Born as a rebellion against indirect censorship of documentary cinema, Vikalp is today a platform for free speech and creative expression.
Censorship is neither possible nor desirable,” asserts Dr Jayasankar, professor, Centre for Media and Cultural Studies at Mumbai’s Tata Institute of Social Sciences, and founder-member of Vikalp. He cites the famous example of the blank editorial in the Indian Express during the Emergency as the perfect act of silent defiance. “Who decides what’s right? It’s the idea of a less powerful ‘other’, one that cannot handle the truth, that is problematic,” he explains.
It was precisely to give this “less powerful ‘other’” the freedom to choose what it watched, that Vikalp was born.
A group of Indian filmmakers committed to freedom of expression, reacted strongly when the Censor Board inserted a certification clause just for Indian entries in 2004’s Mumbai International Film Festival (MIFF). Angry protests forced the authorities to withdraw the clause, but the censorship remained — filmmakers realised that the selection committee rejected the politically sensitive, controversial films anyway, despite the fact that many of these had travelled to foreign festivals and won awards. Rakesh Sharma’s Final Solutions (dealing with Gujarat’s communal massacres after Godhra in 2002), Sanjay Kak’s Words on Water (which explores the struggle over the Narmada dam), and Anjali Monteiro and K P Jayasankar’s Naata (about two men working for conflict resolution in Dharavi, Asia’s largest slum) were among the rejected films.
A CONSTRUCTIVE PROTEST
Vikalp: Films for Freedom began as a six-day festival that screened the rejected films and some more, as filmmakers withdrew even their selected entries from MIFF, preferring to screen them at Vikalp instead. “We received a lot of threats to stop us from screening the films,” recalls Dr Anjali Monteiro, another founder-member of Vikalp. She adds, “Some of the MIFF jury members came to watch the movies.”
“Vikalp means ‘an alternative’,” says Anand Patwardhan, renowned documentary filmmaker who has been behind documentaries like Bombay our City, Prisoners of Conscience, Ram ke Naam. It was Patwardan who suggested the name for the festival. Having screened all the rejected films — just across the road from MIFF — Vikalp became an alternative space for those six days in 2004.
Today, six years later, what is the organisation doing?
“It is not an organisation, it is a movement,” clarifies Patwardhan. This loose-knit collective, functioning over e-mails, has given audiences access to documentary films in India. The last year saw screenings of, among others, Lightning Testimonies, Amar Kanwar’s film capturing women’s narratives of sexual violence; The Other Song, Saba Dewan’s exploration of the world of the tawaif; Kora Rajee directed by Biju Toppo of Jharkhand looked at issues of adivasi labourers and displacement; Kurush Canteenwalla’s Goa Goa Gone portrays the impact of mining in Goa. Suma Josson touches on the issue of farmer suicides in Maharashtra’s Vidarbha region in I Want My Father Back. Vikalp, for the record, also showcases foreign documentary films.
ENCOURAGING DEBATE
With films getting increasingly accessed on the Net, is Vikalp’s role crucial anymore? Attend a screening and you would know it is. Vikalp’s USP lies in the opportunity and space it creates for discussion what with filmmakers being present for Q & A sessions. The latest session, held last month, screened Patwardhan’s Prisoners of Conscience, in which political prisoners of the Emergency narrate their experiences. “These things still happen,” says the filmmaker. Not surprisingly, the younger audience could relate to a film made over three decades ago, thus resulting in a heated post-screening discussion.
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Jayasankar puts it succinctly: “We are all taught to read and write. But we need to be taught to read images.” As we learn to apply ourselves and infer truths from the images we see on the screen, we are the more powerful “others”, not the “volatile” communities reacting to books and films at face value, but going deeper and making informed decisions.
(Vikalp@Prithvi is on Facebook)
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