Voices from the Waters : Day Three & Four

Tushar | Movies | June 11, 2007 at 2:00 pm

The festival has concluded and has, like all the festivals, has left a warehouse of memories, experiences and conversations. Before I go into the films of Day Three and Four, I would like to confess that it gets telling on your reactive senses if you try to catch up with all the films, because a festival is lot more about than just films. In this particular one, they were showing films at two places, one of the regular screen, and one upstairs on Aquascope, so like they said on the opening, save the possibility for you being two places at one time, you can’t watch all the films. And while I used to doze off a little in midst of a film, I quietly used to sneak out and realize there is so much happening that you can only enjoy the moment without much planning or afterthought involved.

Flow(USA Director: Scott Nyerges Duration: 4:26)

Handpainted 16mm and 35mm filmstrips colluded with video to render a meditation on the creeks and rivers of Austin, Texas, in paint and pixels.

Faecal Attraction(India Dir: Pradeep Saha Duration: 32 Minutes)
This movie highlights the horrific condition of the drainage system due to its improper planning and negligence. Sewage is thoughtlessly dumped into the rivers, without any treatment, thus polluting it immensely. It calls out for the improvement of sewage and excreta management in the country. This is a film made by CSE, Center for Science and Environment.

Desert’s Voice(Italy/othernations Dir: Massimiliano Troiani Music: Mario Tronco-Orchestra di Piazza Vittorio, Stephan Micus Duration:9:50 mins)

This film, highly using music as a catalyst, is about the true nature of water, which is an imperishable being. it is more like a visual poetry, a play of music.

Swaraj: The Little Republic (India Director: Anwar Jamaal Duration: 90 min)

This film is set in a small village in Rajasthan, where the women and lower caste people have little say in the local politics. Four strong willed women, however try to change things. The village becomes a universal microcosm of democracy. The film confronts opposite views of political power for selfish interests. The women, on the other hand, perceive political power as an enabling instrument to fulfill the needs for their community. The search for water is their priority. Visually the film revolves through the desert towards a feminine space where four women, freed from the strict code of conduct in the rural society, relive their histories, and draw strength from each other. The sun, the moon, and the desert itself travel with them.

The film, produced by NFDC, was a revelation for me, I had never heard of it before. And I was pleasantly surprised by its appeal, technical detailing, narrative finesse, and overall solid direction. Apart from having a strong, rooted story, the film takes cinema activism to another level. You see faces you never saw in a film before, save one or two actors, and they intrigue you with their on-screen effortless charm. While you are still immersed in the wonder, the fast paced narrative moves on, and how! Set to the beats of Indian Ocean, some sequences in the film, are sheer poetry come alive.

A woman is digging a trench, fully soaked in sweat and desperation of desire, her three other friends mock her from up above, her anger and frustration soars new heights, while trying to battle with the impossibility of her dream coming true and the stark reality of them as a community losing ground, she suddenly discovers water in the depressing darkness! And we are transported to the hypnotizing sounds of Jhini, composed and created in an ethereal envelope by Indian Ocean. The film boasts of many such deftly composed sequences. I would be talking about the film and the director in greater details in the coming article.

Where Swaraj scores in perfection of filmic imagery, it does falter in few portions. The narrative gets a tad linear in places, the dramatic inclusions a tad indulgent, and the overall finale looks more orchestrated than real.
Apart from these minor flaws, Swaraj is worth a collective watch and deserves every single grain of accolades that it has gathered through the years.

Sea in the Blood (Dir: Richard Fung Duration: 26 mins)

This is a personal documentary told largely through slides and home videos by Richard, about living with illness, tracing the relationship of the artist to Thalassemia in his sister, Nan and AIDS in his partner, Tim. The narrative of love and loss is set against a background of colonialism in the Caribbean and the reverberations of migrations and political change.
The honesty with which the director narrates some of the most personal truths of his life is shocking yet gripping. This is the stuff half of the European cinema is made of. Personal lives set ablaze against a societal and political backdrop. The film and other Fung films bring a rich visual color to his eloquent narratives; in his use of both personal experience and cultural history, his observations are quietly revelatory. His sense of recollections create an unforgettable experience to record and watch on screen, his life acquires the shape of a stranger-than-fiction reality. And the whole personal touch makes you introspect into your own life and wonder how tough it is to do what he is doing. This is so effective because of its oft-observed rarity in the world of short films and documentaries. The director will capture the situation and the issue well no doubt, but often will be willing to strip himself apart on screen.

Shadows of Tehri(Dir: Anirban Dutta Duration:45 mins)

Shadows of Tehri is an attempt to capture the essence of old Tehri town in Tehri Garhwal, Uttaranchal, before it is lost forever under the swirling waters of the world’s highest dam, built over the rivers of Bhagirathi and Bhilangana.
The film interweaves folklore, music, tradition and history to create a picture that may help future generations of the now non-existent town.
Four protagonists, who have witnessed its transition from the idyllic capital of a hill to a more modern town governed by a peoples’ council, take a nostalgic look, full of poetry and music, at its historical landmark. The playing of Naubat is an introduction to their narration. In the olden days, a three member band of Dhol, Ranasingha and Nagara kept time for playing by playing Naubat eight times a day.
Quite fittingly, the playing of Naubat marks the end of the film too, speaking metaphorically of the end of the era. The ghost of the king, whose horse had once stopped at the old Bhairav temple, is left to roam silently through the ruins of his beloved town.

The Disappearing of Tuvalu: Trouble in Paradise(France/US/Tuvalu Dir:Christopher Horner and Gilliane LeGallic Duration:50 mins)

A detailed overview of contemporary life in the tiny South Pacific country of Tuvalu, this film documents the earth’s first sovereign nation faced with total destruction due to the effects of global warming. Observation, narration, and interviews with Tuvalu citizens from various walks of life flesh out a full portrait of a unique community confronting a dubious future on the front lines of a global environmental assault.

Village of Dust City and Water(India Dir:Sanjay Barnela & Vasant Saberwal Duration:28 mins)

Village Dust, City of Water focuses on the issue of water-induced migration. Earlier, only landless people would migrate. Now we find that even the medium and small land-holding farmers are migrating to the city due to the lack of water. For example, the Indira Gandhi Canal in Rajasthan inspired farmers to sell jewelry and take loans from moneylenders to buy land alongside the canal thinking that it would green the desert.
Fifteen years later, they are still waiting for water, for their first harvest. Punjab doesn’t have so much water to release to the canal and so it’s urban areas like Bikaner and Jodhpur benefit at the cost of villages that have actually been taken for a ride.

Nor any drop to Drink(Egypt/Jordan/Palestine/Nethelands Dir:Joska Wessels Duration:23 mins)

The film is about the countries in Middle East, confronting the water crises. It travels to Egypt, Jordan and Palestine, where the water crises are slowly brewing up and also details the alternative initiatives by the local village communities in curbing these crises.

The film starts in Jordan where there is a severe water shortage, which will only get worse because the country has a population growth rate of 2.9%, the ninth highest in the world. In Damiya village, a new initiative has started to get the officials and users together in an effort to solve the water problems and develop realistic strategy.
Beni Suef in Egypt is one of the poorest governorates. About 2 million people, most of them farmers that make 3.2% of Egypt’s total population. The demand for irrigation is very high. Farmers are desperate and try to figure out different perspectives for the problem. The water users have started to discuss their water problems with govt. officials at district and governorate levels to come up with solutions.
In Mathaloun, Palestine, Mustafa has developed an innovative project to use the local plain for water harvesting, which will provide safe drinking and irrigation water for agricultural production. He discusses his idea with local officials and manages to turn it into viable municipality projects.

The Never Never Water(Italy/Burkina Faso Dir:Allessandra Speciale Duration:15mins)

The “water lords” have arrived in the Sahel. In Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, the search for water has always been an exhausting chore. In addition to the shortage of water there is now also the threat of privatization. This documentary tells the story of Moussa, an itinerant water seller in the suburbs of the capital. It also follows a journey to discover the problems connected with water which today represents an urgent problem for the whole of our planet, from Burkina Faso and Brazil, and India.

Erosion(India Dir:Sourav Sarangi Duration:60 mins)
Lakhs of people have fallen victim to large-scale erosion that takes place almost every year along Ganga and Padma Rivers in Malda and Murshidabad districts, West Bengal. The situation is worsening each year. Concerned authorities have been callous and negligent and are perpetuating the problems for obvious and monetary gains. The film is an on-location report of the grave situation made over years. It seeks to disseminate the pains, the penury, the anger and resoluteness of the sufferers of erosion.
Sourav, who is a deeply compassionate and introspective filmmaker, emotionally narrates the film. His film too, bears that honesty of expression, it traces every possible thread of the issue through the eyes of someone who understands and imbibes the whole situation.
The last scene of the film is particularly a glaring example of this compassion and intensity where a troubled, exploited lady literally thrashes and opens out in front of the camera. The whole imagery and subsequent realization on screen is spine chilling.

Let’s not disturb the Water(Iran Dir:Bijan Zamanpira Duration:22 mins)

This film, like Bijan’s earlier work, Window facing the sun, is a compelling, moving piece of art. The images speak for themselves; there is an acute trueness of emotion and subtlety in them, more reflective of the Iranian culture.
A group of migrants settle in a new place and build their homes where water is a scarcity. So they decide to go up to the mountain and harvest the ice. On their way back, they load their donkeys with huge blocks of ice. It is the water obtained from this ice, that they use for drinking and all the other household purposes. This movie shows a day in the life of these villagers depicting their adaptation to the new place without disrupting nature.
This is a rare film that will shock you despite its pleasing imagery. The truths, when presented in the way they are, become much more poignant.

The Beginning (India Dir: Pervez Imam Duration: 3:30 mins)

Water, the quintessential element of life is fast depleting from the planet earth. The concept of buying and selling is turning almost everything into a commodity. And a thrifty, businessman decides to invest his bit on an ocean.
This short fiction brings to life a powerful screenplay with merely three chracters and the ocean.

Al Otro Lado(Mexico Dir:Natalia Almada Duration:70 mins)

An aspiring composer from the drug capital of Mexico faces two choices to better his life: traffic drugs or cross the border illegally into the United States. From Sinaloa, Mexico, to the streets of south-central and east Los Angeles, ‘Al Otro Lado’ explores the world of drug smuggling, illegal immigration, the decline of the fishing industry and the corrido music that chronicles it all.

Loktak: The Dying lake of Manipur(India Dir: Aribam Shyam Sharma Duration:58 mins)
Located in the southern part of the Manipur Valley, Loktak is the largest freash water lake in the Indian subcontinent. Loktak is the main source of livelihood and food not only for the human inhabitants but also for the birds and animals residing there. The supposedly extincy Sanghai deer was later found to be still alive in the Loktak region of Manipur.
In 1970, the government came up with the idea of setting up a multi purpose hydroelectric power plant with a rapid progress and development of Manipur and surrounding states. Unfortunately, the plan had produced negative side effects on the environment and the socio-economic life of Manipur.

The Rainy Season(Brazil Dir:Various Dura:38 mins)

From Indigenous Video Makers series from the Video in the Villages project in Barzil, a daily chronicle of the Ashaninka community during the rainy season recorded during a workshop in a village on the Amonia River in Acre. The involvement among the filmmakers and the Ashaninka community makes the film go beyond a mere description of activities, reflecting the rhythm of the village and the humor of its inhabitants.
The film took me back to Apocalypto, minus the background score.

www.videonasaldeias.org.br

Devil’s Water (Bangladesh/France Dir:Amirul Arham Dur:53 mins)

This is a moving chronicle of Asma and Najma, two girls affected by arsenic contaminated water, a small reflection of the sad state of 49 million people in Bangladesh. They are ill-informed, abandoned and rejected by the larger part of the society.
Such personal accounts go beyond where a film can go. Deeply involving and heart wrenching tale of real characters. The reunion between Asma and Najma in the hospital sums up the whole point of the film in one poignant scene.

Dui Paatan ke Beech Mein/Between the Devil and The Deep River(India Dir:Arvind Sinha Dur:65 mins)

This film looks a tad old in its print and execution, but does well to capture the fallacy of the development model of Bihar. A state which has 8 major rivers, 56% of the total area covered with floods perpetually, more than half of the cultivable land is water logged. The film tries to answer the questions that arise out of this acute predicament.
Why did the government model fail?
Why do all the bureaucrats and the scientists, thought-capitalists and intellectuals fail to understand what simple villagers can deduce with age old logic?
Do floods evolve a culture?
Is the situation ever going to change?
Man-made floods and water logging over vast agricultural land has pauperized the people of Bihar. And all this has been done to “protect people from floods”!

Old Sea and the Man (India Dir:R.R. Srinivasan Duration: 70 mins)

Tsunami has revealed many a dark facts of our society. The caste system staring into the face of a developing economy, presents a picture much scarier than the Tsunami could ever conjure.
The film is a detailed account of this ghastly reality that poses a bigger threat than any possible natural calamity.

Gharat(India Dir: Pankaj Rishi Kumar Duration: 41 mins)
‘Gharat’ celebrates the indigenous, traditional watermills of Garhwal, which have been around since as early the 7th century A.D. as the spirit and path to decentralized sustainable development. Director Pankaj Kumar, acclaimed film-maker and editor of ‘Bandit Queen’ narrates the triumphant story of Tau’s attempts to bring electricity to his house with a ‘gharat’ while critiquing the government’s excesses in the name of ‘progress’ like the ‘Tehri Hydel Project’.

Bara(Dir: M.S. Sathyu Duration: 140 mins)

M.S. Sathyu’s classic Bara follows his idealist protagonist as he becomes a mere pawn caught in the intense political rivalry between the chief minister and a political aspirant that is played out in the times of drought and poverty. Local political rowdies instigate chaos. Everything from hiding rice and wheat from the starving public to violating women and igniting a communal war takes place. All this is done just to keep their bellies full at the cost of the poor people. The famine is used as an excuse for all of them to pursue their own personal goals.

CURTAINS!
(a big thanks to Sid for helping me out with insightful bits on films that I could not catch)