The Berlin Wall & Wagah Border
Supriyo Sen is someone whose name is familiar to only die-hard documentary lovers in India. But make no mistake – he is one young filmmaker in India whom we will hear a lot more about in the years to come. Let’s get introduced to him here on PFC:
Sen’s can be expected to be an oft-heard name in next year’s Berlin International Film Festival. His project Wagah, which will seek to interpret the ritual of every evening’s closure of the gates on the India-Pakistan border crossing in a larger context, has been selected by the festival as one of the five concepts selected from 180 entries from across the world for cinematic celebration of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The Kolkata-based Sen’s film, to be shot in the second half of 2008, will be premiered under the special section called My Wall at the festival next year, when Germany and particularly the city celebrates two decades of the fall of the Wall. The film will then travel to all parts of the world along with the four other films selected by the festival under its Berlin Today Award (BTA) programme.
With this film, two-time National Award winner Sen will complete his trilogy of films exploring the theme of Partition of the Subcontinent, with his earlier two films Way Back Home and Hope Dies Last in War having won international accolade.
The latest documentary, to be funded by Berlin-Brandenburg based Medienboard, will be screened along with the four other films made on the theme My Wall by filmmakers from the United States, Lebanon, Germany and Britain.
“2009 will mark the the 20th anniversary of fall of the Berlin Wall. Since 2003, Berlinale has been having the BTA under which they select some projects, and produce 3-4 films. Under this year’s theme, filmmakers were asked to explore the wall, which can be metaphorical, political or wall of any kind,” Sen said in a conversation with this writer. “The festival had invited 15 filmmakers out of the 180 who had submitted their concepts. We had a pitching session with the producers following which the five projects were selected.” The five filmmakers will have a residence programme in Berlin in May, after which they will shoot their respective films.
Sen’s previous film Hope Dies Last in War incidentally had got the prestigious Sundance Documentary Grant and Pusan International Film Festival’s Asian Network of Documentary Award, apart from getting screened at several festivals, including the Mumbai International Film Festival (MIFF).
The film explored the tragedy of 54 families who believe that their near and dear ones are still languishing in Pakistani jails as Prisoners of War since the 1971 Indo-Pak war and how they continue to fight for their freedom without any help from the establishments of two countries.
Sen’s concept note for the 80-minute, DV-Cam film Hope Dies Last in War goes like this:
“It was on December 3, 1971, that the third Indo-Pak war broke out. It lasted for 14 days, culminating in the surrender of the Pakistani forces in the Eastern sector and the creation of Bangladesh. More than 92,000 Pakistani soldiers were taken prisoners by India and in the Western sector, 500 odd Indian defense personnel were captured by Pakistan.
Following the Simla agreement in 1972 between Z.A. Bhutto and Indira Gandhi, prisoners of war (POWs) were exchanged and over two hundred Indian soldiers were eventually repatriated from Pakistan. But for some families their hope of reunion with their loved ones was thwarted.
The third train that was supposed to bring the last lot of Indian soldiers never came. Pakistan claimed that there was no more POWs left in their custody and Govt. of India advised the relatives to presume the missing soldiers as dead, accept monetary compensations and forget about them!!
The families were in no way ready to believe in the Governmental version because most of them heard the names of the missing soldiers being announced in the Pakistani radio as “captured alive”. Their belief was strengthened when proofs of them being alive started pouring in from different sources. One of the soldiers managed to get a letter of his smuggled to his family and mentioned in it that 20 of his compatriots as languishing in the same cell. Photos of two other soldiers came out in Time Magazine, BBC journalist Victoria Schofield mentioned about 40 prisoners in her book- the evidences kept coming in bits and pieces.
Recharged by these ever-emerging evidences, the relatives kept pursuing their cases with the Government of India by forming an organization called “Missing Defense Personnel Relatives Association”. A long and tragic battle started to get the soldiers back.
In course of time the relatives met all the Indian Prime Ministers, petitioned Pakistani premiers like General Zia, Benazir Bhutto or General Musharaf, penned appeals to the Human Rights Commission, ran from pillar to post, fought on the streets and got arrested, used their own personal intelligence sources to get information from Pakistan and collected more proofs of their loved ones being alive in Pakistan but nothing could move the Governments.
Publicly they kept on denying of keeping any POW but privately accused each other of keeping more soldiers of 1971 war and remained busy fighting worst kind of diplomatic war between them. This way three long decades of negotiation saw three wars being fought between the two countries, more hatred churned against each other, several failed peace talks but the soldiers never came back.
In the mean time some of the parents died, some of the wives remarried out of loneliness, and some children lost hope and committed suicide. But perhaps it is the toughest for those who did not give up and are waiting for their loved one’s return. For them life have become a tight rope walking between hope and despair. They have fought the mental battle of attrition for three long decades and are not willing to give up easily.
The film Hope Dies Last in War is the story of the 54 unfortunate soldiers who are betrayed by their own Govt. It is a saga of three generations of their families’ struggle to get their men back. It is a singularly tragic story of Human Rights violation based on the testimonies of parents, wives, siblings, children and grandchildren. The film is about their pain, helplessness, dejection, reconciliation, hope and dreams in war-hungry Indian sub-continent.”
Sen has marked up an impressive CV as a filmmaker. In 2000, he received the Jan Vrijman Fund from International Documentary Festival of Amsterdam for production of the film Way Back Home on his parent’s journey to their homeland (now Bangladesh) after 50 years. The film received BBC Audience Award for the best documentary in Commonwealth Film Festival at Manchester in 2003. It has won multiple awards (International Jury Award, Golden Conch for best long Documentary, Best film of the festival Award) in Bombay International Film Festival, 2004, won National Award (Silver Lotus) for the best documentary on social issues and B.F.J.A. Critic’s Award for the best documentary of the year in India. The film was shown in Amsterdam, Nyon, Manchester, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Baltimore, Berlin Asia Pacific, Istambul, Kathmandu, Mumbai, Calcutta and Puri film festival and special screening was organized in London, Paris, New York, Seattle, Chicago, Pune, Delhi, Bangalore and other cities.
Legendary filmmaker Mrinal Sen said after watching this film, “One of the first grade films I have ever seen, it is excellently made.” Eminent French documentary filmmaker Nicolas Philibert commented, “I am deeply convinced that Way Back Home is pure cinema.” The film also created a sort of history by being one of the rare Indian documentaries released commercially. His third film The Nest was about the lone battle of a tribal family to save migratory birds. In 2001, the film won National Award for the best film on environmental issues, B.F.J.A. Critic’s Award for the best documentary in India and selected in the Indian Panorama. His second film Dream of Hanif was made for Franco-German TV channel PLANET- is the story of one of the traditional scroll painters in India. His first film Wait Until Death was on worker’s death caused by a stone-crushing factory near Calcutta. Later the film played its due role in establishing the worker’s legal rights.
Hope Dies Last in War has also got the Jan Vrijman Fund in 2004 and Asian Network of Documentary Award (Dong Sio Asia Fund) from Pusan International Film Festival in 2006 and Sundance Documentary Fund in 2007. The film was premiered at Yamagata Film Festival in Japan in October, 2007.
Tags: Bengali, Documentary, English - Other
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Thanks for mentioning Supriyo Sen, Utpal. I liked Way back home when I saw back in 2006.
some lines from a review..
“Supriyo Sen