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Filming a
community's concerns
Aprt from many other issues,
the WSN Special Edition dedicated to the NRP conclave in Chandigarh
and Jalandhar also showcased the kind of focus this community
newspaper seeks to bring on the cultural domain. This is the piece
that appeared on the way the WSN looks at the cinema reporting. In
this increasingly multi-media tempered view of the world available
to our youth, we can ignore the moving image only at our peril. --
Ed.
Film pages of even community newspapers are so often full of
Mumbaiya stuff that passes off as film that serious cinephiles have
long stopped being impacted by the entertainment page. This was
something that goaded the editors to have a deep and hard look at
the kind of stuff that should get into a community newspaper in the
name of entertainment. The WSN's entertainment pages are a rich
resource for food for thought when it comes to glorious human senses
of visual arts, music, painting etc. The kind of coverage that the
African Diaspora Film Festival received on its pages is an example
of our efforts to bring to fore a cinema that remains outside the
multiplexes and film magazines.
Our search for images in theatre and cinema that speak about both
common human experiences and the particulars of race is an ongoing
effort. The WSN has been very supportive of the initiatives like the
Spinning Wheel Film Festival. Amu, Kambdi Kalai, The Widows Colony,
Khuda Ke Liye, The Enemy Within were featured with pride but also
with a dispassionate analysis. Amu, for example, was a great effort,
but then it was pointed out how in the absence of a larger body of
cinematic productions on the subject, it remains a linear reading of
a complex happening.
The film on Chanu Sharmila's struggle and the movement against Armed
Forces Special Powers Act 1958, with which the human rights groups
in India's north-east have been trying to take the message out to
the larger world found great coverage in the WSN.
The WSN Entertainment section has always laid stress on how
similarities exist between the way the Black communities are trying
to understand their marginalisation in the medium of cinema and the
perception among the Sikhs at how little is said or understood
correctly about the community through the medium of cinema.
Today more than at any other time there are more films by black
directors, more films on the black experience, and more films with
featured black actors enjoyed by all audiences. Notwithstanding, the
international Black communities, whether in Europe, Latin America or
Africa, continue to play a disproportionately marginal role in the
art of cinema. Is the situation of the Sikh community any different?
There is little that has been done in the name of telling the Sikh
story to the wider world.
Name one film that tells the world about the community's bravery in
fending off the attacks from Ahmed Shah Abdali? The story of Banda
Bahadur has not inspired any Mumbayiya film director to tell it
cinematically. Too many creative and visionary films lie languid,
collecting dust without the light of a screening owing to the lack
of distribution outlets that showcase the films of our experience.
Just as Spinning Wheel Film Festival and similar festivals for the
ethno-minorities’ cinema present films about the concerned
minorities to diverse audiences, irrespective of the filmmaker’s
race or nationality, there is need for the Sikhs to launch several
such initiatives in various regions of the world. Iconisation of a
trend is more welcome than iconizing just one Spinning Wheel. It
must spin as well as spawn more.
9 January 2008
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