Tag: kanglaonline

By Subir Ghosh
Once the early film makers got over the fact that a film could be made of more than one shot, the multi-shot film became the norm of the day. Films of the 1902/3-07 period were no longer treating the individual shot as a self-contained unit of meaning. One shot was now linked to another. It was like putting words together to form a meaningful sentence. The grammar, in any, of course, was far from evolving.

Filmmakers used succession of shots to capture ane emphasise the highpoints of the action rather than construct either a linear narrative causality or even try to establish temporal-spatial relations. The editing of the film was solely intended to enhance visual pleasure for the audience rather than to refine narrative developments as a filmmaker.

Many editing devices evolved, one of them being the overlapping action. This was a result of the filmmakers’ desire both to preserve the pro-filmic space and tp emphasise the important action by showing it twice. Georges Méliès’s A Trip to the Moon (1902) covered the landing of a space capsule on the moon in two shots. In the first, taken from space, the capsule hits the man in the moon on the eye, and he grimaces. In the second, taken from the moon’s surface, the capsule once again lands. To a viewer today, it would mean nothing. And in the film, while a later-day filmmaker would have cut directly from shot to shot, Méliès dissolved from one to another, and worked on it as a transitional device.

Soon, the dissolve was not unusual to see in films. But the direct cuts which continued action from one shot to another became a popular device after English filmmaker James Williamson made Stop Thief! in 1901. The film showed a crowd chasing a tramp who had stolen a joint from a butcher, motivating connections by the diagonal movement of characters through each of the individual shots; the thief and then his pursures entering the frame at the back and exiting the frame past the camera. The fact that the camera remained with the scene until the last character had exited revealed how character movement motivates the editing. Williamson’s venture gave birth to chase films, the most famous of them being Personal (Biograph, 1904).

Edwin S Porter, considerably influenced by another of Williamson’s films, Fire!, employed overlapping action in Life of an American Fireman (1902), and showed a rescue in its entirety, first from the interior and then from the exterior perspective. The cuts were not perfect yet, and the ‘imperfect’ match cut of GA Smith’s The Sick Kitten (1903) took it further. The cut in question was that from a long view of two children administering medicine to a kitten to a closer view of the kitten licking the spoon. Films, as you can see, were still jarring to look at.

It was Porter, formerly a camerman with Edison Studios, who took the narrative element of cinema further with The Great Train Robbery (1903), a convetional Western film. It was twelve minutes long, and built upon his earlier work Life of an American Fireman. The film used a number of innovative techniques, including cross cutting, double exposure, composite editing, camera movement, and on location shooting. Cross-cuts were a new, sophisticated editing technique. Some prints were also hand coloured in certain scenes. None of the techniques were original, and the film is today considered to have been heavily influenced by Frank Mottershaw’s earlier British film A Daring Daylight Burglary.

Among the narrative techniques employed by Porter was a medium shot of the bandit leader firing his revolver directly at the camera. The film was originally distributed with a note saying this shot could be placed either at the beginning or at the end of the film, or both. Most modern prints put it at the end. It is believed that the sequence with bandit Justus D Barnes was the inspiration for the gun barrel sequence in James Bond movies.

Porter (born 1870) started his career doing odd jobs, but showed his knack for gadgets relatively early – he shared a patent at age 21 for a lamp regulator. Porter entered the film industry in 1896. He was briefly employed in New York City by Raff & Gammon, agents for the films and viewing equipment made by Thomas Edison, and then became a touring projectionist with a competing machine, Kuhn & Webster’s Projectorscope. He travelled to the West Indies and South America, and returned to become a projectionist.

In 1899, he joined the Edison Manufacturing Company, and subsequently took charge of motion picture production, operating the camera, directing the actors, and assembling the final print. As a touring projectionist he knew what pleased crowds; he later used this info to the hilt.

In The Great Train Robbery, Porter took the Western, already familiar to audiences from novels and stage, and made it an entirely new visual experience. It used as many as ten different indoor and outdoor locations and was groundbreaking in its use of “cross-cutting” in editing to show simultaneous action in different places. The film added pace to cinema.

He presented two parallel stories in The Kleptomaniac (1905), and used side lighting, close-ups, and changed shots within a scene in The Seven Ages (1905). He paved the way for DW Griffith’s contributions in editing and screen storytelling, but himself could not keep pacec with motion picture art. . Yet he seemed to regard them only as separate experiments and never brought them together in a unified filmmaking style. Porter rarely repeated an innovation after he had used it successfully, and even protested when others rediscovered his techniques and claimed them as their own. He was never comofrtable with stars, and as the star concept became a phenomenon in the United States, Porter faded away.

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2011/11/cutting-to-the-chase/

By Subir Ghosh
Once the early film makers got over the fact that a film could be made of more than one shot, the multi-shot film became the norm of the day. Films of the 1902/3-07 period were no longer treating the individual shot as a self-contained unit of meaning. One shot was now linked to another. It was like putting words together to form a meaningful sentence. The grammar, in any, of course, was far from evolving.

Filmmakers used succession of shots to capture ane emphasise the highpoints of the action rather than construct either a linear narrative causality or even try to establish temporal-spatial relations. The editing of the film was solely intended to enhance visual pleasure for the audience rather than to refine narrative developments as a filmmaker.

Many editing devices evolved, one of them being the overlapping action. This was a result of the filmmakers’ desire both to preserve the pro-filmic space and tp emphasise the important action by showing it twice. Georges Méliès’s A Trip to the Moon (1902) covered the landing of a space capsule on the moon in two shots. In the first, taken from space, the capsule hits the man in the moon on the eye, and he grimaces. In the second, taken from the moon’s surface, the capsule once again lands. To a viewer today, it would mean nothing. And in the film, while a later-day filmmaker would have cut directly from shot to shot, Méliès dissolved from one to another, and worked on it as a transitional device.

Soon, the dissolve was not unusual to see in films. But the direct cuts which continued action from one shot to another became a popular device after English filmmaker James Williamson made Stop Thief! in 1901. The film showed a crowd chasing a tramp who had stolen a joint from a butcher, motivating connections by the diagonal movement of characters through each of the individual shots; the thief and then his pursures entering the frame at the back and exiting the frame past the camera. The fact that the camera remained with the scene until the last character had exited revealed how character movement motivates the editing. Williamson’s venture gave birth to chase films, the most famous of them being Personal (Biograph, 1904).

Edwin S Porter, considerably influenced by another of Williamson’s films, Fire!, employed overlapping action in Life of an American Fireman (1902), and showed a rescue in its entirety, first from the interior and then from the exterior perspective. The cuts were not perfect yet, and the ‘imperfect’ match cut of GA Smith’s The Sick Kitten (1903) took it further. The cut in question was that from a long view of two children administering medicine to a kitten to a closer view of the kitten licking the spoon. Films, as you can see, were still jarring to look at.

It was Porter, formerly a camerman with Edison Studios, who took the narrative element of cinema further with The Great Train Robbery (1903), a convetional Western film. It was twelve minutes long, and built upon his earlier work Life of an American Fireman. The film used a number of innovative techniques, including cross cutting, double exposure, composite editing, camera movement, and on location shooting. Cross-cuts were a new, sophisticated editing technique. Some prints were also hand coloured in certain scenes. None of the techniques were original, and the film is today considered to have been heavily influenced by Frank Mottershaw’s earlier British film A Daring Daylight Burglary.

Among the narrative techniques employed by Porter was a medium shot of the bandit leader firing his revolver directly at the camera. The film was originally distributed with a note saying this shot could be placed either at the beginning or at the end of the film, or both. Most modern prints put it at the end. It is believed that the sequence with bandit Justus D Barnes was the inspiration for the gun barrel sequence in James Bond movies.

Porter (born 1870) started his career doing odd jobs, but showed his knack for gadgets relatively early – he shared a patent at age 21 for a lamp regulator. Porter entered the film industry in 1896. He was briefly employed in New York City by Raff & Gammon, agents for the films and viewing equipment made by Thomas Edison, and then became a touring projectionist with a competing machine, Kuhn & Webster’s Projectorscope. He travelled to the West Indies and South America, and returned to become a projectionist.

In 1899, he joined the Edison Manufacturing Company, and subsequently took charge of motion picture production, operating the camera, directing the actors, and assembling the final print. As a touring projectionist he knew what pleased crowds; he later used this info to the hilt.

In The Great Train Robbery, Porter took the Western, already familiar to audiences from novels and stage, and made it an entirely new visual experience. It used as many as ten different indoor and outdoor locations and was groundbreaking in its use of “cross-cutting” in editing to show simultaneous action in different places. The film added pace to cinema.

He presented two parallel stories in The Kleptomaniac (1905), and used side lighting, close-ups, and changed shots within a scene in The Seven Ages (1905). He paved the way for DW Griffith’s contributions in editing and screen storytelling, but himself could not keep pacec with motion picture art. . Yet he seemed to regard them only as separate experiments and never brought them together in a unified filmmaking style. Porter rarely repeated an innovation after he had used it successfully, and even protested when others rediscovered his techniques and claimed them as their own. He was never comofrtable with stars, and as the star concept became a phenomenon in the United States, Porter faded away.

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2011/11/cutting-to-the-chase/

By Amar Yumnam
On the second Saturday of this month, I entered with a friend a high-end cookies and sweetmeat store in Imphal; being high-end, the customers usually visiting this shop are also high-enders who have cultivated a taste for quality in goods over years of exposure outside the State. I had to enter the city business district (Thangal Bazaar in this instance) due to some unavoidable personal reasons and a friend accompanied me on my request. Since we do not usually enter the marketing areas often, we wanted to allow ourselves some indulgence by purchasing some exquisite items. But we were absolutely shocked. The display cases were mostly empty, and the salesman just related the impossible costs of preparing the items for which we entered the shop at all. It was a very pitiable look; the shop is there, the salesman too but very little to sell with the display cases mostly empty.  The more than century old (in terms of days) blockade along the highways have really eaten into the economic flesh of the polity.

German Unification: In the afternoon, I was reading a research report just sent by a colleague from Italy. The research was evaluating the economic impact of the unification of two Germanys by breaking down the Berlin Wall. The results are absolutely interesting. These testify the positive economic impacts of relationships maintained for non-economic reasons. In the particular case of the German unification, it has been found that West German families who had social ties to East Germany in 1989 experienced a persistent rise in their personal incomes after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Moreover, the existence of such households impacted positively on the regional economic performance through higher entrepreneurial activity and higher returns on these. Thus West Germany regions with stronger ties with the East have consistently outperformed other regions.  In a more technical language, it has been found that one standard deviation rise in the share of households with social ties to East Germany in 1989 is associated with a 4.6 percentage point rise in income per capita over six years. This is a very powerful testimony to the strong relationship between social ties and regional economic performance.

Look At Us: Now let us go back to the story of empty display cases in the high end sweetmeat shop in Imphal consequent upon the blockades. Besides the expected rise in prices under the impact of the blockades, many other important socio-economic implications are coming to the forth. The mountains catching fire in Manipur is absolutely understandable. We must accept that we have not developed the mountains for more than six decades while the major development outcomes have been visible in Imphal only where the majority population are Meetei. Given the differential geographical structures and the more or less clear demarcated settlement of the different ethnic groups, the heightened articulation along ethnic lines is easily understandable. Further, since there has been very little development in their areas of settlement the people naturally have to feel the protection of whatever perceived ethnically owned boundary of territory as the proverbial last straw. Still further, there is the usual adding fuel to the fire scenario when the road medians in the Kangla Park area are improved more than seven times a year while the mountains suffer from absolute absence of roads, schools and health facilities. This is where we say that accounting of development expenditure now needs to be done with the accountability component inherent in it. For instance, all the annual audit and accounting reports on road construction works should specify the road sections where the expenses have been incurred rather than the present one of just tallying the vouchers. This is the only way to evolve accounting with accountability.

The issues of widening distance among the different ethnic groups have been with us for quite some time and with particularly heightened temperature for the larger part since the start of this new century. The results are visible now. Unlike the unification and resultant economic expansion Germany have experienced, what we have experienced during the last decade of this century is but the relative decline in per capita income of Manipur from the more than 83 percent of the national average in the beginning of this century to about 50 percent of the national average today. This has happened despite the more than four-fold increase in plan expenses during this period. Something somewhere has terribly gone wrong. 

Search Governance: Since we have been witnessing the build-up for the contemporary unsavoury scenario and are now facing crises in multiples of dimensions, we naturally need to identify the root cause for all these. Without mincing many words, we must say that the blame for the crises we are facing today should squarely fall on the nature and quality of governance we have been unblessed with. The absence of governance at both the provincial and the national levels have never been so wonderfully established than by the ongoing blockades. Imagining the long term effects of these disturbances makes our hearts shudder. There definitely is going to take a long time to reverse the rising tide of ethnicity meaning necessarily against one another. In the meantime, the negative economic impact of worsening social ties would get reflected in slower growth of Manipur, particularly in the mountains. Further, even if genuine developmental interventions are attempted today, these would not easily convince the mountains. In other words, establishing the credibility of governance in the mountains would now be a very costly affair.

It is in such times that the elections are coming round the corner. The governments one after another have ensured over the years that there be utter disconnect with the people. This does serve the purpose of the now powerful, wealthy and majority politicians. Since the people feel no connection with the government and expect nothing from any government, the elections are reduced to plain one day stand alone shots. The wealthy, powerful and corrupt politicians can never think of a more congenial atmosphere to pave their way into the political power. Spend heavily and resort to muscles as much as possible and more effectively than others, then the remaining five years are cool for personal aggrandisement. But now the million dollar question with our future at stake is: how prepared and committed the people of the land are to work and vote for a better Manipur?  

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2011/11/economy-wounded-but-who-cares-vote-governance-and-slippery-population/

By B.G. Verghese
First the bad news. The just released South Asian Human Development Report for South Asia in relation to Food Security in 2010-11 produced by the Mahbubul Haq Development Centre in Lahore makes dismal reading. The global food crisis since 2008 has hit this region hard. The striking feature is that it is not lack of availability but lack of access to what is available among the under-mass of the population that is the cause of a continuing and growing crisis for the poor.

The verdict on India is grim. “The path of economic reform that has resulted in high economic growth in some regions and sectors in India has been accompanied by failure on food security in all aspects – production, availability, distribution, affordability, absorption and nutrition – which makes India one of the most undernourished countries in the world”, well below the  standards prevailing in South Saharan Africa.

As much as 76 per cent of Indians consume inadequate food; three-fourths of its women and children are anaemic; foodgrain production declined from 208 to 196 kg per annum per capita between 1997 and 2010 while unemployment among agricultural labourers rose correspondingly. Farm productivity has declined and food prices have spiralled upwards; only one in four households has access to safe drinking water and sanitation facilities. National investment in agriculture and health has been consistently low. Following economic liberalisation, the emphasis has been on reducing food subsidies rather than on ensuring greater food security. Climate change now poses further uncertainties. Farmer suicides are rising and now total over a quarter of a million since 1995 with almost 16,000 deaths in 2010.

None of this was exactly unknown, but to be told it upfront on the basis of international comparisons is shocking. At the same time, India is growing more billionaires than most. This is an unacceptable and unviable situation, with huge regional and gender disparities as well, that contrasts ill with boastful talk of being an emerging great power that merits a seat at the high table. The latter claims are not without merit and cannot be discounted but there is a greater underlying truth that must be urgently addressed.

Greater investment in agriculture and the whole gamut of farm production and management practices, especially post-harvest technologies that include storage, cold chains, marketing and processing, are overdue. There has to be a new evergreen revolution with much more attention being given to dry land farming and tapping the immense potential of the eastern alluvial plain with its still inimical land relations that remain what Daniel Thorner long back called an agrarian depressor.

Contract farming, with safeguards, homestead farming (as a valuable nutritional supplement), and the licensing of multiple-brand retail trading could give a huge boost to farm production, productivity, processing and incomes. Bhoodan lands are still being distributed and settled tardily, years after the original land-gift. Unorganised small farmers suffer considerable storage and distribution losses and are exploited by middlemen. This results in their receiving a smaller share of the consumer’s rupee while the consumer pays more for poorer quality produce. Appropriate backward and forward linkages could make a significant difference to both productivity and prices to the benefit of both the famer and the consumer. 

Yet, change is resisted and often two or more problems are cited to every reform solutions. Reforms must certainly be undertaken with due care and positioning of safety nets for those who might lose out or require time to adjust in the transition. The country is now ripe for the next round of reforms which should not be held back for fear of electoral loss but, instead, made the platform for winning electoral rewards.

Speaking at the recent National Development Council meeting to approve the 12th Plan, the Prime Minister called on the nation to eschew negativism and not subject growth to short term considerations. The NDC endorsed a target of nine per cent growth during 2012-17 and heard a call to shun populism and not allow party election victories to overshadow India’s victory. The introduction and passage of the Goods and Services Tax and the new Direct Taxes Code will test the willingness to hew a new path away from negativism. Inflation has been a universal worry. But the GST, once adopted, should also help bring down prices.

The good news is that there appears to be a new drive towards reform and measures to curb corruption. A practical slew of “Lok Pal” measures – rather than a single, cumbersome enactment – will hopefully be in place over the next few months. India’s latest HDI Report shows heartening signs of inclusive growth with all disadvantaged categories like Dalits, tribals, women and Muslims registering improvements and narrowing differentials with the rest in terms of literacy, health and employment parameters. This still merits only one cheer, as there is much leeway to make up to gain parity with the rest, and more so, to match international standards.  Poverty is being rolled back – slowly. The latest series of baby deaths in West Bengal and the heavy toll taken by Japanese encephalitis in eastern Uttar Pradesh show how far we need to go, especially as these fatalities are caused by maternal malnutrition and lack of primary health care.

Census figures also show a continuing exodus to the cities from the countryside. These Malthusian refugees, mostly landless labourers, exploited sharecroppers and tiny peasants, find that the land is no longer a fond “mother” or them and simply cannot provide the income and opportunity they seek with a growingly unfavourable land-man ratio. NAREGA has helped but needs now to be better planned and professionally backstopped to create more and better farm capital assets and rural infrastructure, with less leakage. Yet no one has yet calculated to what extent the annual distress migration of 30-40 million “nowhere” persons (including family) has been arrested. 

The challenge is to create an additional net 10-12 million jobs per annum to match the growth in the labour force on account of population increase. Unimaginative land acquisition and environmental restraints have thus far been impediments to infrastructure development and manufacturing growth. These policies are fortunately now being reviewed. Meanwhile, two major industrial-cum-employment initiatives have been taken with the announcement of a new manufacturing policy to generate 100 million jobs in 10 years by facilitating national manufacturing investment zones and industrial corridors, and an additional 400,000 new jobs in 21 integrated textile parks.

These are bold new initiatives that must be supported and pushed through. But they need to be underpinned by a parallel process of incubating tiny, mini and small industries partly by upgrading the khadi and village industries, handloom and handicrafts sector as well as off-land farm processing and servicing industries though micro-finance, skill formation and cooperative development and facilitation.

The entrepreneurship is there. Imagination has been lacking.
www.bgverghese .com

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2011/11/falling-hdi-but-silver-linings/

By B.G. Verghese
First the bad news. The just released South Asian Human Development Report for South Asia in relation to Food Security in 2010-11 produced by the Mahbubul Haq Development Centre in Lahore makes dismal reading. The global food crisis since 2008 has hit this region hard. The striking feature is that it is not lack of availability but lack of access to what is available among the under-mass of the population that is the cause of a continuing and growing crisis for the poor.

The verdict on India is grim. “The path of economic reform that has resulted in high economic growth in some regions and sectors in India has been accompanied by failure on food security in all aspects – production, availability, distribution, affordability, absorption and nutrition – which makes India one of the most undernourished countries in the world”, well below the  standards prevailing in South Saharan Africa.

As much as 76 per cent of Indians consume inadequate food; three-fourths of its women and children are anaemic; foodgrain production declined from 208 to 196 kg per annum per capita between 1997 and 2010 while unemployment among agricultural labourers rose correspondingly. Farm productivity has declined and food prices have spiralled upwards; only one in four households has access to safe drinking water and sanitation facilities. National investment in agriculture and health has been consistently low. Following economic liberalisation, the emphasis has been on reducing food subsidies rather than on ensuring greater food security. Climate change now poses further uncertainties. Farmer suicides are rising and now total over a quarter of a million since 1995 with almost 16,000 deaths in 2010.

None of this was exactly unknown, but to be told it upfront on the basis of international comparisons is shocking. At the same time, India is growing more billionaires than most. This is an unacceptable and unviable situation, with huge regional and gender disparities as well, that contrasts ill with boastful talk of being an emerging great power that merits a seat at the high table. The latter claims are not without merit and cannot be discounted but there is a greater underlying truth that must be urgently addressed.

Greater investment in agriculture and the whole gamut of farm production and management practices, especially post-harvest technologies that include storage, cold chains, marketing and processing, are overdue. There has to be a new evergreen revolution with much more attention being given to dry land farming and tapping the immense potential of the eastern alluvial plain with its still inimical land relations that remain what Daniel Thorner long back called an agrarian depressor.

Contract farming, with safeguards, homestead farming (as a valuable nutritional supplement), and the licensing of multiple-brand retail trading could give a huge boost to farm production, productivity, processing and incomes. Bhoodan lands are still being distributed and settled tardily, years after the original land-gift. Unorganised small farmers suffer considerable storage and distribution losses and are exploited by middlemen. This results in their receiving a smaller share of the consumer’s rupee while the consumer pays more for poorer quality produce. Appropriate backward and forward linkages could make a significant difference to both productivity and prices to the benefit of both the famer and the consumer. 

Yet, change is resisted and often two or more problems are cited to every reform solutions. Reforms must certainly be undertaken with due care and positioning of safety nets for those who might lose out or require time to adjust in the transition. The country is now ripe for the next round of reforms which should not be held back for fear of electoral loss but, instead, made the platform for winning electoral rewards.

Speaking at the recent National Development Council meeting to approve the 12th Plan, the Prime Minister called on the nation to eschew negativism and not subject growth to short term considerations. The NDC endorsed a target of nine per cent growth during 2012-17 and heard a call to shun populism and not allow party election victories to overshadow India’s victory. The introduction and passage of the Goods and Services Tax and the new Direct Taxes Code will test the willingness to hew a new path away from negativism. Inflation has been a universal worry. But the GST, once adopted, should also help bring down prices.

The good news is that there appears to be a new drive towards reform and measures to curb corruption. A practical slew of “Lok Pal” measures – rather than a single, cumbersome enactment – will hopefully be in place over the next few months. India’s latest HDI Report shows heartening signs of inclusive growth with all disadvantaged categories like Dalits, tribals, women and Muslims registering improvements and narrowing differentials with the rest in terms of literacy, health and employment parameters. This still merits only one cheer, as there is much leeway to make up to gain parity with the rest, and more so, to match international standards.  Poverty is being rolled back – slowly. The latest series of baby deaths in West Bengal and the heavy toll taken by Japanese encephalitis in eastern Uttar Pradesh show how far we need to go, especially as these fatalities are caused by maternal malnutrition and lack of primary health care.

Census figures also show a continuing exodus to the cities from the countryside. These Malthusian refugees, mostly landless labourers, exploited sharecroppers and tiny peasants, find that the land is no longer a fond “mother” or them and simply cannot provide the income and opportunity they seek with a growingly unfavourable land-man ratio. NAREGA has helped but needs now to be better planned and professionally backstopped to create more and better farm capital assets and rural infrastructure, with less leakage. Yet no one has yet calculated to what extent the annual distress migration of 30-40 million “nowhere” persons (including family) has been arrested. 

The challenge is to create an additional net 10-12 million jobs per annum to match the growth in the labour force on account of population increase. Unimaginative land acquisition and environmental restraints have thus far been impediments to infrastructure development and manufacturing growth. These policies are fortunately now being reviewed. Meanwhile, two major industrial-cum-employment initiatives have been taken with the announcement of a new manufacturing policy to generate 100 million jobs in 10 years by facilitating national manufacturing investment zones and industrial corridors, and an additional 400,000 new jobs in 21 integrated textile parks.

These are bold new initiatives that must be supported and pushed through. But they need to be underpinned by a parallel process of incubating tiny, mini and small industries partly by upgrading the khadi and village industries, handloom and handicrafts sector as well as off-land farm processing and servicing industries though micro-finance, skill formation and cooperative development and facilitation.

The entrepreneurship is there. Imagination has been lacking.
www.bgverghese .com

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2011/11/falling-hdi-but-silver-linings/

By Joshy Joseph

Instead of a prologue:

The hunter and his bow are done
The chasing arrow almost there
I run knowing
The certain futility of why I run
Encircling the night lantern
Are many, shadows
Starving for a feast
Awaiting the arrow’s piercing
Greedy for my taste, salivating

Here, there is no sanctuary
Not one tree for his shielding
You would not shelter me
Open the door of your rock
Allow my scream in at least

(On a road near Thiruvananthapuram railway station, he was found unconscious. The penury, the societal amnesia and alcohol-all consumed him.  At 61, trailblazing A. Ayyapan became a poem in the scaffolding of history. This last poem, quoted above, was found in the pocket of his shirt and was later translated by Madhavankutty Pillai)
But why? And why Manipur
See, we used to get a lot of films from Manipur made by reputed filmmakers. But all these films were showing the exotica of the nine hills and one valley, continuously, that same story about the orchids or about the dance forms. So there was this general feel that nobody can enjoy this idyll…and the reason being the underground and insurgent groups…but the reality is neither hyper real nor surreal. It is simply a nuanced reality.

So, when Lokendra Arambam’s Soldiers in Sarong exploded in the scene it was one of the first political documentary about north-east which I felt debated the nuance. It revolves around Irom Sharmila’s fast (especially the first three years) and talks about the politics of the legitimate violence of the State. He never tried to obtain a censorship certificate and it was shown in intimate circles. He knew that it would not be passed.

Then later, Haobam Pawan Kumar’s film happened, which is not a film by a single filmmaker. Pawan, when he was studying in SRFTI (Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute), kept on tracking the developments against AFSPA. …So, it was a collection of the footages of all the news -reel cameramen from Manipur which Pawan put into a film. The name of the film is AFSPA 1958. So that is a major visual exposition of the political violence by State and non-State actors, seen by this part of India. That film was also not submitted for censoring. The film was not censored for the Mumbai international Film Festival… and won an important award at the MIFF.

Later….
…..when Films Division was showing MIFF award winning films in Kolkata, this film was also there. But it could not been shown because the authorities in Nandan insisted that the film can only be shown if there is a censor certificate for the same. Later, the film was censored with certain cuts. The film did not lose its impact although there were certain cuts. It did not take away the politics of the film. Now this film was submitted for the national awards next year because although the film was made some ten years back… may be seven years back, it was censored only two years ago and it won the highest award in India, the national award from the President of India.

The dichotomy, the dilemma and the dissent….
Ironically, that is the same year when the armed forces gallantry award list included a number of personnel posted in Manipur for the Assam Rifles. A rigorous training in army also includes the fact that there is learning about how to shoot.  But you really don’t get a laboratory to shoot down people unless there are flashpoint (not that any shooting is justified) and until you are posted either in Jammu & Kashmir or in the north-east where you are authorized by the State to shoot and kill on doubt or suspicion.

What this Armed Forces Special Powers Act does is that it actually knocks out the judiciary. A person in uniform, not necessarily an officer, but an ordinary jawan or an army personnel can shoot anybody down if he suspects that other person as a militant. So, you are authorized to kill on suspicion. With AFSPA, it’s not the track record, not the past that matters; but it is the future which is foreseen by the army man who is shooting you down.

The so called encounter killing means that someone is shot dead and beside the body you find a 9mm pistol… this story continues for so many years by now, as if the so called militant is taking over the might of the military, on a daily basis, with a 9mm pistol!

So, this film by Pawan was awarded the topmost prize on the same year in which an army officer from Kerala (who took a deputation to Assam Riffles), won the highest gallantry award. And the highest number of gallantry awards was from the state of Manipur that year. So my point is that a filmmaker who recorded all those State killings… is awarded by the President of India who also awards the perpetrators of killing at the same time.

The AFSPA film was awarded,  but the act was never repealed, AFSPA continues… this film is now being shown in various festivals.

I am torn by this dilemma. By the commodification of dissent. For example, Manorama was raped and killed. I am only talking about one person because this was a very controversial case known to rest of India. First, the army denied that the rape took place and said it was encounter killing and later, the forensic report in Kolkata proved that she was raped and killed. Rape is a civil crime. Forget about AFSPA, even if it happens in any other place, we know the taboo, the social crisis and trauma the victim has to undergo even if she has to approach a civil court. Now, here she is, bound by an act, where a civil crime is disallowed to be tried in civil court. She has to go to a military court.

People, places and placards…
My identity card allows me to go into places which is otherwise not easily accessible. And when I access the difficult terrain of Manipur, I am convinced about this draconian act going beyond an act and becoming a culture. Even if you repeal AFSPA, the act has become a culture… for example, only the para-military forces are coming under the purview of AFSPA. But when, two years back, the boy who was dragged into a medical shop and shot down by the Manipuri commandoes… the Manipuri commandoes are not coming under the purview of AFSPA, but AFSPA has become a culture. Even if you are going to repeal AFSPA, the cycle of violence is not going to end so fast. Because it has filtered down to the minds of police of Manipur.

So, even after the two committees recommendations (the Jeevan Reddy Committee and the Veerappa Moily Committee) to repeal AFSPA, nothing has been done, not even the process of compiling a white paper involving the rank and file in Manipur.

Look at the delicious irony. Manipur is a dry State… so we have to go to the Army PRO, the Assam Riffles PRO to get our stock of liquor (as and when needed while we are at Imphal).

Catharsis, confrontative, contextual…
I happened to be in Manipur shooting a film for Films Division on these Rickshawallahs who hide their face with a piece of cloth and the glasses, when the Malom incident broke out (November, 1999). The rickshawallahs, felt a sense of unease as the society looked down on the their profession as a result the act of hiding the faces. I was making a film on the subject. It was then the Malom incident broke out. A bomb explosion that was planted by the underground while a military truck was passing. The military truck was damaged, some personnel were hurt.

And then the usual story of the heavily armed personnel coming back and then letting loose a volley of bullets on all those people who were waiting for the bus and some who were in a nearby market.  Irom Sharmila started her fasting from that day. Because, in a land where you have no right to life, there is no meaning in living. If suspicion is enough to shoot you then the state does not respect your right to life.

I was shooting the rickshawallahs with a 35mm camera for Films Division and I knew that I cannot bring in these things in a very direct manner. I asked my unit members to bring some Diwali cracker-bombs from Kolkata. My idea was to plant these crackers(as a part of shot).. and I asked the mothers and children to play…of course to study their reaction when they hear the explosion.

We planted the bomb, the camera rolled, explosion happened. There was a confusion for a moment and then they burst into laughter. They said “…no gimmicks please, we Manipuri women know what is a bomb blast and what is a cracker-bomb.”

Politics, polemics and the camera looking inward…
So the film Making the Face (for PSBT on a Manipuri transgender make-up artist, Tom Sharma) we included a still of Sharmila in hunger strike and also one still by Suvendu Chatterjee on the wall graffiti of UNLF. And also towards the end of the film there was a interview of the Naga folk singer, Reuben Mashangwa… and he said that the sex starved commandoes did not even spare these transgender people. The transgender people in Imphal are known as Nightingales as they come out at night. At times when these commandoes do not have condoms, they used plastic bags as a protection.

Now, Ruben also was having a plastic bag with him in which we had brought our liqour. He put his middle finger inside the bag and gesticulated to the camera. I kept about six seconds of that shot in the film and although there were other objections from PSBT, this was not objected to.

The censor officer said: “… you have made a beautiful film but that one shot spoils the entire beauty of it… it was almost like a slap on my face.” So, I said that’s precisely the point, if you don’t allow me at least those 6 seconds of ugliness, I won’t be doing justice to the reality of Manipur. Then he said that you will have problems with Doordarshan for the telecast. But I reiterated that we were not going to cut it. Subsequently, it  was passed and broadcat as it is.

Not that we have to be tactical all the time. In the film While Gods took to Dancing which we did on Sharmila the tone was direct. See, if you are really cornered and suffocated by the system and the artist in you is alert… you explore the other means and ways of expression and still somehow reflect the truth.

Look at these Iranian films which are a craze of the film festivals… I have followed them very closely and also, I happened to be associated with an Iranian film shooting unit in the capacity of a liaison officer from Government of India some seventeen years back, where I found that even to be a producer of film, you have to be some sort of a licensed businessman.

Like an industrialist gets a license, in the same manner you can be a producer if the Ministry of Culture approves and you fulfill all the stipulations. Only, then can you be a producer. Now, before the coming of the digital age, you had to get the film raw-stock through the Ministry of Culture(for which you had to submit the script).

The question is not about what access you have or how high voltage the footage is. But, the moment you take this footage for granted as your film, it becomes another reportage.  Because the reality is so hard-hitting you are no more challenged and hence you tend to ignore the larger picture. So, a typical problem in Manipur is an explosion of footage without really laying out a cinematic palette.

The crux, the dialetic and the umbrage…
Aribam Syam Sharma’s old films reflected the real Manipur. But when it comes to the documentaries, they were all commissioned by some government agency or the other and does not reflect any socio-political realities.

All the films of Guwahati Doordarshan are commissioned because they don’t have an in-house set-up. So all the filmmakers in north-east earn their bread & butter from these commissioned programmes. As a result the safety net is taken for granted.

When Manipur started burning after the Manorama incident, people started asking these filmmakers as to why don’t you return this award to the Government of India…the silence of most of the filmmakers were deafening

I went to Manipur for the first time some twelve years back. Then the bamboo was flowering in Manipur after some forty-five years. Earlier, I read in paper about this bamboo getting flowers in north-east after forty-five years and with every cycle of bamboo flowering there was scarcity of food, famine and plague.

The road journey in itself was very interesting, because we traversed through Bengal, Bihar, Assam and on the sixth day we reached Manipur. From there it took us two days to reach Kunghphung  village where bamboo was flowering on the river bank of Barak… the  village where we had to reach.

My unit members were scared when they heard from the locals..the law and order situation in the village. The production coordinator was a Naga person from Imphal. He said we cannot straight away go to this village because we have to pass through some Kuki villages. If we passed through the Kuki villages we would reach faster, in a day. But then he would be killed because there was a series Naga – Kuki clash, happening at that time.

I remember the name of a person called John(who I stumbled upon in the State Guest House in Kohima). He asked me: What is your mission? I told him we are making an environmental film about the bamboo flowering story. So he said that it is not an environmental film, this is political cinema. I insisted that it is an environmental film.

He said ‘Do you know how Mizo National Front came in to power in Mizoram?’ John elucidated: when the bamboo flowered some fifty years back, overnight the crops were destroyed by the rats. Because the rat population increases. The grain within the bamboo flower, rather the fruit is eaten by the rats and their fertility shoots up. The number of nipples increase. So the number of litter in a single birth goes up to fourteen or fifteen and over just a month and the rat population explodes. It destroys all the standing crops and all the crops in the go-downs. So in Mizoram when this thin bamboo… Thingtam, blooms, there was no food to eat.

Laldenga came into the social scene to collect rice and feed people. Basically, MNF, which, over the years became the most dreaded underground organisation in the north-east, came into being when the bamboo flowering happened. This is the lesson which I got there in the Nagaland guest house over a glass of rice beer! I discovered an absolutely different India.

Epilogue, epicenter and an attempted end to this conversation with myself:
Political cinema, is not what you set out to make. But what comes to you as political reality unfolds and demands to creep into your narrative. Look at Mohsin Makhmalbaf and the vox-pop structure of The Cyclist. The overt political undercurrent in the deceptively simple narratives of Jafar Panahi –Abbas Kirostami-Majid Majijdi.

Or my friend Razzak’s unblinking still camera capturing Kamala Das. They, all look for beauty, subversion and the politics of the subject. How? Because Razzak grapples with his loneliness and transfers that to the lens whether he is shooting a still or doing camera for my film. Does he need sympathy for his loneliness? No, a political understanding to document him and yes, being brutal about his loneliness and yet celebrate the humaneness of his creations. Maybe a film as an ode to his stills…do I have a cinematic vocabulary to do that…

One of my forthcoming films set in Manipur…has three co-ordinates, eighty year old Tomba who goes for a morning walk with his swan Anaguaba, a photographer Ratan Luwangcha who told me the story and the celebration of simple aesthetics in a complex times. Or is the quest of simple aesthetics in multi-layered frame itself a complex exercise.

FCP or Premier can edit…what can it edit…maybe some NG shots and then piece a reality or a hyper reality. It is the mind’s eye that edits our vision of politics or the lack of it.

My friend Rupachandra, from ISTV in Imphal, told me once, that he gave a one line advice to anyone who went to Manipur and contacted him.

It was:  that while being in search of a story, please don’t become a story!

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2011/11/jumpcuts-from-the-margins-in-search-of-political-cinema-in-manipur-and-some-addendums/