The defector - Leaving North Korea

"The defector" is a documentary film by Korean-Canadian director Ann Shin that follows a group of persons who escape from North Korea in their search for freedom. It is like a thriller as it follows a journey across different Asian countries. The film also makes you reflect on ideas and words like sovereignty, defection, illegal emigrants and human traffickers, usually heard on TV news and perceived as abstract concepts.

"The defector" will be part of Mondovisioni, the International Documentary Film Festival that will be held at Kinodromo cinema in Bologna between January to April 2014.

Introduction

Every year hundreds of thousands of persons leave their countries for dangerous journeys in search of a better life. Many of them lose their lives during these journeys. Some of them are caught during transit in other countries and exploited or imprisoned. Some other are caught in their destination country and sent back. Finally some of them, manage to escape in their destination countries and hide as "clandestines", hoping for some way of legalizing their presence sooner or later.

The clandestines and those who somehow manage to get a legal status in their new homelands, inspire hundreds of other hopefuls from their villages and cities to follow their paths.

There are opportunities for making money from these journeys - at every step of the journey, through each of transit countries and finally in the destination country, some monetary transaction occurs. The persons who organize and help the journeys are called agents or guides by the emigrants and "human traffickers" by the destination countries. They may be linked to organised crime networks. They are known to be ruthless, exploitative and brutal. At the same time, they need to ensure that at least some emigrants reach the destination, otherwise the word of their non-reliability spreads and they lose business.

The emigrants, usually from lower strata, who do not have the qualifications or the resources to become legal emigrants or student-emigrants, need significant amounts of money for these journeys.

Despotic regimes, wars and conflicts also force large numbers of persons to leave their homes and thus increase the pressure on illegal emigration. "The Defector" follows one such journey.

The film

"The defector" follows a small group of persons from North Korea during their journey in China. From north of China, they travel to Xian, accompanied by their guide Mr. Dragon. Then they travel from Xian to Kunming. Finally, they are taken over by another guide who takes them through parts of Laos to northern Thailand, where they can come out as refugees. After spending a few months in Thailand, they enter South Korea, their destination country.

The film focuses on the stories of three persons - the guide, Mr. Dragon and two North Korean women - Sook Ja and Yong Hee.

Mr. Dragon, with a past in North Korean army, had crossed into China more than 10 years ago and is guide/trafficker for other North Koreans. Sook Ja wants to escape from the repressive regime in North Korea and to find her sister, who had escaped seven years earlier and then disappeared. Yong Hee, sold as an illegal bride to a Chinese farmer more than 10 years earlier, wants to escape from the illegal life.

A small part of the film is about Mr. Heo, a north Korean refugee in Canada and his efforts to help other north Korean refugees.

Comments

The film has been shot with hidden cameras and you never see the full faces of any persons escaping from North Korea. Most of the film is about the journey in China - from the north to Kunming. It shares some details about how to escape the control systems in China, but most such information that can be used to trace specific persons or the escape routes is not there. As spectators you are quickly drawn into the stories of the three main protagonists of the film and you can feel their fear and tension, wondering if they are going to make or will get caught and sent back to face prisons and torture in North Korea?

The film has some scenes from north Korea about the general poverty but the stories of the three protagonists are not so much about poverty as they are about repression in the country and their search for better life opportunities.

Talking about the making of the film, Ann Shin had written:

One of the North Koreans not chosen by Dragon was Kyung-shil, a pretty young woman wearing a sparkly sweater and black high heels. She had defected several years ago and ended up in the hands of traffickers in China. Now she worked as a call girl and sent money to her family back in North Korea. Estimates are that eight out of 10 North Korean women found in China are trafficked and sold to men as brides, or sold into the sex industry. (The one-child policy in China had created a demand for North Korean women.)

I wondered if Sook-ja’s older sister had been trafficked.

Dragon told Kyung-shil and the others that he would come back for them on his next trip. For now, he, Sook-ja and my camera crew had a long journey ahead of us where we would travel and film covertly.

We journeyed day and night on buses and trains, jumping off at certain times to avoid inspectors. Dragon knew the schedules like clockwork and we all grew to trust him implicitly. Making documentaries is a leap of faith; That faith is built on the trust a filmmaker establishes with his or her subjects. It’s remarkable how quickly trust builds when lives are at stake.

The most heart-wrenching part of the journey was when the defectors were only miles away from freedom. Trekking through the Laotian jungle, having evaded police patrols and crossed two mountains, Sook-ja suddenly broke down in tears. The realization had just struck her: she was utterly alone. She could see now that her elderly mother would never be able to make this physically demanding journey. The whole purpose of her trek was to reunite her family, but she hadn’t found her sister, and she would never see her mother again.

“I want to erase my name,” she wept. “I want to forget the memory of being born and growing up.”

The journeys of the emigrants are all about loss and alienation - dreaming of better futures and losing families and friends, fearing for families and friends, and living clandestine lives in alien lands where they are just a commodity for sale and exploitation. The nightmares do not end even when they reach the lands of their dreams - in South Korea, they need to go through a process to ensure that they are not north Korean spies. The fear for their family and friends left in north Korea never ends and making a new life is tough, because prejudices run deep.

Personally I found Dragon to be the most interesting character in the film - for the law in China and Laos, he is a "human trafficker" - exploiting the escapees for earning money, but he sees himself as a human rights fighter, helping his country-persons to find a new life and risking his own life. "I am brutal" he agrees, "but it is the only way to save their lives and my life."

In the new globalized world, the rich are welcome every where, money and goods can move freely across borders but not other human beings. Thus people from the south, try to cross the Mexican-USA border, while immigrants to West Europe face dangerous journeys across eastern Europe and Mediterranean sea.

Each of them follows a dream but most of those who survive, live lives of exploitation and discrimination, holding on desperately to life, willing to settle for a precarious security, hoping for better lives for their children. "The defectors" gives you a glimpse into their lives.

***

God loves Uganda! Unfortunately.

The documentary film “God loves Uganda” by director Roger Ross Williams is about American christian groups who feel that they have a special mission for Uganda and about the impact of their work on different aspects of human rights in the African country. The film provides a glimpse into one of the forces that has shaped large parts of humanity in the last five hundred years – the force of cultural colonization.

“God loves Uganda” is part of the international documentary film festival called Mondovisioni, that will be held at Kinodromo cinema in Bologna (Italy) in January-April 2014.

Introduction

About five hundred years ago, the colonization era saw Europeans spreading out towards American, African and Asian lands. Exploiting the natural resources of the conquered lands was the most important goal of this colonization. It also resulted in actions that shaped millions of lives, including the decimation of indigenous populations and the slave trade. The conquering armies were accompanied by missionaries, who were supposed to take the word of “the only true God” to the heathen "to civilise them".

Thus colonization took cultural ideas from the old world and established their hegemony in the conquered lands. After the end of the second world war, as the colonies became free countries, they usually carried the legacies of the colonial rules in their national constitutions and laws. It has been difficult to shake off those colonial legacies. For example, even today, the laws made by the British in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, continue to be the laws of independent India, including the infamous art. 377 of the Indian penal code that classifies homosexual relationships as a criminal offence.

The ideas of “the only true religion”, “the only true God”, “the only true prophet” and “the only true God’s book” are common to many religions but have been especially true for certain Christian and Muslim groups. Therefore, saving the souls of those who do not know about or believe in "the true God", has motivated many persons to dedicate their lives in spreading the word of God among the “non-believers”, including to persons of their own religions but who had slightly different beliefs.

“God loves Uganda” is about an evangelical American group who believe that all the answers of life are in the Bible. They have identified Uganda as the "God's land". About 84% of the population of Uganda is Christian, while another 12% is Muslim.

Film

Groups of American young men and women are influenced by charismatic church leaders like Lou Engle and Rev. Jo Anna Watson, to spend parts of their lives in spreading the words of love, brotherhood, peace and the true teachings of Bible to Uganda. “One million missionaries, one billion converts and one trillion dollars of funds” is the dream goal of one of the groups’ leaders from a church based on an ecstatic trance kind of religious ceremonies.

The American evangelicals have opened their centres in Uganda where they recruit and train young Ugandans to spread their ideas among others. The Ugandan acolytes are accompanied by the young missionaries from America. They are relentless and aggressive, standing on street sides and shouting to people about the dangers of sinning and the urgency of coming to the path of the true religion.

Persons like Rev. Kapya Kaoma and bishop Christopher Senyonjo, from Anglican church and traditional Ugandan church explain how the conservative ideas promoted by the American groups have taken hold among the general population, politicians and leaders of Uganda. These ideas touch on subjects like abstinence, adultery, use of condoms, abortions and homosexuality.

The film focuses especially on the conservative evangelical ideas about homosexuality and how those ideas have influenced the parliament debate in Uganda and resulted in the approval of a new national law that foresees a death penalty for homosexuals. At the same time, it has stoked growing intolerance in the public opinion towards gay, lesbian and transgender persons.

A sequence of the film shows a public meeting where evangelical pastor Martin Ssempa, through graphic images explains that homosexuality is all about licking assholes and eating shit, and thus needs to be punished by death. “The world, the U.N., all the countries have been taken over homosexuals. They will come and make your sons and daughters become perverts and homosexuals. Only we can stop them, it is our duty to stop them”, he thunders in the meeting.

Another episode of the film shows the funeral of a GLBT rights activist, during which the pastor criticises and asks the friends and companions of the activist, to give up being gay and lesbian, followed by attacks of goons on the persons who do not agree with his sermon.

Comments

The film is a frightening look at how good intentions, firm beliefs in God, peace and love, can become instruments of madness, murder and intolerance. That persons promoting and condoning these things are no scary zombies but rather next-door kind of clean-cut American and Ugandan young men and women, makes it even more frightening.

The American evangelical missionaries have actively collaborated with making of this film – they are very open in sharing their ideas and their activities. They are convinced that what they are doing is good and are willing to share everything about it. Their certainties in their religious beliefs makes any kind of dialogue and questioning difficult if not impossible. The strategy of American evangelical conservatives is to start by working with orphanages, schools and education system - by influencing and converting young people to their way of thinking.

The world knows much more about the impact of Wahabi ideas on the promotion of a fundamentalist and traditional view of Islam in different parts of the world. Similar knowledge about impact of conservative evangelical groups is much less, though their role in promoting American wars around the world and the American government's resistance to use of condoms and family planning measures (especially under the Bush administration) have been talked about. "God loves Uganda" shows that they are not very different from their Wahabi brothers.

I had read about the strong views against homosexuality in countries like Uganda and Malawi, but I had imagined that these were due to “traditional African beliefs”! “God loves Uganda” shows that there is nothing "traditional African" about them - ideas of conservative evangelicals from USA have played an active role in arriving at this kind of public opinion and the intolerant laws.

Conclusions

“God loves Uganda” is a close look at how the desire of "helping others", promoted by persons with strong beliefs and lot of money, can influence and change a society's beliefs, and reinforce certain kind of ideas.

Wahabi islamists and evangelicals like IHOP (International house of prayer, Kansas, USA) are not the only ones who want to mould the world to their ideas. Other hardliners including conservative groups among Jews, Buddhist, Hindus and Sikhs, have been inspired by them and have similar ambitions, though usually their activities are focused in their own countries.

How these conservative religious views and processes are shaping our world and what kind of world will be there tomorrow? What role is played by the new technologies in the globalized world in spreading of such views? In the war between the ideas embodied in the United Nations’ declaration of human rights and the ideas of conservative religious groups, which ideas will dominate humanity in the coming decades? The film left me troubled, pondering on such questions.

***

Blood on fire in a cynical world

Dylan Mohan Gray's film "Fire in the blood" moves you and makes you despair for the future of world. It tells the story of more than 10 million people who died due to the uncontrolled greed of Big Pharma. It forces you to think of those other countless millions, who continue to die around the world because of the way the Big Pharma operates. Yet, "Fire in the blood" is a film filled with hope - it inspires you to stand up for your rights and fight for a better world.

"Fire in the blood" will be part of the Mondovisioni, the international documentary film festival, that will be held at Kinodromo, Via Pietralata of Bologna between January and April 2014. You can check the reviews of other films in programme at Mondovisioni festival by clicking here.

Introduction

"Fire in the blood" is the story of persons with AIDS and their fight for medicines. This story illustrates how Big Pharma (ab)used international laws and manipulated governments in ruthless endeavour to increase their profits. This is the same way that big tobacco companies, armaments industry, big oil companies, international mining and petroleum companies, big food and seeds companies, etc. work. Ownership of most of these companies are interlinked.

Any discussions or questions about the modus operandi of these big multi-national corporations are immediately attacked as "communists", "anti-capitalists", "anarchists" and "radicals". Persons who raise these issues are called "against development" and "they want to maintain poverty". In reality the corporations of the Big Pharma are "monopolies disguised as free-market campaigners", they refuse any kind of middle ground and are as extreme as any communist regime they criticise.

Vandana Shiva in a recent article in Guardian had written about this convoluted idea of "development" characterized by the Big Pharma and other corporations as: "A living forest does not contribute to growth, but when trees are cut down and sold as timber, we have growth. Healthy societies and communities do not contribute to growth, but disease creates growth through, for example, the sale of patented medicine. ..Water available as a commons shared freely and protected by all provides for all. However, it does not create growth. But when Coca-Cola sets up a plant, mines the water and fills plastic bottles with it, the economy grows. But this growth is based on creating poverty – both for nature and local communities."

"Big Pharma" towards which "Fire in the blood" points an accusing finger, include companies that sell brand name "blockbuster" medicines such as Pfizer, Roche, Glaxo Smith Kline, Novartis, Merck and Bayer. "The top ten big pharma companies in "Fortune 500" list earn more than the remaining 490 companies combined together, but their greed for money is endless", says Fire in the Blood, "only 5 cents per dollar of what they earn goes back to the research of new medicines."

The film

When the AIDS epidemic broke out in the 1980s, soon Africa became the continent where it affected the most persons. In the initial years, when there were no medicines to control AIDS, millions of persons died all over the world. The first successful treatment of AIDS came out in 1996 but it was very costly - around 15,000 dollars/person/per year - a cost that was not accessible to millions of AIDS patients in the developing world. The new AIDS treatment made of a mixture of drugs, dramatically changed the lives of people in the developed countries, giving them back near normal lives, but only a tiny minority of persons in the developing world had the resources to get these medicines.

Countries like Thailand and Brazil started producing these medicines but these could not be imported to Africa because of patent laws and pressure of countries like USA and European Union. In 2000, Dr Hamied, CEO of an Indian drug company called CIPLA, told a high level meeting of U.N., governments and big Pharma that he can supply those medicines for 350 USD/person/year but his offer was ignored. Activists launched a campaign, but the decision of South African government to import these medicines was blocked with a lawsuit by the big Pharma.

CIPLA made another proposal of reducing costs, offering treatment for 200 USD/person/year. Initially generic medicines from India were attacked as "counterfeit, illegal and low quality". Though Africa provided less than 1% of the income of the big Pharma, it opposed the import of low cost medicines in Africa fearing that such practices will undermine their long term incomes from rapidly developing countries like China and India, and that they might put pressure on companies in US and Europe to reduce the costs in domestic markets.

In 2003 big Pharma and countries like USA and EU bowed to the mounting international pressure and negative public opinion, and stopped their opposition to import of life-saving AIDS drugs in Africa. In the mean time, between 1996 and 2003, when people could have been treated, more than 10 million persons had died needlessly in the developing world.

To avoid similar challenges to its control in future, since 2003 Big Pharma has launched other measures with the support of World Trade Organization and governments of USA and EU  - an international trade agreement called TRIPS, and other bilateral trade agreements. India's patent laws have also been changed so that it can not challenge the Big Pharma.

Comments

I remember participating in different initiatives around the end of 1990s and the beginning of 2000s to talk about the situation of HIV positive persons especially in Africa and their lack of access to the anti-AIDS treatment. I also remember the joy when the Big Pharma had been forced to withdraw its court fight against the import of generic anti-AIDS drugs in South Africa. Still Dylan's film has managed to surprise me by providing new insights in the complex issue of access to medicines and human rights.

Access to medicines has different aspects and point of views. "Fire in the blood" manages to present them in an easy to understand manner by focusing on the stories of the people. It uses a lot of historical footage. It has many well known personalities like former US president Bill Clinton, archbishop Desmond Tutu and the south African icon Nelson Mandela, talking about the issue of medicines. It also presents interviews with different persons who had played a key role in the fight against the Big Pharma like Jackie Achmat and Jamie Love. Photography, music and editing of the film are wonderful.

At the end of the film, it is easy to feel disgusted by the behaviour of the Big Pharma and the support they still manage to get from US and EU Governments. The film makes the point that in spite of all their talks about human rights and high principles, Big Pharma with support from willing governments was responsible for millions of deaths due to lack of access to affordable medicines.

It is also discouraging to understand that though that particular fight was won by ordinary persons, similar fights about other issues such as medicines and life-saving technologies, tobacco, food, seeds and nature are still going on with little attention from the rest of the world.

The ownership of corporations controlling Big Pharma has links with big media companies - they have big institutions, famous names of experts and academics, they use and manipulate concepts like free choice, liberty of expression and free markets through popular and specialized media. They create philanthropy foundations, run beautiful advertisements of the good work they are doing, they "donate" free medicines for the "diseases of the poor" - all the while consolidating their control on lives and deaths of people!

Personally I am not a pessimistic person. I believe that change will come. None of the worst tyrannies of the world has lasted for ever. History shows that when the despots and dictators feel strong, the seeds of their destruction are growing in their bellies. So the reign of the corporations will also end. The question is, while we wait for the change, who is going to pay the price of their reign with their lives?

Do not miss on "Fire in the blood", it is worth watching!

***

Powerless - The Ironman and the Goddess

" Powerless" is an engaging documentary film around the theme of electricity in India. It explores the lives of the urban poor and the impact of electricity shortage. It also looks at how the system makes it so difficult, if not impossible, to bring any kind of reform. It tells the stories of two persons - Ritu Maheshwari, an officer who wishes to bring reform; and Loha Singh, an electricity thief, who looks at himself as a kind of Robinhood. "Powerless" is a powerful film, forcing you to reflect on your ideas of right and wrong.

Ironman and the Goddess

When I saw "Powerless", I was immediately struck by the names of its two key figures - Loha Singh and Ritu Maheshwari. Loha Singh, literally means "Iron Lion" and Maheshwari, the wife of Shiva, is the goddess Shakti in Hinduism. With an anti-hero playing with fire and the lady official, using her power in the hierarchy to bring a change, can be seen as the story of the Ironman and the Goddess.

In the initial part of the film, the two start on the opposite sides - Maheshwari wants to reduce the financial losses caused by the electricity theft and Loha Singh wants to ensure that small entrepreneurs and their workshops can continue to run, even if that means that he steals electricity. As the film proceeds, you realize that both have their hands tied and that both will be used and then abandoned by the system.

Maheshwari is an IAS officer, part of the Indian National Administrative service. To become an IAS officer, you need to go through a tough entrance exam and a selection process. Every year, hundreds of thousands of young graduates from the small towns of India try this entrance test and only a small minority manages to get in. Some of them, like Maheshwari, come with idealism and dreams of reforming the system.

Loha Singh is a barely literate nobody, who has come through a life of informal, low paying exploitative jobs since his early childhood. Circumstances have made him a "katiyabaaz", someone who splices the electric wires. His life is still one of poverty and a daily game of roulette that can end with his death.

Kanpur, the city where Maheshwari and Loha Singh come across each other, with 3 million population is an industrial town on the banks of the river Ganges in the state of Uttar Pradesh (UP) in north India.

Story

Kanpur faces chronic electricity (power) shortage, with long power-cuts that last up to 10-15 hours every day. The electrical infrastructure of the city is grossly outdated with loss of electricity and frequent burnouts. Personnel of the electric supply company ask for bribes from the consumers - bribes are needed for everything, including for manipulating electric bills and supply.

Loha Singh knows how to connect you to the electric lines passing on the streets and if needed, he can steal electricity from your neighbours. He has grown up in the city, starting as a child worker. His clients call him Robinhood - it costs less to pay him than to bribe the personnel of electric company and he responds faster to their needs.

Ritu Maheshwari, an idealistic IAS officer is the new CEO of the electric company, she has just arrived in Kanpur. She wants to reform by mobilizing the personnel, answering the needs of clients, and stopping the electrical losses through theft. Persons with long experience in the company and set in their ways (mostly men), tolerate her with smirks and barely masked contempt, but Maheshwari is persistent, and she refuses to back down.

Many persons in the city and the personnel both are unhappy with Maheshwari's reforms. She is disturbing the status quo without any improvement in electric supply. The summer has arrived and the electricity need is increased. People who have the means, use their own generators increasing the pollution.

Loha Singh does not care about Maheshwari. He knows that officials can come and go, but the city is not going to change.

Election time arrives. Irfan Solanki, a local politician, intervenes, asking Maheshwari to back off. However Maheshwari does not understand the rules of political patronage, and refuses to bend. Solanki thunders about the "arrogant woman who wants to command" in his election campaign and gains public support to win the election. Maheshwari is transferred to another city and the life goes back to the old ways.

Comments

Usually such films are made when such stories are already over and have created some news for some reason. The film-makers collect testimonies, share documents and stage some of the key events for making their documentaries. Some times, on some drammatic real-life events, commercial films can also be made. In "Powerless" it is remarkable that the real-life drammaticity of the whole arc of events has been captured with actual protagonists without staging or fictionalizing anything.

The film has three main characters - the city of Kanpur, Loha Singh and Ritu Maheshwari. It gives us an intimate glimpse into some of the complex issues facing the individuals who need to negotiate their lives in the context of local social, cultural and economic systems. "Powerless" does not explain the complexity, you can glimpse the complexity through the lives of Loha Singh and Maheshwari.

The city of Kanpur in the film is a part of the old city. It is not presented in the kitsch magic realism of Bollywood - rather it is a dystopic post-modern scenario where the city is like a dark urban jungle of decaying houses, dirty spaces of garbage and open drains, with hundreds of electric wires criss-crossing the screen like spiderwebs. The usual joie de vivre between the people in India that usually dominates its congested life spaces, is hardly visible in this film. Rather the spaces are dominated by moments of anger, angst and despair. Large parts of the film have been shot at night, sometimes during power blackouts, that deepens the dark mood of the film.

The continuing feudal mentality of the people, after 60 years of independence of India, comes out when the middle aged man pleading his case and asking for leniency, sits down on his knees and calls the officials "Mai baap" (mother and father). It comes out when the local politician Solanki, shouts at Maheshwari in her office, "Lower that finger, don't you dare, I am the representative of the people."

Loha Singh has the biting carelessness and wistfulness of a man living on the edge. He knows the system and understands that idealistic officers trying to achieve legality are without any hope of success and that his life will continue. He is also aware of his own fragility when he acknowledges that he does not know any other work and has no other options for survival. His hands carry the scars of his daily duels with the naked live electrical wires. He also knows that sooner or later his luck is going to run out and he is going to end with an accident that will kill or disable him.

Ritu Maheshwari has the look of a small town woman. She has a house with a garden and a marble floor. Compared to the dark world of Loha Singh, her life is luxurious (though in comparison with the booming entrepreneur and professional classes of the upworldly mobile India, it would be considered very modest - in fact, few persons from well-off families in India, dream of being part of IAS). She has already been transferred many times but has not yet lost her idealism. In the patriarchal society, women like Maheshwari can be venerated like goddesses at some levels, especially in the media, but at more personal levels and especially with their male colleagues, they are often bitched about as being arrogant or dominating. At the end of the film, she knows that she has lost her fight. Unless she can forget her idealism and learn some of the rules of the game, a life of transfers from one place to another awaits her.

Editing and music are used very well in the film, adding to its quasi-commercial film drammaticity. In fact watching "Powerless" reminded me of a recent commercial film, "Shanghai" (by Dipankar Banerjee, 2012), that had some common elements with it - it was also based in an UP town and had an upright IAS officer. "Shanghai" was about the murder of an idealistic politician who is unwanted because he questions the dominant notions of development and globalization. In that film, the IAS officer manages to extract his revenge from the subservient bureaucracy and the corrupt politicians. Compared to most of the commercial films coming out of Bollywood, "Shanghai" was not bad.

However I prefer "Powerless" because it made me reflect on how each of us, and our interests, influence the system and how that makes it so difficult to change that system! The film's title "Powerless" is about lack of electrical power, but it is also about lack of power in the persons to change the system.

Credits

Directed by Fahad Mustafa and Deepti Kakkar
Assistant director: Jamal Mustafa
Production assistant: Ahsan Iqbal
Associate producer: Leopold Koegler
Cinematographer/editor: Maria Trieb
Editor: Namrata Rao
Music composers: Amit Kilam, Rahul  Ram and Nora Kroll Rosenbaum
Sound designer: Kunal Sharma
Production: Globistan Films along with ITVS and others
Website: http://www.powerless-film.com/ (film stills used above are from this website)

***

Kalakaar - Visual artists in contemporary India

Avijit Mukul Kishore's documentary film in two volumes, "To let the world in", provides an intimate and rare glimpse of some of the better known visual artists from contemporary India.

The world of visual artists is a hidden world and a largely ignored world, except by the people who deal with art. The only exceptions are when suddenly some artist gets in the limelight because of some scandal, like M. F. Hussein. In the recent years, economic magazines and investment bankers have also started talking about some Indian artists whose works command big money. However, both these kinds of spotlights on the artists, have little to do with them as artists and with their art.

This article is about the first volume of the documentary film "To let the world in". The film presents brief interviews with some important visual artists of contemporary India, and shows some of their works. The interviews deal with issues like early influences, finding one's own specific path of artistic expression, and interactions between artists. The visual arts touched in the film vary from paintings, sculptures, installations, photography and performances. A key area of discussion on which many of the women artists talk about is gender and art.

The film starts with artists born in the 1930s and proceeds towards younger persons.

UNDERSTANDING ART

Whatever be the area of a creative expression - writing  or painting or acting - people are always interested in understanding what made the artist reach that specific artistic expression. "What did you and why did you want to express that?", they ask.

Arpita, one of the artists in the film illustrates this when she says, "If I have made a fish, you should also see a fish. But people ask you 'what is it?' so you have to write down everything that this is a fish, this a flower ..."

I think that there is some confusion among artists and among general public in differentiating between the "artistic expression" from "understanding art". At one level, art is about experiencing it, feeling it emotionally and instinctively rather than trying to understand it logically. At another level, somehow people are also interested in whys and hows of the art.

I feel that not all persons who are good at "artistic expression" are equally good at "explaining and understanding their art", and that these are two specific and separate skills. Good artists may be skilled at expressing their feelings and emotions in their art-form, but they may not be good at explaining the subconscious processes and ideas that prompted that artistic expression.

To understand this difference, I like to use the example of persons with obsessive dreams. A person can be a wonderful dreamer and may have strong obsessions about some dreams, but that person can not always understand the significance of those dreams and may need the help of a psychologist or a psychiatrist to understand that. However, most of the time we are happy with our dreams as they are, we do not go to psychologists or psychiatrists to understand them.

Thus, in my opinion, when people say that art-experts and art-critics are "frustrated artists" (or even book critics and film critics), I think that they are confusing between two different skills.

Coming back to the film, seeing different artists tell about their creative processes and their lives, was a wonderful opportunity to look at their art through their eyes. It adds new dimensions to their work. For example, I felt moved by the explanation of Sudhir Patwardhan about the changing relationships between the city and the nature, and his conclusions about painting tiny bits of the city seen through windows.

Just seeing the artists as persons can also add to our understanding about their work, though I am not sure if there are ways to define that understanding as "correct" or "wrong" - it becomes your specific interpretation of their work. For example, after listening to Arpita, the images of nude women in the foreground and military men in the background in her paintings, were no longer generic expressions of violence against women during wars but for me they became a depiction of the situation in the north-east of India.

FINDING ONE'S OWN SPECIFIC PATH

Artists explaining how they slowly discovered their own specific way of being an artist was an area that fascinated me in the film. Thus, Arpita's process of making, cancelling and re-making, Nalini's need for an immersive experience of her art, and Nilima's decision to put her children in her paintings, were interesting in understanding their works and also the kind of forces that gave directions to their artistic expressions.

The artists come out of their art schools with knowledge about techniques, norms and the examples of famous masters. Then, they need to find their own distinctive artistic voices that can move away from the recommended techniques and norms, and become something new. In this process, the artists in the film illustrate the importance of inter-action, dialogue and conflict with their peers. They talk about coming together to hold exhibitions or living together in the same area where they can interact regularly.

The name of late Bhupen Khakhar came up frequently in these discussions in the film, as one of the important artistic influences on different artists in contemporary India.The film pays a special homage to him by showing some of his works - thus, he is the only non-living artist featured in the film.

 AGAINST THE CONVENTIONS

Artists are expected to follow their own social rules and flout the conventions. Different artists in the film express it by depicting subjects that are usually ignored in mainstream medias - violence, exploitation, nude bodies, vaginas and even homo-erotic imagery.

I know that "flouting conventions" is a kind of stereotype, yet it was comforting to see that in spite of the rise of the conservatives of different religions in public spaces in India, Indian contemporary artists are willing to raise questions about those issues that are usually hidden behind the walls of morality and hypocrisy.

THE DICHOTOMIES

There are different dichotomies of meanings given to words and concepts such as - visual versus spoken cultures and popular versus elitist art, that were seen as static but have revealed to be more dynamic. The film touches on some of them and raises questions about them.

What is the role of visual arts today? With social media, TV and films, and digital art, are visual arts going to change and disappear? If photography is a visual art form, how is it affected when millions of persons start taking billions of photographs with their cell phones and putting their personal exhibitions up on Facebook, Twitter and Flickr? Is it democratisation of art or the loss of this art-form because it is now a common skill and not a special skill?

In the film Pushpamala talks about the changing meanings of elitist art meaning some higher quality of art form that is accessible to a few, while popular art is that is practiced by simple persons in their communities and homes and should be accessible more easily to the people. She underlines the contradiction by pointing out that today the "elitist art" of Rabindranath Tagore is far better known and accessible to public compared to the more "popular" art of Kalighat paintings.

Before human beings learned to speak, read and write, we were visual beings and we expressed ourselves mainly through visual mediums. For long part of our history, reading and writing were elitist skills reserved for a few and thus, we continued to be mainly oral and visual societies. Then over the past centuries, gradually reading and writing became more accessible to people and slowly we had started to become words-based societies. Finally, now slowly the pendulum has started to move in a different direction, where people can click pictures with their mobile phones and share them or share short-hand messages that use visual icons. So in future will we go back to being visual societies? What would that mean for the visual arts?

I am still wondering about such questions stimulated by watching the film.

ART AND MARKETING

How do we compare and who compares artistic merits, deciding who is a better artist? The film is about certain artists who are considered important in contemporary India. How was their importance decided?

I can imagine that defining someone as "good" or "great" artist is a result of interplay between the skills of the art-making along with a range of other factors including luck, mentorship, influence and the ability to market oneself. Were it not so, we would not have so frequently persons who become famous many years or decades after their death, while during their life-times no one recognizes their artistic worth.

I was wondering about it while watching Pushpmala in the film as she prepared herself for a performance. How is the performance of a visual "artist" different from that of a person like Lady Gaga or Poonam Pandey, who are able marketers of their skills? Is the difference only in their aesthetics, attitudes and motivations?

And now with the increase in the aggressive marketing of some persons on the social media and their ability to create news, will the criteria for defining good artists change in the future? I can imagine that already some artists with better social marketing skills get more attention from media and their art sells for more - will they be the important artists of our future?

ABOUT THE FILM

I loved watching the first volume of "To let the world in" for stimulating all these different ideas in my mind. I am planning to watch it again soon. At one and a half hours, it is almost as long as a feature film, yet it rushed past so quickly. There were so many moments in the film, especially while it showed the artists' works, that I wished that I could freeze it and look more carefully at those art works.

In the film, often the screen goes dark, as if the camera-eye is blinking.I felt that as a metaphor of how we can have the world in front of us and yet not see it. The human mind is a master illusionist. Each of our two eyes sees a different aspect of the world, but our mind learns to bring those two views together and we forget that our two eyes can see two different worlds. Our eyes also keep on blinking, adding intervals of darkness in front of our eyes, but our mind makes sure that we do not notice that darkness. The film reminds you about those intervals of darkness.

Film is visually very rich, full of colourful images of different art styles. The interviews with the artists are very unhurried and gentle, leaving them to choose the kind of things they wish to talk about, making it richer also at the level of emotions.

CONCLUSIONS

As a child, I was very much aware of contemporary Indian artists of 1960s including J. Swaminathan, Hebbar, B. Prabha, Jatin Das, Ram Kumar, M. F. Hussein ... I had even met some of them. However, over the past 3-4 decades, I had lost contact with the world of Indian artists. Thus, the artists featured in the film are my reintroduction to that world. Except for Anita Dube, who had been part of an exhibition in Bologna in 2012, I was not even aware of their names.

Hearing different persons in the film talk about Bhupen Khakhar and thinking that I had no idea who he was, made me feel bad, and was a reminder of what I had lost while I had been away from India. Searching for and admiring his works on internet, made me feel better.

I am looking forward to watching the second volume of the film, as well as go back to the first volume, for a more in depth viewing.

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Exploring madness

Recently I saw the "Exploring Madness", a series of short films by Dr. Parvez Imam. He is a doctor and a documentary film maker. The films are very brief, each lasting 3-4 minutes only.

The one I liked most was where he tells about women who are brought to a mental health hospital and left there by the family. Often, the families give a wrong address to the hospital, so that they can not be traced. After a few months, when the women are cured or are better, they want to go back to their homes, but the law does not allow persons treated for mental health problems to go out alone. Their only way to go out of the hospital is if some family member comes to accompany them. For many of them, no one ever comes to take them back so they are doomed to wait in the mental hospitals for ever. It was heart rending in the film to listen to the women who kept on saying, she had two children and she wanted to go back to her family.

I appreciated that the film respects the privacy of persons it interviews. And I liked the briefness of films. Even in their briefness, they make a clear point and touch the heart. I think that it requires a deep understanding of the theme and a strong empathy, to come up with something like this.

In the film, a lawyer tells about the Indian laws relating to mental illness. In India, if you are declared mentally ill, you lose all your civil rights, including the right to vote or to marry. For the law, it is justifiable reason for asking for a divorce. So like those women doomed to eternal wait for the families to come back and take them, there are many other areas of human rights violations of persons with mental health problems.

However, you can be cured of mental illness. Often mental illnesses are cyclical in nature, so there are periods when you are better. Doesn't the law allow you to regain your civil rights once the doctor treating you has certified that you are better? That sounds very cruel and unfair!

While watching the film I remembered some episodes from a period of life, that I had almost forgotten. It was the time when I was a PG student in anaesthesia at Willingdon hospital (or the Dr Ram Manohar Lohia hospital) in Delhi. Some times there were calls from the mental health unit accross the Tal Katora road and sometimes, I did go there to provide anaesthesia for persons receiving electric shocks (ECT). As shocks also produce convulsions in the body, through anaesthesia, you can relax the muscles so that they don't get hurt or pains afterwards.

I was thinking that in those days, I had never stopped on the way to look around in the mental health unit. It was only rushing to the ECT room and back. Perhaps, just the sight of ECT scared me so much that I didn't want to think about it?

At that time, I did not know that many organisations of "survivors of psychiatric services" are fighting against ECT, they feel that it is inhuman treatment and not useful. However, the textbooks of medicines continue to teach students about usefulness of ECT in certain conditions.

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A symphony for Bombay

It is a beautiful symphony, played by invisible beings, the kind who walk all around you every day and whom you never see. Perhaps, you are also one of them? Symphony is made even more beautiful because, each of those invisible beings is singing a different song, with a different rhythm.

Seven Islands and a Metro by Madhusree Dutta is that symphony. The film was released in some commercial theatres about ten days ago. It is rare that I get to see newly released films but this time, Mukul, my nephew and cameraman for this film, brought me a preview copy. Today, while I was watching it, I wished I had watched it while Mukul was here. In some Dvds there is a director’s cut of the film, where the director explains and talks about the film, while you watch the scenes. If I had watched it with Mukul, I could have had a cameraman’s cut of the film! The film is so beautiful that I really regret not having done that.

Seven islands is about some of the different Bombays that exist for its 15 million inhabitants and for thousands coming here every day in search of a living. Each of them sings their song.

Like the persons who hang at the top of the sky scrappers and clean glass for a living. “I like it up here, there is a kind of peace here”, one of them says.

Like the hundreds of I.D.cards with their pictures, and people standing in queues, answering questions about themselves – name, place of birth, father’s name – in English, Marathi, Hindi, Urdu…

Like the line of cement mixers trailing on the highway like giant snails, their snouts raised up towards the sky to catch the extra-terrestrial sound waves, while helicopter drones above.

Like the girl with grey eyes, who says, “I tell people on the face that I am a bar dancer. I am not afraid. You have to be made stronger to live here. Only money counts”, and suddenly her voice cracks with emotion.

Like angry women protesting against the invasion of UP and Bihar walls, “We’ll butcher you like fish.” Like Kulwant Kaur with icey hands in the story narrated by Manto, who listens to her husband brag about the six he killed and the seventh, a beautiful girl, he wanted to rape. Like the Dawood Bohra bank worker who says, “I was born here in 1944. When he said that you should go to Pakistan, I felt so bad. Why should anyone doubt my patriotism for India?”

Like all those dead and living, living together there in the cemeteries, the Europeans, the Church of England Christians, the Church of Scotland Christians, the Church of North India Christians, the Italian prisoners of war, the Japanese prostitutes and cotton traders, the Chinese.

Like the small window above the graveyard, where a swing is moving in a small room and small feet peep out and go back in. Like the tall and well built Reshma, who talks about her tom-boy days and those trying to dial a "wrong number" with her. She is the stunt women, a celebrity in her area, having done stunts for Hema Malini in Sholay. “Take a look at my pictures. In my time, I was also beautiful, why didn’t I become a heroine?” Like all those small, thin men with faces burnt by sun, who rummage through garbage, who bulldoze houses of poor like themselves, and who talk of hunger, “You can wake up hungry in Bombay but you are ready for hard work, you will not go hungry to sleep.”

Like the young man selling chai during the night. Even beggers and vendors buy the tea from them. “They can deflate the tyre of my bicycle, but I can’t give bribe. I don’t earn enough. They can do what they want.”

Another talks about his love for the girl from the other caste and how he was made to leave for Bombay while the girl committed suicide. “For a days labour, you earn 15 rupees in the village. Here I can spit out betel for 15 rupees in a day.”

Cruel, funny, tragic and comic, they all mix together in a never ending kaleidoscope, each staking their claim to life. The young boy extolling the virtues of vegetarianism, almost unaware of the violence inherent in his words. Or those who talk of the riots and because their religion does not allow them to hurt others, how they gave a couple they had discovered to others “more suitable for the job”. And the hope in their eyes that refuses to die. My future will be better, they all believe. In any case, life here is much better than what ever, I left behind, they argue, perhaps more to convince themselves than others.

The only discordant note in the symphony comes from the comments of the two writers, Sadat Ali Manto and Ismat Chugtai, and the effort to add abstract symbolism to the film, like the broken picture of Gandhi or the red shawl. Harish Khanna as Manto is suitably intense and Vibha Chibbar is a delight to watch, but their philosophical posturings sound false and superfluous like the burqa clad women pushing carts with polyfoam Mumbai maps or the burning kite or the red coloured water with I.D. pictures floating in it.

Words of ordinary people are like swords, cutting and cruel unapologetically. “No more Bihari and UP walla bhaiyas here, let them stay where they are”, says a woman bluntly. There is no need to add abstract symbolism, it is already there in plenty.

They all say that it is about money. No one talks about community, the relationships. After leaving the small towns, what communities they create? What relationships sustain them and replace the warmth they left in home towns? The film does not explore them but you get glimpses of it, like the boy running along the train, who is pulled in by others hanging at the door.

The idea of watching a documentary film for 100 minutes is a bit daunting but once the film starts, it is difficult not to get involved and forget time. Bombay never looked so beautiful as it looks in the rain scenes. Music, sound, images, people, everything fits well together.

In the end, I was feeling a bit jealous about Bombay. I have been there a few times, but my heart is in Delhi. I wish someone had made a symphony for my Dilli like this!

Below, some credits of the film.

Title: Seven Islands and a Metro
Director: Madhusree Dutta
Actors: Harish Khanna & Vibha Chibbar
Cameraman: Avijit Mukul Kishore
Editing Reena Mohan, Shyamal Karmakar
Dialogue: Sara Rai
Sound design: Boby John
Music: Arjun Sen

Note: Poster of the film if from the press kit

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