Tamil Nadu - Madurai   

“For the poor, it’s always an emergency”

— Photo: G. Moorthy.

DISCUSSION: Renowned film maker Anand Patwardhan interacting with the audience in Madurai on Friday.

MADURAI: “Influences happen pretty unconsciously and I cannot precisely put one particular source or ideology that has influenced my thought process,” said Anand Patwardhan, an award winning filmmaker, on Friday. He was in the city to take part in a face-to-face interaction at the Madura College where his music videos and films were screened.

Mr. Anand is certainly India’s most distinguished and noted filmmaker and awards galore at national and international levels for this dedicated individual.

A film career spanning more than three decades has never failed to record the most contentious issues that disturb and disrupt the lives of millions of dispossessed countrymen at a given point of time.

His oeuvre includes films that were the most burning issue at that point of time: Waves of Revolution, Prisoners of Conscience, Bombay our City, In the Name of God, Father, Son and Holy War, Narmada Diary, We are not your Monkeys and War and Peace.

He has also been in the midst of controversy and many of his films were put on hold for censorship only to be released later after fighting a legal battle.

Speaking on his film Waves of Revolution, he said that the film was made during the time when Jayaprakash Narayan’s movement (Total Revolution) was on and it was followed by Emergency. Anand had to go abroad to escape incarceration and the movie went underground as State repression was at its worst. He was able to show the film abroad, but in India so many people were caught as political prisoners and even after Emergency was over and Janata Party came to power prisoners, mostly suspected Naxalites, Mizos and Nagas, were not released. The documentary is a touching portrait of an uprising that led to the implementation of the Emergency.

This film was followed by a 45-minute documentary, Prisoners of Conscience, which includes interviews of Jayaprakash Narayan and leaders of Student Federation of India, Communist Party of India (Marxist Leninist) and other working class organisations who underwent torture as prisoners held without trial.

Anand’s camera captures the inhuman conditions that existed (still exists) in prisons and also explains the hierarchical structure within the prison and facilities that accompany the structure. Images of countryside oppression of the feudal lord on his serf and the urban restructured form of oppression that also include State sponsored violence are captured. Answering a question thrown to compare the present with the past as screened in the film, he was quick to respond, “Things have not changed for the poor whether there is emergency or not. For the poor it’s always an emergency.”

Only on the surface level there is democracy and that too is available only for the elites and it is yet to disseminate to the underprivileged sections of society.

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