in censorship. documentary practice and political activity, and which become normative Through the rest of the account there as a history is created. is curiously little else to describe the nature of the movement in terms of its So much of the history of form is cinema. There is instead a stance, a about the history of form you’ve pose on a poster, a demeanour or received—or, sometimes, perceived. behaviour that marks it. A similar tone can be found in a 1999 report Here is a common form of history from the Deccan Herald, about a 35 provided in the 1990s in particular. fellowship project initiated by the 12 Shoma Chatterji, writing in a 1994 organisation Majlis. The writer issue of Spectrum, the catalogue of spends a few paragraphs describing MIFF’s Indian non-competitive Madhushree Dutta as a fiery, gutsy section, describes the independent woman on the basis of an encounter documentary movement: she had with the Mumbai police, before getting to the point of The Emergency triggered a the report. series of films starting with Anand Patwardhan and It is not cinema that is being spoken followed by others. …From the of here so much as comportment. 1980s a simmering movement made its presence felt within the A Matter of Performance realm of Indian documentary films. The simmering gained To elaborate my meaning, I would momentum and speed, garnered like to describe Saba Dewan’s lovely 13 itself for action, and defined film The Other Song (2009). It is a ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 6, Number 2

wonderfully warm, but fairly opportunity to refine their craft; they straightforward journey into the have not acquired the quicksilver, world of tawaifs (courtesans) in flirtatious twists necessitated by the search of a lost or obscured thumri, kind of performance where one must and through this, a lost or obscured make regular eye-contact with the life, tradition and aesthetic. audience, not unlike that eye-level shot which the community video women in A significant sequence in this film is Andhra Pradesh aptly named the of a classical music mehfil in Sangham shot. The ‘sense’ of Benaras, organised at the haveli of an distinction between the comportment old, elite, merchant family by the of both sets of artists and their art Kashi Sangeet Samaj as part of its may be subtle but it nevertheless centenary celebration. The gathering provides irrefutable evidence of and musicians are mostly male and hierarchy. The Other Song brings out a upper-caste; in the old days there ‘sense’ that the world thinks that the would have been courtesans. The male artists are doing real, serious ambience is in stark contrast to the work, whereas the louche courtesans, 36 frayed glamour of the courtesan while fun, are not to be taken so world, indicating that a sanitisation seriously as artists. and perhaps brahminisation has taken place. Similarly, I find Shoma Chatterji’s description of the independent film For me, the sequence strikingly brings striking for its personification: “It out the issue of comportment in the stands by itself, its head bloody, but arts. There is a manner in which these unbowed.” It sounds like a artists carry themselves, with import, description of a performance, not of with gravity, with punditry, with the a film. And yet, what is a stately pace of experts. This is quite in documentary film but a performance contrast with the comportment of the of the filmmaker? When Thomas women who people this film—their Waugh labelled these political films mischief, their tartness or sweetness, the “committed film” he pointed out their fragile vanities and arrogant that in doggedly documenting a glamour. It may well be that here, the certain politics, the filmmaker men are technically far more enacted a performance of 14 accomplished singers, having had the commitment. The more passionate Gender and the Documentary Film – Paromita Vohra

filmmaking but her battle with the police that marked her as a warrior and hence significant, according to the Deccan Herald report.

These performances and the manner of their performing—the comportment of the filmmaker and the film—conferred status on both. That which did not fit into this comportment might well struggle to be recognised, or cause those who view it to be uncomfortable with recognising it. This idea of the comportment of a film is echoed in a conversation I had with a critic who Writer, poet, journalist and playwright Bharatendu Harishchandra with his courtesan told me he loved my films because mistress, madhavi. Photograph courtesy they were funny and political but he 37 Bharatendu Collection, Bharat kala Bhavan, Banaras Hindu university. Still from Saba could not imagine giving them a prize Dewan’s The Other Song. because though they were political, they could not be serious, because the performance, the better the film: they were too enjoyable. Another The more derivative the performance, experience I had was after I had the duller the work. An important screened my film Unlimited Girls in element of this performance was often 2002. The film, about feminism in the rite of passage of censorship. India, is in English and Hindi, and its Battles with the Central Board of Film form and content are rooted in urban Certification or the ‘right-wing’ were a contexts. A few days later I received a badge of validation of a film’s political four-page letter from a man about significance. This is not to imply that how my film was elitist, not genuinely this is not a genuine battle or problem political because it is urban and in any society, particularly ours, but humorous, and that I, with my short censorship often became a means of hair and my manner of dressing, had judging a film’s importance. Similarly, silenced the suffering women of rural it was not Madhusree Dutta’s India. The writer obviously felt, as ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 6, Number 2

many do about women who laugh too In this history of warfare and loudly, that the film and I had not warriors, how could someone like comported our selves well enough to Nina Shivdasani have found a place? be deemed political. A woman who, quite apart from creating a political work of art made A Frivolous Question outside the context of organisational politics, had got her censor certificate Which brings me to an apparently through strategy, not chivalric public frivolous question I have frequently confrontation? addressed to my documentary filmmaking colleagues: Why do so The history of Indian documentary is many male documentary filmmakers far more hybrid than the monolithic have a beard? one being bandied about. The gendered nature of this history and This performance of commitment may its valorisation had enforced a have various comportments, or rasas. somewhat gendered practice along While the ideas of the unvarnished fairly conformist lines. When this 38 form may no longer have such a tight history was questioned in feminist hold, the notion of significance still terms, it resulted in new and exciting comes via comportment. Eventually no political understandings which found matter what your chosen form, its articulation in diverse artistic and enactment varies depending on the rasa resonant forms that reinvigorated you choose, the register of the film, and documentary film culture in India. often—though by no means always and only—it is important that there be an aura of fervour or gravity to it, Paromita Vohra is a documentary something that ‘carries weight’. filmmaker and writer. Sometimes these rasas of seriousness, the comportment of the ascetic, the warrior, the guru, the seer and seeker of truth, the arduous carrying of weight on your shoulders requires the growing of a beard. Of course I’m only joking. Aren’t I? Gender and the Documentary Film – Paromita Vohra

39

Poster of Paromita Vohra's 2002 film Unlimited Girls. ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 6, Number 2

ENDNOTES 7. Bhaskar Sarkar and Nicole Wolf, ‘An Interview with Madhusree Dutta’, BioScope: 1. Shai Heredia, ‘Excavating Indian South Asian Studies, Vol. 3 (January 2012), experimental film’, unpublished research pp. 21-34. project, Experimenta India, 2004. Available from Shai Heredia at 8. Ibid., p. 22. [email protected]. 9. Madhusree Dutta, ‘In Defence of the 2. Waves of Revolution documents the non- Political Documentary’. Available at violent Bihar Movement of 1974-75, which http://infochangeindia.org/film- was initiated by students and led by the forum/news-a-views/in-defence-of- veteran Gandhian Socialist Jayaprakash political-documentary.html. Narain (JP). The movement became the symbol of resistance to dictatorship, 10. Nicole Wolf, ‘Make it Real: culminating in the electoral defeat of the Documentary and other cinematic Congress Party in March 1977. experiments by women filmmakers in India’, unpublished dissertation, 2007. 40 3. Prisoners of Conscience focuses on the political prisoners of the Emergency, the 11. Shoma Chatterji, ‘The “Investigative” muzzled media and the over-100,000 Documentary’, Spectrum India, (1994), p. 15. Indians who were arrested without charge and jailed without trail. 12. ‘Gutsy and Different’, Deccan Herald, 1 August 1999. 4. Arvind Rajagopal and Paromita Vohra, ‘On the Aesthetics and Ideology of the 13. Saba Dewan’s The Other Song was Indian Documentary Film: A researched and produced with two grants Conversation’, BioScope: South Asian from India Foundation for the Arts in Studies, Vol. 3 (January 2012), pp. 7-20. 2001-02 and 2005-06 respectively.

5. Partha Chatterjee, ‘Indian Documentaries 14. Thomas Waugh, Show Us Life: Towards in Perspective’, Cinemaya, No. 28-29 (July- a History and Aesthetics of the Committed September 1995), pp. 32-36. Documentary (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1984). 6. Madhu Bhushan, ‘Interview with Deepa Dhanraj’, Deep Focus, Vol. 1(3) (November 1988), p. 38. Gender and the Documentary Film – Paromita Vohra

REFERENCES 8. MULAY, VIJAYA. 2008. From Rajas and Yogis to Gandhi and Beyond: Images of India 1. BHUSHAN, MADHU. 1988. ‘Interview in International Films in the Twentieth with Deepa Dhanraj’. Deep Focus, Vol. 1(3), Century. Calcutta: Seagull Books. pp. 32-39. 9. RAJAGOPAL, ARVIND and VOHRA, 2. CHATTERJEE, PARTHA. 1995. PAROMITA. 2012. ‘On the Aesthetics and ‘Indian Documentaries in Perspective’. Ideology of the Indian Documentary Film: Cinemaya, No. 28-29, pp. 32-36. A Conversation’. BioScope: South Asian Studies, Vol. 3, pp. 7-20. 3. CHATTERJI, SHOMA. 1994. ‘The “Investigative” Documentary’. Spectrum, pp. 10. SARKAR, BHASKAR and WOLF, 15-28. NICOLE. 2012. ‘An Interview with Madhusree Dutta’. BioScope: South Asian 4. DUTTA, MADHUSREE. n.d. ‘In Studies, Vol. 3, pp. 21-34. Defence of the Political Documentary’. Available at 11. WAUGH, THOMAS. 1984. Show Us http://infochangeindia.org/film- Life: Towards a History and Aesthetics of the 41 forum/news-a-views/in-defence-of- Committed Documentary. Metuchen, NJ: political-documentary.html. Scarecrow Press.

5. GARGA, B.D. 2007. From Raj to Swaraj: 12. WOLF, NICOLE. 2007. ‘Make it Real: The Non-Fiction Film in India. New Delhi: Documentary and other cinematic Penguin Books. experiments by women filmmakers in India’. Unpublished dissertation. 6. ‘Gutsy and Different’. 1999. Deccan Herald, 1 August.

7. HEREDIA, SHAI. 2004. ‘Excavating Indian experimental film’. Available from Shai Heredia at [email protected].