Festival Diary. Day Four-April 3

Day Four of the 8th Kolkata People’s Film Festival commenced with a packed hall and the audience filing into the balcony. We kicked off the screenings with Gay India Matrimony, directed by Debalina. The film engages in a critique of the nationwide debate on same-sex marriage, documented in the form of casual and sometimes intense conversations between members from and outside the queer community in contemporary India. The documentary, shot over a span of five to six years, delves into the deeper intricacies and implications of marriage as a patriarchal institution, gender binaries, rigid classifications of caste and class reflected in urban matrimonial ads, and the inadequacies in current laws governing marriage. Debalina’s use of tongue-in-cheek humour to explore this sensitive subject is a veil to shroud the underlying outrage within the queer community against its mainstream and normative counterparts because queer history is a history of social exclusion and stigmatization. Debalina and her two friends, Gourab and Sayan, go on to explore their marriage prospects with potential same-sex partners and capture the ensuing commotion on camera. The reactions and responses to their outrageous decisions range from ridiculous to shocking. Many factions within the community believe we are a bit closer to the final milestone now that section 377 has been struck down, while others disagree. This documentary is an important piece to add to that ongoing debate. In the live Q&A session, some tagged marriage as a fragile commodity, while others spoke about the hardliners appropriating marriage for their benefit. But for a community long sidelined by the heteronormative “lamestream,” it is a fight for emancipation, social integration, and a way to solemnize their love through a culture of celebration.  

In Aruna, Akshay S. Poddar explores the contentious issue of ‘marital separation,’ through the short fiction genre. The film explores the stigma of marital separation and how his protagonist, Aruna, who is recently separated, fights that stigma. Akshay brings on a clever focus on kinship patterns and domestic violence, and how a woman’s family relationship or marital quality can influence their agency. In India, like marriage, divorce is used as a brand, albeit a brand that no one wants to subscribe to. Throughout the movie, we see a pattern of disdain and ‘othering’ meted out to Aruna. Even if she tries to eke out an independent life, her pitiful status invites unsolicited attention and commentary from her neighbours, and predatory stares from other men around her. She visibly becomes a liability even in her sister’s life. Aruna is a painful reminder of the position of single or divorced women in India caught in a regressive belief system.

Amit Jacob’s Machan (The Scaffolding) is a social commentary on inequality in children’s education and the intricate relationship between schooling and poverty in the global south. The film examines how the working poor’s limited social and economic standing are contributing factors to educational marginalization in post-liberalization India. Machan is a story of two friends – Deepak, from an affluent background and Pakya from the working class – who forge a strong bond despite their socio-economic differences. The district-school teacher convinces his daily-wage parents about the utility of the state’s free and compulsory education (incentive) scheme. Much like the scene where Deepak and the other kids at school sing, “the new leaves began to sprout, opening new ways to begin,” Pakya’s life slowly starts to look like Deepak’s, and we see a trusting relationship unfolding between the two. But, when the local brick kiln shuts its operations, Pakya’s parents are forced to relocate and Pakya is forced to quit school again. The movie closes with the scene of Pakya’s departure. The director uses the same red van to tie the ending scene back to the beginning. The red van here becomes emblematic of departure and migration. The monochrome still frames in the closing scene are a moving reminder of Pakya’s past and the moving red van is indicative of the new and unknown. 

The director deploys class relations in the contemporary context of economic liberalism and political and social illiberalism. Machan, meaning a temporary structure used by workers as scaffolding during construction work, is symbolic of the fleeting nature of migrant labourers who keep moving from one region to another for work. Machan shows us how economic and physical hardships faced by poor parents can often shape their efforts to support their children’s schooling. Or, how the decisions concerning children’s education can be influenced solely by the family’s perceptions of its importance as a substitute for paid labour. 

The conversations from the first session continued through the quick lunch break. The afternoon session opened with Nangi Bheet (Naked Wall), directed by Anant Dass Sahni. The opening montages of the film with the phone calls, nervousness, and stolen glances across the road, portray young romance. A crush. This perceived innocence is played out against a tapestry of caste, religion, masculinities, patriarchy and ultimately violence and death. A young man in love with a woman from a different religion, his older relative in love with a woman of a different caste. Intense patriarchy, and fleeting tenderness. Shot on location at the border of Haryana and Rajasthan, the film shows the space, using both language and music effectively. The cinematographer, Debjit Samanta, mentioned in the conversation that followed that it was a conscious decision to depict the violence as subtly as possible. 

The second film, Bheeja Neel Tarpal (Wet Blue Tarpaulin), directed by Anunay Barbhuiya picked up the conversation of identity, loss of space and the sense of not belonging in one’s own home, a common thread running through the festival. Identity politics against the backdrop of the NRC in Assam. A young man trying long-distance to help his wife submit their official papers, hearing news of loved ones whose names are on the lists, all over the phone. The frustration of missed calls and phones drained of battery, a message with bad news, the daily drudgery of work, isolation and loneliness are shown through silences, sudden one-sided conversations, and a raincoat carried everywhere by the protagonist. In the conversation that followed, Barbhuiya spoke of the significance behind the name—the tarpaulin as a physical representation of the ‘temporary’ and a lack of a place to call home. The cat—a constant through the film – is also a significant trope. Bheeja Neel Tarpal showed both the inhuman nature of draconian acts such as the NRC and the struggle against time faced by an individual—both to prove his and his wife’s identity and in his daily livelihood. His employer and supervisors are not inhuman, although the suggestion to get fake papers reinforces the fact that one’s rights can be tenuous, dependent on politics, and the way the wind blows. 

The afternoon session concluded with another account of pain, loss, and a quest for identity. A haunting yet poetic tale of rootlessness, Ghar ka Pata (Home Address), directed by Madhulika Jalali, begins with an attempt to reconstruct the long lost home of her birth, a place and of a time that loosely exists in her memory. A memory that is essentially a shadow of her family’s collective memory. Madhulika Jalali is a Kashmiri Pandit. Today, in the wake of films like the ‘Kashmir Files’ when the pain and loss of an entire community have been co-opted and warped to serve various agendas, a telling of intimate stories that carefully weaves together fragments of reality is of utmost importance. Jalali was forced to leave her home as a child. Twenty-four years later, when her father took the family to Srinagar she found herself in a land barely known, where loss and longing manifest at every turn, yet, hope lingers on as a spirited companion. These experiences and their documentation unfurl a truth starkly different from what the RSS-BJP led saffron camp propagates to achieve their agenda of divisive faultlines, bloodshed and enmity. Jalali mentions that as an artist, she is interested in how memories and forgetting shape our perceptions. Changing landscapes and a lack of preservation of history make organized forgetting easier. Thus, from the vacuum emerges the possibility of reconstruction of fragmented and warped reality which fascist forces actively use for their nefarious purposes. 

A Bid for Bengal, directed by Dwaipayan Banerjee and Kasturi Basu, exposes historical fault lines and reveals the machinations of frontal organizations in the Hindu right-wing network responsible for the recent political shift in West Bengal. The filmmakers said that this is a ‘film born out of our unease with our present’, and deep scorching doubt about the past. The documentary is a quest to find answers to several questions that have been haunting us for a while now. How did the Hindu-nationalist politics find a foothold in West Bengal after all these decades? What led to the eruption of violent riots in a state where once a Chief Minister commented ‘Sarkar na chaile danga hoi na’ (Riots do not happen unless those in power want them to)? In Bengal, religious organizations had to talk along leftist-socialist lines. What made the entire conversation revolve around nothing but Hindi-Hindu-Hindutva? In the post-screening discussions, Dwaipayan said the fault lines have always been there. The great Kolkata Killings happened in 1946. Bengal was divided along religious lines, providing ample scope for fanatics and fundamentalists to dictate the politics along those lines. The film ends on a bittersweet note. BJP was defeated at the 2021 State assembly elections. The No Vote to BJP campaign was a crucial political resistance. But the election has ruptured West Bengal Politics. The parliamentary left and the Congress have been decimated. BJP has still emerged as the only relevant opposition. As has been a recurring theme throughout the festival, these are dark, dangerous and depressing times. BJP needs a parliament to operate, whereas their guardians RSS and several other Hindutva organizations like the VHP penetrate and spread their poison. They get into people’s homes, mobile phones, kitchens, and bedrooms. They infiltrate the very air that we breathe, the blood that runs through our veins. Hate is strong. Social divisions are evident. Struggle and resistance are the needs of the hour. 

With the festival almost reaching its end, the closing note was delivered by Sayantani and Utsa. They mentioned how in the times of rising fascism in India, and arbitrary censorships, spaces like Kolkata People’s Film Festival becomes important evermore. The salient feature of this festival is that it is independent and doesn’t take any government fund or corporate fund, which lets it be independent. The post-pandemic situation and its continuing effects challenged People’s Film Collective at every step while organizing this festival but they were determined to hold this festival again to renew the conversations, camaraderie and solidarity with everyone. This year, all the 38 screened films brought out the broadening fault lines of our society. Times like ours, require screening films that question the ruling dispensations and institutions in power. With spaces shrinking either due to shutdown, censorship or towing the government line, festivals like KPFF becomes places to show films that bring truth to power and engage with our surrounding critically. Hence, despite all the challenges, they decided to go ahead with the festival and that was possible because of everybody who were involved in making it a success. They formally expressed their gratitude towards everybody including the directors, selection committee, volunteers, Uttam Mancha, vendors, technicians, and the audience. They ended their note by announcing a new venture “Selections from KPFF”. During the festival, many college, university going students and faculty alike expressed their desire to screen some of the films projected at the festival. They want to organise the screenings at their respective colleges and universities. So “Selections from KPFF” will help with that. If any department, college, or university wishes to screen any of the films shown at the festival, they can contact People’s Film Collective. PFC will travel to their screening with the film if the organizers can arrange venue, projection and other technical and logistical details. This is to ensure that more and more people who missed the festival, can watch the films and take the conversation to its intended goal. PFC is also planning to resume their regular activities like, monthly screenings, little cinema, their magazine, “Protirodher Cinema” will be published on August 15 during the Frames of Freedom festival by PFC. They ended the note by saying that the 9th KPFF will be back in January 2023 at the same place and they hope to see everyone to be there. 

The film festival concluded with Jhini Bini Chadariya (The Brittle Thread), directed by Ritesh Sharma, a film exploring the love and hate dimensions in Varanasi. The film portrays the complicated social fabric from his very first shot. Crude-lewd-filthy India, gleaming with boisterous life. Headstrong, feisty street dancer Rani works hard to provide for her daughter and give her a life different from hers. Reclusive weaver Shahdab discovers a new world in his friendship with an Israeli tourist. Their world is filled with little things, small joys and a dark looming shadow threatening to consume anything and everything that makes this otherwise battered world liveable. This is a story about the battles of hard-working life that unite common people everywhere. But often the case of the city is that these stories get drowned out by the noise of the tolling of bells and loud prayers. While the centre of Varanasi is currently being demolished alongside old temples and mosques, local communities stand on the edge of a schism. ‘Jhini Bini Chadariya’, a poem by Kabir, becomes a powerful metaphor for how people are interconnected and how life is always in the process of weaving itself. The director has created a collage of the heartland, drawn with great empathy and a deep sense of understanding of the nuances and complexities that form the subcontinent.  

Report:Paroma, Mayurakshi, Koel

Photo: Sayan, Nivedita 

Kolkata People’s Film Festival 

31 March-3 April

Uttam Manch (Hazra)

Entry Free