Festival of restraint

In the concluding part on the recent Mumbai International Film Festival for Documentaries, GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN explores thematic variations to point out how some can be sources of inspiration and invaluable guidance in our existence.

DOCUMENTARIES are enormously powerful tools which directors can use to drive home uncomfortable messages, but in the just- concluded Mumbai International Film Festival for Documentary, Short and Animation Movies, I was surprised to see tremendous restraint. Yet, the fear associated with such cinema, the fear that it will sensationalise issues and spread panic and havoc remains among the powers that be.

Take, for instance, Josky Joseph's seven-minute fiction on noise pollution, "Status Quo". He says nothing beyond what has already been reported in the Press and television: we all know that the battering our ear-drums undergo causes untold misery, physically and mentally. Yet, Joseph tells me that the Censor Board was quite unhappy with his work, and went to the extent of saying how his picture could have been made; a few suggestions were made. Pray, since when has the Censor Board assumed the mantle of a script writer?

If Joseph's imagery causes the right concern, "Breathless" by Sanjay Sahare strikes an accurate note as well. His animation underlines the poison all of us here in this country have to breathe in, thanks to the industries that stubbornly refuse to install pollution-control devices. There is a kind of rare punch here that few can miss.

Also of immense public service was James Moll's "The Last Days". Yes, it is about the Holocaust, a subject that has been flogged to death. But I found the story of five Hungarian survivors moving. The Nazi atrocities can never fail to evoke a sense of revulsion, even half a century later, and today when man's cruelty to man is at a critical juncture, Moll's work - brilliantly edited and crafted - serves as a poignant reminder of the dark days that can once again befall nations arrogant enough to presume that they are invincible. "The Last Days" is devoid of flab and unnecessary flavour and may well serve as a model for Indian documentarists.

The Mumbai Festival had more of this variety. Peter Wintonick's (remember his "Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media" ?) "Cinema Verite: Defining the Moment" is a documentary about documentary. It candidly captures the finest frames of the last century's finest non-fiction films. Partly an adventure, partly a celebration, Wintonick moves across North America and Europe chasing some of the great figures who changed the world, who even changed the way we perceive this world. It can be Kennedy, it can be Jane Fonda . . . but the director's homage to these men and women, or, rather to those who froze them on celluloid, is masterful.

No less captivating was Wim Wenders, whose "Buena Vista Social Club" is a classic must-see. The club, of musicians, was famous in the pre-Castro Havana of the Fifties. Later, it sank into oblivion and remained there, till Wenders accompanied the aged singers and instrumentalists as they went abroad for the first time. The movie climaxes with their two sold-out concerts in Amsterdam and a final triumphant show at New York's Carnegie Hall. Wenders works with portable digital video cameras, settles into the rhythm of Havana, and yields to his curious eye. The city appears in bold colours, the musicians are trailed step-by- step, but with disarming unobtrusiveness.

Privacy is a major worry in a scenario where the movie-maker is armed with a small video camera. Richard Raskin, who presided over the international video competition in Mumbai, emphasised the value of respecting the subject's private space. But it is so easy to disregard that.

Rajiv Kumar slips up precisely here: his "Darkness of Terror" probes the violence and vindictiveness of caste clashes in Bihar. His images are compelling, but at places one feels that Kumar is a little too inquisitive, and he appears a trifle heartless when shooting the dead and the suffering. The dead in "Darkness of Terror" would, I felt, wake up disgusted at the way their bodies had been magnified and displayed on screen. This reminds me of what Jim Corbett had to say long ago, when he came upon a woman, killed by a tiger and stripped of her clothes. She would wake up ashamed at the state she had been reduced to, he wrote and added that he had quickly covered her with whatever he could lay his hands on.

Now for something more pleasant, yet striking. Jesper Jargil explores the Danish auteur, Lars Von Trier's novel method of creating a movie. Called "Dogma", Von Trier and a few others decided to free cinema from superficiality: no artificial props, filming in natural lighting, hand-held camera and so on. Jargil gets on to the sets of "Idiots", Von Trier's first effort in this direction, and the result is both amusing and frightening. The man's temperamental relationship with his cast is legendary, and the process is stormy all right. Jargil catches the essence of it all.

Aruna Raje Patil's biographical sketch of Mallika Sarabhai explores the nuances of the dancer's deepest of emotions, and yet there was not a frame where I felt that Patil was prying. The wonderful bond between the two women reflects on the screen, although I wish that our directors would learn a thing or two about editing from Hollywood, where movement is sheer magic.

Documentaries like Kumar Shahani's "Bamboo Flute", Pankaj Rishi Kumar's "Kumar Talkies" and Eisha Marjara's "Desperately Seeking Helen" have outstanding subjects to talk about, but somewhere these pictures get heavy and pedantic, with a whole lot of footage that deserves to be clipped mercilessly.

Shahani reveals how the flute has been the most vital emblem of Indian civilisation - from the classical to the aboriginal. Kumar seeks out the history of a cinema hall in a small north Indian town whose residents want the travails of their own existence filmed and exhibited. However, Kumar falters on the way with his elaborate personal anecdotes. Marjara is obsessed with the Hindi star, Helen, and she must somehow meet her in Mumbai. But her fetish turns into boredom for the viewer, despite the fascinating possibilities the theme held.

Somehow, the shorter entries made greater impacts. I loved "Tales From The Reading Room", a sweet account by Minkie Spiro of the romances at the old British Museum Library. The bond between love and learning has been magnificently narrated in this work.

There were a couple of others - "Tough Pose" (Maria Leonida) and "Blood Ink" (Carmen Guarini and Marcelo Cespedes) - that took a look at issues like nude modelling and crime reporting. A sense of humour drives away scepticism and complexity from both these movies, and what emerges are sheer documents of engaging facts. Is that not what documentaries should be?

(Concluded)

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