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For a country whose cultural nuances have been reduced to song-and-dance sequences in Hindi films, the West is now taking note of India’s non-fiction films

Documentary films made in India are finally getting their due, though loopholes still exist

For a multilingual country whose diverse cultural nuances have been crystallised to the hackneyed song-and-dance sequences in Hindi fiction films, the global West is now, rather curiously, taking note of India’s non-fiction films

Director Vinay Shukla’s While We Watched—a documentary film that chronicles the journey of senior journalist Ravish Kumar, former Senior Executive Editor at NDTV, who has been revered for his journalistic integrity in the face of a dispensation that’s largely inimical to critics—premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September last year. While it still awaits a screening platform in India, the film was also shown as recently as this month in New York’s IFC Centre, alluding to an interesting phenomenon the Indian cinema industry is currently witnessing. For a multilingual country whose diverse cultural nuances have been crystallised to the hackneyed song-and-dance tropes in Hindi fiction films, the global West is now, rather curiously, taking note of India’s non-fiction films.

Earlier this year, the spotlight was resolutely on SS Rajamouli’s pan-India magnum opus RRR at the 95th Academy Awards—and it did win in the Best Original Song category. However, the unexpected victors were documentary filmmakers Kartiki Gosalves, whose film The Elephant Whisperers won in the Best Documentary (Short Film) category, and Shaunak Sen’s All That Breathes, nominated for Best Documentary Feature. Sen’s film had also received the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 2022, while this year, Sarvnik Kaur’s Against the Tide took home the Special Jury prize in Verite filmmaking.

“I think the moment for Indian documentaries began, at a smaller treble, with An Insignificant Man [directed by Vinay Shukla and Khusbhu Ranka] in 2016, because that had a good theatrical run. And then there were other films like Katiyabaaz (2013),” says Sen. In the last three years, he believes there have been an array of Indian non-fiction films that have performed immensely well in the global festival circuit. “We have won at Cannes—last year my film won (L’Oeil d’Or for the best documentary), and the year before Payal Kapadia’s A Night of Knowing Nothing won (the same honour) as well. Then films have travelled to Berlin. So, there’s clearly a moment, and it is absolutely unchallengeable that Indian non-fiction has been doing significantly better than its fiction counterparts,” Sen adds.

A still from Shaunak Sen's All That Breathes, which was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 95th Academy Awards

A still from Shaunak Sen's All That Breathes, which was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 95th Academy Awards

A still from Kartiki Gonsalves's The Elephant Whisperers, which won in the Best Documentary (Short Film) category at the 95th Academy Awards

A still from Kartiki Gonsalves's The Elephant Whisperers, which won in the Best Documentary (Short Film) category at the 95th Academy Awards

So, is anything being done differently now, as compared to how documentaries were approached earlier? The answer isn’t a straightforward one, according to veteran documentary filmmaker Nishtha Jain, whose 2014 film Gulabi Gang won the National Film Award for Best Film on Social Issues. “In the last decade alone, numerous Indian documentaries have had international success, winning prestigious awards and accolades. But in the last two years, three documentaries reached the Oscars and the buzz around them makes it seem that Indian documentaries have only now come of age. It’s not true. The Indian and the world media has only now begun taking Indian documentaries seriously,” Jain, an Academy member herself, points out.

The director doesn’t necessarily believe that the quality of stories being told has witnessed a significant difference or improvement, but ancillary factors have proven to be crucial in the way Indian documentaries are being consumed and perceived today. “Oscar campaigns are often accompanied by huge publicity budgets that enable in-your-face publicity, plus the craze around the Oscars makes sure that everyone is writing about these, and also ensuring that you have heard about every Oscar nominated film much to the disadvantage of other equally deserving films,” Jain says. An uptick in access to international co-productions and international grants in the past decade has also boosted the documentary filmmaking ecosystem in India, where, according to Jain, finding sponsors locally continues to be a challenge.

“There are no funds now, and they’ve been drying up for the last five years. There are some funds available for new and budding filmmakers. But for the ones who are established, literally no funds are available,” says documentary filmmaker Teenaa Kaur Pasricha, whose 2017 film 1984, When the Sun Didn't Rise, won the 65th National Film Award for the Best Investigative Film. According to Kaur Pasricha, the rise of OTT streaming, especially through the Coronavirus pandemic, has led to a disproportionate focus on “entertainment” as opposed to discourse on social causes even for non-fiction films, thereby exacerbating the problem of finding adequate funding for auteurs who choose the latter route.

The hoops to jump through

Kaur Pasricha doesn’t approve of the spate of true crime documentaries that have flooded the OTT-scape over the past few years, as she wonders what the point behind glorifying such repetitively graphic content is. “Indie directors, whether in the fiction or non-fiction format, working in any genre besides horror, crime, sex, and money find it difficult to get financial backing, because producers and distributors are unwilling to invest in original content. This is a very shortsighted way of approaching things, and people need to be able to differentiate between what’s good and what’s bad,” she says.

A still from Teenaa Kaur Pasricha's film 1984, When the Sun Didn't Rise (2017), which won the 65th National Film Award for the Best Investigative Film

A still from Teenaa Kaur Pasricha's film 1984, When the Sun Didn't Rise (2017), which won the 65th National Film Award for the Best Investigative Film

Sen agrees with Kaur Pasricha. When his first film Cities of Sleep was released in 2015, he felt like he had to fight a battle to get to the finishing line of firstly completing the film, followed by crusading for it to reach an audience that proved to be elusive due to a dearth of screening platforms. “I did independent screenings, on college and university campuses, and basically whoever would have me because I did not know where to put it out. Compared to that, when All That Breathes came out, it felt like it had been released in an entirely different world,” he says. But he acknowledges that the flurry of true crime documentaries on streaming platforms has only led to a calcification of the genre in mainstream consciousness, which makes it that much harder for non-fiction films of other kinds to see the light of day.

There’s also the aspect of digesting indigenous subjects to make it more palatable for a white audience—as Indian documentaries continue to bag funding heavily from abroad, and are also widely shown there—that troubles Jain, who approaches this “Hollywoodisation” with a fair amount of skepticism.

A still from Cities of Sleep (2015), directed by Shaunak Sen

A still from Cities of Sleep (2015), directed by Shaunak Sen

A still from Sarvnik Kaur's Soz: A Ballad of Maladies (2016), which was produced by PSBT

A still from Sarvnik Kaur's Soz: A Ballad of Maladies (2016), which was produced by PSBT

And then there’s the issue of censorship, which comes in several iterations. “My first film Soz: A Ballad of Maladies (2016) was produced by the Public Service Broadcasting Trust (PSBT) on a shoe-string budget of six lakh rupees. You can imagine how difficult it becomes to shoot something in Kashmir on that amount of money. Following that, the film was not allowed to air on Doordarshan because it was considered too dangerous, as it dealt with Kashmiri music of resistance,” says Sarvnik Kaur, who won a National Award for said film.

Kaur also highlights the high stakes that accompany the outsourcing of post-production work to countries outside India, owing to a lack of funding within the country, as it makes the playing field uneven. “In these cases, our merit and skills have to be top-notch because we are then competing for resources that are a part of the national funds allotted by the governments of these nations for the work their nationals do,” she says. For Jain, this also means tailoring her film to meet the editorial needs of individuals who don’t necessarily understand the purpose of her work. “A documentary is really made at the editing table, and I like to exercise my independence in my filmmaking practice. But working in an international context, there is increasing pressure from the stakeholders to make your film a product easy to market to the largest number of consumers. This requires making compromises like simplifying the story or (changing) the way it’s told, and I’m not comfortable with these,” she says, adding that when she started making documentaries, she did not enter the field thinking this is how it would be.

Do documentaries have a bright future in India?

The biggest testament for documentaries standing the test of time in India, despite being faced with largely inclement conditions, is its resilience in a country that continues to obfuscate its importance. Besides, it has also earned the bad rap of being too boring, tedious, or academic, as Kaur Pasricha observes. “When we were children, growing up we were indeed watching documentaries that were a little boring in their formats. Also, not every AV film is a documentary. These differentiations need to be drawn, so that people know what a documentary truly is,” she says. However, literacy and interest in the medium is on the rise, as initiatives like DocEdgeKolkata—an annual documentary incubation-cum-pitching forum for Indian and Asian filmmakers—are actively involved in building a community that supports documentary filmmaking.

Nishtha Jain's Gulabi Gang (2014) chronicles the story of a female vigilante group in India by the same name. Sampat Pal Devi formed the group in 2006 in Banda District, Uttar Pradesh. They are geared towards empowering women of all castes, and safeguarding them from domestic violence, sexual violence, and oppression.

Nishtha Jain's Gulabi Gang (2014) chronicles the story of a female vigilante group in India by the same name. Sampat Pal Devi formed the group in 2006 in Banda District, Uttar Pradesh. They are geared towards empowering women of all castes, and safeguarding them from domestic violence, sexual violence, and oppression.

“Professor Nilotpal Majumdar [president at Documentary Resource Initiative, which organises DocEdgeKolkata] trains documentary filmmakers, in order to help them turn their vision into reality. He teaches people how to write proposals that can attract funding opportunities, and also how to pitch films to attract broadcasters once the film is completed,” says Kaur. It was DocEdgeKolkata that had a hand in honing the skills of Shukla and Sen, as the latter also admits that the platform has contributed immensely in shaping upcoming talents like him.

Moreover, with the advent of better technology and advanced equipment available in India today, the definition of documentary filmmaking has evolved in ways that now allow people to even shoot on their phones.

But while Kaur Pasricha is a little conservative about expecting much support as a seasoned professional in the field, she, along with Sen, Jain and Kaur, do believe that the future is bright for the young guns in the country. For Kaur, it is the process, and not the accolades, that feels rewarding, and on most days, that provides enough impetus to her to keep pursuing what she started. “I feel like there is an awakening happening everywhere. We have just reached a point of implosion where people are seeing the dystopian future that we are approaching at breakneck speed,” she says. Right now, the filmmaker believes that the world is in a state of disarray, and is severely lacking in love. “We can’t make sense of what’s on the outside. With documentaries, the process of making one is so hard that you need to look within with a certain amount of love to keep going, which is why I believe documentaries have a bright future. When you can’t make sense of what’s on the outside, you look inside for answers, and that is what documentaries help you achieve,” she signs off.

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