 "PM Modi will talk about While We Watched one day, says Ravish Kumar")
While We Watched is a 2022 Indian documentary made by Vinay Shukla featuring NDTV news editor Ravish Kumar's journalistic approach despite the backdrop of general media bias in India. It was first premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival 2022. Also premiered at the 27th Busan International Film Festival, it won the Cinephile award and the International Competition at DocPoint Helsinki.
The documentary also won the renowned Peabody award.
The movie documents the life of Ramon Magsaysay Award-winning journalist Ravish Kumar and the state of broadcast news in India today which is now streaming on MUBI.
Hindustan Times shared an interview of Vinay and Ravish talking about the journey of making and releasing the documentary, today's mainstream media and the relevance of While We Watched right now.
Multifaceted life of Ravish
Vinay was asked about why he chose ‘the aspect of loneliness’ from the multifaceted life of Ravish as the focus of his documentary.
Vinay mentioned that he was in a period full of idealism when he started making movies in 2008-09. There was a currency of larger political ideas being spoken on a larger scale where people used to discuss how politics should be.
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He elaborated on how he felt loneliness and a lot of dejection in 2019-20 when the society around him was shaping up whether it was movies news or any political scenarios. He starts feeling marginalised and lonely.
During that phase, he came around Ravish Kumar, and how he is feeling the same loneliness and disagreeing with the world around him and wonders if he is relevant to society anymore.
While praising Ravish, he said he says over 5000 words on camera every day, but he wanted to capture who is the person behind the camera. "How is it that journalists put their stories together. What do they do when they're off camera. And I discovered that Ravish is very funny, but he's very introspective and always fighting with larger ideas. I felt that despair has a constant presence in his life and I tried to bring that to the film," Vinay added.
What does Ravish say about his lonely figure?
Ravish mentioned in the interview that most of the shots in the film were when he would be going into the crowd and the crowd was reacting to him, good, bad or ugly. He mentioned that when he introspected, he realised that that was just the one hour when he was around the people capturing people on the camera. "Otherwise most of my life, I live alone," he said.
Ravish always avoids giving his opinion on the movie and he stated that it was difficult for him. “Because the loneliness that I used to feel, which I felt I'd come past then, began running through my veins again,” he added.
Then he felt that he was not influenced by perception at all. He also mentioned that when you're working, you're a labourer and a labourer is lonely. He said that you have to concentrate, wrestle with yourself, and contain your mood. Even if there are hundreds of people around you, you're still working alone.
Journalist experience shouldn't be reduced to a film dialogue
People join journalism for different purposes or intentions. In a metro, thousands of passengers get down to different stations. Few people joined journalism to join politics, some wanted to earn 3-4 crore via wrongful means. But Ravish believes that the issue is that the metro and the station should operate smoothly. The concern for him is that the journalism infrastructure has ended.
Many faceless journalists have spoken the truth in the face of the wrong and as a result, they were sent to jail and lost their jobs. Those journalists have risked their lives or their family and their experience shouldn't be reduced to a film dialogue.
Job or Journalism
About choosing between a Job and Journalism, Ravish mentioned that there's definitely more leeway there, but the world is very different. There is no provision for experienced resources like there is a newsroom, there's more joy, but the person only keeps applauding whatever they have created. There are more voices and more collaborators in a newsroom. He said he has no regrets about what he said and he doesn't believe the time has come to review his statement.
Documentary releases during Lok Sabha Elections 2024
When asked about the release at the time of the Lok Sabha Elections and Israel's attack on Rafah, Vinay said that the world is going through a brutal time. The film is dissecting the mainstream media and seeing the effects across the countries. According to him, the polarisation that exists is very high and it is time to contemplate the larger public information systems we have that shape people's minds. News is a major public information system and it's important to find out what is wrong with it and how we can improve it.
Talking about While We Watched
Ravish said he believes more and more people should watch this film. “We need to expose what's wrong with it (today’s journalism). Younger filmmakers should watch this film so that they're inspired to make something else, something bigger. Films should always be talked about,” he says.
“See, even Prime Minister Narendra Modi talked about Gandhi recently. I'm very sure that one day, he'd talk about While We Watched too, and say that no one knew Ravish Kumar before that.”