Do We Get the Documentary We Deserve?
Rakesh Sharma
Indian Express, 28 Sep 2007
His film was denied a censor certificate, then granted one without a single cut. Earlier this month, it received a national award. Filmmaker Rakesh Sharma writes about making documentary films in India today
At the first ever film show in India on July 7, 1896 at the Watson Hotel in Bombay, the Lumiere Brothers screened a package of documentaries including Arrival of the train, Leaving the factory and Ladies and Soldiers on Wheels. From July 14 1896, these films were shown in Bombay’s Novelty theatre, with the backrows costing 50 paise and front seats’ ticket at Re 1, a huge sum those days.
The first few films to be made in India were actuality films or documentaries — Harishchandra Sakharam Bhatwadekar’s The Wrestling Match (1899) and Save Dada’s 1901 film about the homecoming of R.P. Paranjape, the mathematics topper at Cambridge. Dadasaheb Phalke made a number of documentaries including Scenes of the river Godavari, Simhast Mela; he even filmed the 37th session of the Indian National Congress in 1923!
Today, the biggest film industry in the world doesn’t have space for the documentary. No multiplex would consider screening documentaries, unless the film-maker hires his own video projection equipment. No mainstream DVD distribution company would consider a promo blitz to market and sell documentaries. Few TV channels even create the space to show documentaries, and those who do or plan to, want the film for a pittance or for free.
It is either a tribute to the film-makers’ determination or just foolhardiness that documentaries still get made. Funding is the first hurdle. Unlike Europe or the US, we do not have any film funds or foundations to approach. PSBT may fund 26-minute films on DD, but they have to adhere to the “programming code”, a euphemism for cinema vetted by the state. Of late, there is the new NGO-commissioned film, but it too comes with strings attached; many just want the corporate film highlighting the NGO’s achievements.
Next stage — filming. Speak to any documentarian and each has a nightmare story of being arrested and attacked, of cameras smashed and crews beaten up. Though we have demanded accreditation with the PIB, the government has maintained a studied silence.
So, you beg and borrow, somehow cobble together the funds and make the film. End of ordeal, right? Not before a warm welcome by the CBFC, that is, the Censor Board.
In 2004, the CBFC formally denied a censor certificate to my film Final Solution and observed that the film “promotes communal disharmony among Hindu and Muslim groups and presents the picture of Gujarat riots in a way that it may arouse communal feelings and clashes among Hindu Muslim groups... State security is jeopardised and public order is endangered if this film is shown...”
The ruling itself was a culmination of harassment that included malafide delays in slotting the film for a censor panel preview. During this period, Final Solution screenings were disrupted by the police and extra-legal censors, rightwing party cadres in Karnataka, Gujarat, Delhi, Jharkhand, Haryana, Rajasthan etc.
Some months later in 2004, following an outcry from sections of civil society, the CBFC cleared the same film without a cut. Earlier this month, the president gave it a national award. The jury awarded the film “for its powerful, hard-hitting documentation with a brutally honest approach lending incisive insights into the Godhra incident, its aftermath and the abetment of large scale violence”.
A week before Final Solution made history at the Berlinale by becoming the first ever documentary to win the prestigious Wolfgang Statudte award, it was missing from the Mumbai International Film Festival, rejected on the grounds of not being good enough. The selection committee weeded out inconvenient films dealing with communalism or the politics of gender and environment etc. Film-makers boycotted the MIFF, organised a parallel protest festival and Vikalp was born. Three years later, Vikalp co-ordinates screenings with a wide cross-section of groups and institutions. Yet, even Vikalp couldn’t make the UPA see the light. The censorship regime has only become tighter.
The Directorate of Film Festivals battled me in the Delhi High Court, generously spending the taxpayers’ money to prevent my film from entering the 52nd National Film Awards (NFA). They insisted it was made only in 2005, the year it got a censor certificate, and not in 2004 when it won a dozen awards and hence was ineligible for NFA!
Next year, the ministry suddenly changed the rules, making documentaries made on video ineligible. Not only did that keep out Final Solution, but about 95 per cent of independent documentaries in the country.
I sent them Final Solution nonetheless. Anand Patwardhan, Gaurav Jani and Simantini Dhuru filed a writ petition in the Mumbai High Court, protesting against the compulsory requirement of a censor certificate as well as the exclusion of video. Even before the next hearing, the government wasted some more of the taxpayers’ money, re-inserting ads in major dailies, now inviting video films as well. Over the next couple of years, the government of India committed its precious resources to a legal battle — the Mumbai High Court did away with censorship at NFA as a pre-requisite, the GOI appealed in the Supreme Court. The saga is yet to end as the film-makers’ review petition is slated to come up for a hearing.
