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Shubhra Gupta

With more viewers realising that documentaries can be a rich experience, the road for documentary filmmakers seems less rocky.

Picture: A still from the documentary film, Final Solution.

Has the space for edgy, confrontational, non-feature tracts increased in the past decade? Are there more documentary filmmakers joining the movement? Do more people watch documentaries now? These questions arise every time there is a community viewing of documentary films, like at the Prasar Bharati Trust (PSBT)-UNESCO mini-fest, which concluded in New Delhi, recently.

Such questions also crop up when there is controversy over censorship aimed at throttling critique. The upcoming Mumbai International Film Festival 2004 (MIFF) is one such instance. In the face of a boycott from the very filmmakers the festival was targeting, the Information and Broadcasting Ministry has been coerced into withdrawing the mandatory censor certificate clause, without which documentary filmmakers would not have been able to show their stuff. The censorship issue may have been resolved for now, but the larger questions still remain.

Every year, for the past 15 years, we've had assurances that award-winning documentaries would get automatic slots on Doordarshan. Sure, slots have been created, but only after 10 p.m. and 11 p.m., and even those times are not sacrosanct: the Sunday night slot given to PSBT documentaries, is liable to be arbitrarily cancelled or postponed at the last minute, without prior notice. There is also the constant attrition a zealous thought police can place on filmmakers. In Maharashtra, for example, there is an active movement to not let films be shown publicly. Anand Patwardhan, who has been single-mindedly examining the debilitating effects of communalism and religious extremism in his films, spends a lot of time with his legal advisor. Another Mumbai-based filmmaker Rakesh Sharma, who has been shooting in post-Godhara Gujarat, tracking Narendra Modi's gauravyatra, and the mood amongst communities in the State, anticipates going the same route. There's also the question of what, finally, gets screened. Those outside the PSBT fold, or those who do not have official sanction rarely get a look-in on the State-run channel.

As far as the private satellite channels go, there is simply no space for films which don't come with attached sponsorship: just the thought of having to put in money is anathema to their corporate ethos. Where TRPs rule, there is no place for non-profit initiatives.

This long-standing situation, which has meant limited access to whatever little is available on a public forum such as the national broadcaster, has also meant, naturally, little awareness.

There are two factors which are already bringing about a change in this bleak scenario: tumbling costs of actually making a film with digital technology (a DV camera costs Rs 1.75 lakh to Rs 2 lakh, and one 60-minute tape costs Rs 120), and the forging of alternate avenues of exhibition, which translates into that magic mantra all filmmakers lust for — larger audiences.

"Today, if I have a camera, and a story to tell, and Rs 50,000, I can begin telling my story," says Sharma, who's uniquely positioned because of the way he's been on both sides of the divide. He's been involved, at various points of time during the 1990s, in the start-up of Channel V and Vijay TV for Star. There's also been a rewarding stint with Shyam Benegal on the mammoth TV series, The Discovery Of India. In 2001, he switched to independent filmmaking with Aftershocks, an hour-long film shot in Kutch, which depicts how the State-run mining corporation subverts the process of democracy in two quake-hit villages by evicting residents, and taking the villages over for mining. The film has already been invited to about 70 overseas festivals, and has been screened several times within the country.

Sharma is aware that lowered costs, both during and post production (most editing is now done on computers) will see more people getting into documentaries and short films. So, funding is not such a big bug bear anymore, even though finding no-strings-attached money still continues to be a struggle, with traditional sources such as the State, corporates, NGOs, and global film funds, being increasingly reluctant to ante up big amounts for agenda-free content.

"The time when we used to go to the State and say, "Give me the space and money to criticise you," is now over. This is not the 1970s anymore," says Sharma. Out-of-the-box thinking in terms of distribution, which he believes is the real stumbling block, will set filmmakers on the path to higher visibility, and ultimately higher returns on money spent. We need to harness and exploit technology, he says, perhaps get a donation of film projectors, and keep them busy with private screenings, or get people to watch our films on CD by hooking in VCD enabled audio systems to their TV sets.

There are others who say that audiences for their films are increasing exponentially. Delhi-based Amar Kanwar, who has spent 15 years in the trenches with several award-winning films on ecology, politics, art and philosophy, (Season Outside, The Many Faces Of Madness) believes that these are very interesting times for documentary filmmakers. "Not only can we work at low costs, we can work for longer periods of time on our subjects. Most importantly, we can afford to take the kind of risks on subjects and formats that we couldn't earlier," he says. But he says that the fact is also that documentaries films will always, in a sense, be on the fringes, because that's the only way the filmmaker can exist without compromising. "But we are finally making films that people want to see," adds Kanwar.

His films, which have also been shown at numerous international film festivals, are in constant circulation on the viewing circuit — in schools, universities and private screenings. If he had the energy, he would be out there, showing one film every day, so many are the opportunities. "Anytime I hold a screening, eight times out of 10, I get another screening," he says. And it's not just him, it's almost everyone he knows who is in the same field. "Audiences are realising that they can get so much from our films, on a conceptual, emotional and informational level. Sometimes I feel guilty that I'm not showing enough," he says. It's still a long way off when a paying audience will come into a theatre to watch a documentary. But the road to it now looks less rocky.

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