Reality on celluloid

will hit screens soon. Is it time to understand this genre of hard-hitting cinema?

Director Anurag Kashyap is shielding himself from the sun's rays when we meet in the open lawns of Delhi's India Habitat Centre. His eyes squint when our photographer urges him to take off his sunglasses and he complains jokingly when she orders him to pose for the camera.

Kashyap has waited ardently for the film industry to find him. His film Paanch, a hard-hitting tale of a bunch of young Indian college students, never made it to Indian cinema halls but was a runaway success at numerous international film festivals. "I am the only film director who made it to the headlines without even getting any film released," he says.

If there's hope in Kashyap's eyes, it's because his controversial Black Friday (made two years ago) is finally going to be released in mainstream cinema halls all over India. But he also fears that his film may be stalled once again by the courts at the very last minute. "Till the time Black Friday doesn't release, I don't think I'll really believe it," he says.

Is Black Friday jinxed for a Friday release? Maybe the theme of the film has been unkind to Kashyap. Based on the 1993 Mumbai blasts, Black Friday looks at the investigations into the incident that shook Mumbai and the rest of the nation.

If Black Friday will present its version of what happened in 1993 to audiences on February 9, Parzania, released last week, is based on the real-life story of a Parsi family caught in the throes of the 2002 Gujarat riots.

Made on a shoestring budget by Rahul Dholakia, Parzania, says actor Naseeruddin Shah, has left him with a lump in his throat. The making of the film was emotional and Shah, who plays the role of the father whose child is lost in the riots, remembers crying inconsolably when Dara Modi (the father of the child Azhar around whom the story is centred) took him to the spot where his son went missing.

Are we ready for cinematic journeys of incidents that have left an impact on people in the real world? Thankfully, an increasing number of such films are coming face to face with audiences.

Though numerous films in the past have highlighted the issue of riots, it is almost reassuring that an increasing number of short films, documentaries and even YouTube videos are creating films along this theme.

While there are filmmakers like Kashyap and Dholakia who have fought to see the release of their films, there's also Amarnath Varma who recently made Salaam Mumbai, a three-minute short film on the 2006 Mumbai train blasts, basing it on the spirit of the city's residents to fight back. This he submitted on Google Video and advertised it online.

"I wanted to focus on the courage of Mumbai's residents since the 1993 blasts," explains Varma.

If cinematic India is waking up to these controversial issues, this year's Sundance film festival has looked generously at cinematic takes on the world's social and political issues.

In fact, this year's opening night premiere was Chicago 10, a film that mixed archival video footage with animation to explore the Chicago conspiracy trial and the riots at the 1968 Democratic Convention. On the official Sundance film fest website, Chicago 10 director, Marco Williams, says, "I wanted to explore the impact of the past on the present."

"I was," he adds, "interested in the reverberations and what we may do as a nation to reconcile these events." Other films at Sundance look at World War II, the war in Iraq and other scandals and corruption in politics.

Kashyap, a regular at the Sundance festival, says, "Cinema like Black Friday is a living proof of history and centred around it. Audiences will once again be ready for discussions, lots of questions and maybe some answers."

In fact, at one of the panel discussions at Sundance, filmmaker Ian Buruma said, "In some ways, we remember history through Hollywood rather than the real thing."

But it's the journey to portray the "real thing" that becomes difficult, admits Kashyap. "There's a lot of pain one goes through while making films in this genre. I was so restless and had sleepless nights while researching for the film," he adds.

Ultimately these stories revolve around real people who have lost their loved ones in real life. "We are only trying to recreate it cinematically, but their loss is real," he says. Shonali Bose, director of Amu, a film on the 1984 riots post-Indira Gandhi's death, remembers how, as a student, she and her friends were cooped in the Miranda House hostel for three days after the event.

"It was a story waiting to be told," she says, remembering how she'd seen people affected by the tragedy. Later, when she was on the 17th draft of the film, the Gujarat carnage shook her.

"It was a different community, a different political party, but chillingly the same level of organised violence. I ended Amu with this tragedy as it poignantly made the point that the cycle of violence would continue until the question of justice was dealt with," she says.

While Bose and her team worked diligently to reconstitute and showcase the event, what shook her was the bizarre response of the Censor Board: "They said: 'Why should young people know a history which is best buried and forgotten?' My response was, we made the film because they (the people) need to know."

RIOT RISING

Mr and Mrs Iyer: This film by Aparna Sen revolves around a group of passengers who find themselves stuck in a bus because of religious riots

Dev: Kareena Kapoor's character in this Govind Nihalani film was inspired by Zaheera Sheikh who lost members of her family in the Gujarat Best Bakery incident

The Little Terrorist: Ashwin Kumar's award-winning short film revolves around a Pakistani boy who crosses the border and is regarded as a terrorist by an Indian village

Salaam Mumbai: This three-minute short film is on Google Video. Directed by Amarnath Varma, the film pieces together stills of the 2006 Mumbai bomb blasts.

Amu: Shonali Bose's attempt at showcasing the 1984 riots where Sikhs were ruthlessly massacred.