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U.S. film-maker plans film on Mumbai attacks

Martin Smith

PUDUCHERRY: U.S.-based documentary film-maker Martin Smith, whose latest documentary on climatic changes, ‘Heat,’ was aired in October 2008, plans to make a film on the terror attacks in Mumbai.

Mr. Smith, who was on a visit to Puducherry for the screening of ‘Heat,’ has produced a number of documentaries including ‘Hunting bin Laden’ (1999), ‘In Search of Al Qaeda’ (2002) and ‘Return of the Taliban’ (2006). His works have been aired on a television programme on the American public television network.

“I have traced the recent events in Pakistan, including the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and the attack at Hotel Marriott in ‘The War Briefing.’ I have never really covered Kashmir. I feel that the attack on Mumbai is another facet of politics and internal tension in Pakistan. But prior to this, we will be working on a documentary on the Madoff 50 billion dollar scandal,” he said.

Mr. Smith said that the heart of the story behind the Mumbai attacks was “the relation between the civilian government of President Zardari, military and ISI.”

“This is what I am planning to examine. The issue is less about India, it is about the internal politics in Pakistan. One idea is to see how the world covered the Mumbai attack,” he said.

Noting that ‘Heat’ was “really challenging,” he said, “We are not talking about insurgency but energy infrastructure and complexities. Film-makers often prefer to build a chronological tale to tell but with this topic of climatic changes, there was no one big story but many stories.”

In this two-year effort, he has travelled to 12 countries on four continents interviewing top policy-makers, executives of companies, including Chinese coal companies and U.S. oil giants on their response to the earth’s looming environmental disaster.

“The experience in ‘Heat’ opened a whole area of interest. The documentary does not deal primarily with science but what we are going to do with the problem. It looks at large energy corporations and government especially in the United States,” he explained.

For instance, he said cars in the U.S. emit more Co2 than all cars in Europe, India and China.

“If China continues to go on the current path, then cars in the country will consume more oil than the entire world supply in the mid of this century, if they do not develop an alternative.

“If someone can develop technology that provides better energy, it can be adopted in other countries. Somebody has to develop energy cheaper than coal and electric cars. Climatic change is not the ultimatum. It is the symptom of our relationship with nature. We need to be aware of our impact,” he said.

PondyCan, an organisation working for sustainable development in Puducherry, undertook the first screening of ‘Heat’ in India.

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