The ballad of Gargi
SHALINI USHA NAIR
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Filmmaker Gargi Sen aims to strike a balance between artistic expression and the socio-political agenda of her films.
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Documentary filmmakers are not distributors, they never have been.
Photo: Anu Pushkarna.
Self-critical: Gargi Sen has always been brutally critical of her own films.
“Thank God our time as filmmakers is over!” says Gargi Sen. She has just watched Anirban Datta’s ‘In For Motion’ at the Second International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala (IDSFK) and the distributor in her is thrilled. “Newcomers have so much talent. It is getting to watch films like these that make everything worth it.”
In 1986, after graduating from the National Institute of Design, Gargi knew with the absolute conviction of youth that she would never make a film.
Three years later she made ‘Because of our Rights’ (1989), a film about the rights of forest dwellers in Dehradun. There were no distributors for documentaries then and almost by default the Magic Lantern Foundation (MLF) came into being. Started by a group of friends, MLF has produced and distributed films that deal with human rights issues for the past two decades.
Feminist subtexts
“My films always have strong feminist subtexts,” says Gargi. Her film ‘Ballad of Builders’ (1993) about construction workers dealt with an advocacy bill that the workers tried to negotiate with the union workers. “Though not ostensibly about women, the first question you ask once you have watched the film is what about the women and children?” she says.
Of her latest film ‘Rehana – A quest for Freedom,’ which was screened at the IDSFK, she says, “Sometimes the audience takes a film to a whole new level. The story of the genesis of a female leader is still novel in Kerala. Watching it here, for the first time, I was proud of the film and the reaction it elicited.”
This is a highlight indeed for the filmmaker who has always been brutally critical of her own work. An admirer of the layered narratives of filmmakers like Madhushree Dutta and Paromita Vora, Gargi says she “suffered from artistic angst very late in the day.” In the late 1990s she grew tired of her “formulaic style of filmmaking and complacent politics.”
She was also bored of working with the in-house crew of MLF. “It was getting too incestuous,” she laughs. This led to a brief hiatus during which she completed a course in Mass communication from the Leicester University in United Kingdom.
In her last three films, ‘The Storytellers’ (2003), ‘The (T)error of Pota’ (2005) and ‘Rehana’ (2007), Gargi says she feels like she is getting closer to striking the balance between artistic expression and the socio-political agenda of her films.
With more than 15 successful films, which are still being screened in classrooms and festivals around the country, and more in the pipeline, Gargi’s time as a filmmaker is clearly far from over.
In 2003 MLF saw a major revamp. The team started Under Construction (UC) in order to disseminate independent films across the nation and beyond. “Documentary filmmakers are not distributors, they never have been,” says Gargi.
UC was started to bridge the gap between the filmmaker and his audience. “Once we started, however, I figured that it was not merely a question of logistics. The audience we had assumed existed had to be created,” says Gargi.
Towards this end UC has curated 200 films for distribution. They have also organised festivals like Persistence Resistance, which is in its second edition, where only films distributed by UC are screened. It was conceived as a travelling festival and in 2009 it was held in Delhi and London. “Next year we are hoping to take it to more cities,” says Gargi.
A great fan of the Kerala brand of hospitality, cuisine, IDSFK and Mammootty, Gargi promises to return for the International Film Festival of Kerala in December.
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