Bangladeshi director Tanvir Mokammel's obsession with rivers is nothing new. Two of his feature films are set in the backdrop of the liberation war of the country and unfold on banks of river Chitra and Modhumati.
A couple of documentaries on the Karnaphuli and Jamuna rivers talks about the plight of people living on their banks.
However, with his next project -- a documentary titled "Dhaleswari Katha" (The Story of Dhaleswari)-- Tanvir seeks to break new grounds. He says he wants to go beyond film-making by launching a social movement to save the river Dhaleswari from pollution and let the film be born out of it.
"The rivers of Dhaka basin -- Buriganga, Turag, Balu and Shitalakhya-- all are now extremely polluted. Only Dhaleswari, a river with lot of history and culture, has managed to remain relatively pollution-free.
"But the manner in which factories, brick kilns and unplanned residential areas are growing beside the river and the way the river-bed is being occupied illegally by the rich and the powerful, it will not be long for the Dhaleshwari to lose its navigability and become just another polluted river of the Dhaka basin," Tanvir told PTI on phone from Dhaka.
Tanvir, who has won national award as a director, says his hour-long research-based documentary will try to explore the pros and cons of how to save the river.
The filmmaker says he wants to go beyond film-making and venture into the role of an activist-director by organising all stake-holders-farmers, boatmen, fishermen, weavers and local politicians and authorities-along the banks of the river for a social movement to save Dhaleswari.
According to the director, he would prefer to call "Dhaleswari Katha" an "activist film".
