Jai Bhim Comrade [2011]

 Anand Patwardhan’s Jai Bhim Comrade remains political filmmaking at its most elemental – fearless, angry, uncompromising, rebellious, carrying a fiercely subaltern lens, and rejecting the idea of “art for art’s sake” – and a brutally unflinching examination of Dalit experience in India. Heroically and expansively filmed over 14 long years – its runtime of nearly 3 hours remains 2^nd only to Vivek in his filmography – it began with footage of the Dalit-Marxist poet-singer Vilas Ghogre from Patwardhan’s exceptional film Hamara Shahar from 12 years back, and whose tragic suicide in 1997 triggered this work. His self-annihilation was driven by extreme disillusionment – or was it a final act of protest? – upon the murder of a dozen Dalit residents of Mumbai’s Ramabai colony by the police, the zealous agents of a violently casteist society and state. Thereon, it branched into four intimately interrelated branches – a deeply personal memorialization of the Ambedkerite activist’s life-long resistance; an investigative reportage, over the following 1 ½ decades, into the brazen killings, the sham probe and mockery of justice that followed, and the despair that it left in its wake; an extension into other Dalit activists and artists – in particular, the dissident cultural troupe Kabir Kala Manch that performed anti-caste street theatre and songs, and the firebrand speaker and Dalit Panthers co-founder Bhai Sangare –; and documentation of the systemic oppression, caste atrocities and otherization that continues unabated, perpetuated by a majoritarian social order, right-wing political factions, and a proudly bigoted middle-class. Filmed in unvarnished visuals using portable video cameras, the weaving in of incendiary revolutionary music into its epic length – which reminded me of Barbara Kopple’s similarly courageous Harlan County, USA – remains its most electrifying and enduring aspect.

Director: Anand Patwardhan

Genre: Documentary/Investigative Reportage/Political Documentary/Essay Film/Musical

Language: Marathi/Hindi/English

Country: India

Hamara Sahar (Bombay: Our City) [1985]

 Anand Patwardhan, with his remarkable fourth film Hamara Shahar, firmly established himself as India’s foremost documentary filmmaker. Made using grass-root financing, shot with a mobile 16mm sync-sound camera, and distributed through alternative working-class channels to sidestep restrictions imposed by state authorities and corporate powers, this was like a bristling pocket-sized dynamite. Patwardhan – who blended political resistance into his filmmaking, influenced by the manifestos of Third Cinema and Imperfect Cinema – resorted to a deliberately dialectical approach while recording the extreme plight of the impoverished and disenfranchised slum and pavement dwellers of Bombay. The megapolis’ middle and upper classes, on one hand, cruelly and callously exploit their labours for building high-rises, disposing wastes, getting domestic help, and whatnot, while on the other treating them like bottom-feeders, complaining how they pollute the city’s shiny ambiance, illegally occupy lands that’re screaming to be monetized, and simply refuse to disappear. Along with proudly expressing their monstrous apathy, they also weaponize the police into destroying their shanty homes and forcibly evicting them through wanton violence. The director demonstrated radical empathy for the poor – across caste and religious lines – while recording their extreme tribulations and capturing their devastating misery; in parallel, he made his biting scorn eminently clear by allowing the city’s Municipal Commissioner, Police Commissioner, wealthy industrialists and pompous residents to express their classism, hypocrisy and casual apathy in the comfort of their sprawling homes, exclusive clubs and posh surroundings. These alternating and arresting interrogative segments were anchored by a song dripping with cutting anger and profound pathos performed by a street theatre troupe led by the Marxist-Dalit poet-singer-activist Vilas Ghogre. His shocking demise 12 years later would provoke Patwardhan’s magnum opus, Jai Bhim Comrade.

Director: Anand Patwardhan

Genre: Documentary

Language: Marathi/Hindi/English

Country: India

Sabar Bonda (Cactus Pears) [2025]

Marathi filmmaker Rohan Kanawade’s tender and assured feature debut Sabar Bonda – weaved with intimate semi-autobiographical elements, memories and reflections – was an intensely muted expression of barely contained emotions. A contrapuntal evocation of grief and desire, two supposedly antithetical emotions, it also captured with subtlety what could’ve easily made for acrid parody, viz. the very Indian habit of family elders and “well-wishers” freely encroaching into private spaces and imparting unsolicited advices on life choices and marital decisions. Informed and shaped by the director’s own experiences upon his father’s demise a decade back, which necessitated a rather uncomfortable trip back from Bombay to his village that he hadn’t visited in many years, the film too opened with a similarly reluctant “homecoming” of Anand (Bhushaan Manoj), a 30-something gay man employed in a middle-income job in Bombay, to his ancestral village for performing his father’s last rites. Though he’d “come out” to his parents long back, his extended family members aren’t explicitly aware of his sexuality – though not fully unaware either – and consequently, along with instructions on how he should mourn, also doggedly badger him on marriage. However, contrary to societal expectations, he rekindles his intimacy with Balya (Suraaj Suman), an old friend who’s similarly single and a farmer who’s craving to escape from his rural environs. Naturalistically shot in soft colours, lyrical exteriors and framed in rounded edges like old photographs, Kanawade’s understated depiction of the fraught situation – and toned-down evocation of the homophobic atmosphere – was laced with undercurrents of defiance and a wish for the mundane. Alongside the two male leads, competently played by theatre actors who’ve known each other for long, Jayshri Jagtap was also memorable as Anand’s mother.

Director: Rohan Kanawade

Genre: Drama/Romantic Drama/Slice-of-Life

Language: Marathi

Country: India

Against the Tide [2023]

 Watching Sarvnik Kaur’s poignant and poetic documentary Against the Tide, one’s immediately transfixed by the exacting chronicling of her deeply moving subject, given the long and arduous shooting conditions that it must’ve entailed. However, what enthralled me most was her fluid blending of narrative storytelling – and therefore fictive elements – into the nonfiction form, and the formal elasticity accorded by that. It draws particularly fascinating parallels with fellow Jamia Millia Islamia alumnus Shaunak Sen’s masterful docu All That Breathes. The nuanced and evolving portraiture – over the course of a year – of two friends belonging to the marginalized Koli community and tirelessly striving to sustain their piscine vocations, brings to mind the powerful delineation of avian passions of the two ghettoized Muslim brothers. The story of this indigenous fishing community – whose lives and livelihoods have been pushed to the edges on account of displacements due to Mumbai’s reconstructed cityscape, and rapid depletion of stock exacerbated by industrialized fishing, climate change and marine pollution – is evoked through two fiercely intimate friends, albeit separated by class and pursuing contrasting routes. Rakesh lives an impoverished existence with his wife and mother, having opted to continue pursuing traditional fishing in the shallow seas in his frayed old boat with a seasonal crew; Ganesh has moved up the socioeconomic ladder and lives in the city with his wife, but is stuck in the vicious loop of raising capital to go deeper into the sea using expensive crew and equipment, and drowning in debt as a consequence. The brilliantly shot work, with its underlying theme of tradition vis-à-vis modernization, is hauntingly bookended by two births and imbued with stirring echoes through recurrent use of a plaintive dirge.

Director: Sarvnik Kaur

Genre: Documentary/Essay Film

Language: Marathi/Hindi

Country: India

The Disciple [2020]

 Chaitanya Tamhane’s The Disciple – the first Indian film since Mira Nair’s brilliant Monsoon Wedding to feature in the main competition at Venice – was an immersive delve into the austere, rigorous and cloistered world of Hindustani classical music… the years of training, discipline and self-sacrifice that it necessitates aside, a world defined by the tradition of passing down of skills from guru to protégé, and avowed reverence in return. The film’s titular disciple is Sharad (Aditya Modak), who’s thoroughly committed to attaining mastery in this field, even if that means life-long self-denial. Unfortunately, despite his monomaniac pursuit and extreme desire to achieve transcendental abilities, he may never be able to make the leap to greatness; and hence, his growing internal conflicts with seeping disillusionment, existential despair and puritanism become as onerous as the pursuit itself. In this journey over a number of years, from youth to approaching middle-age, three people represent his moral compass – Guruji (Arun Dravid), a barely recognized stalwart and his equanimous teacher, who represents the benchmark that he strives for; his father who too lacked the gift despite his enormous passion in this field; and Maai, an esoteric, forgotten maestro whose views about denouncing recognition and embracing extreme self-flagellation – captured through eerily captivating voice-overs – accompany terrific slo-mo long-take shots of Sharad riding on his bike through the Bombay streets. Modak and Dravid, interestingly, are both classically trained vocalists, and both brought startling authenticity to their roles; Modak was especially brilliant in capturing the seemingly unflappable protagonist’s obsessive quest that completely consumes his identity and being along the way. The film’s brooding tranquility and layered use of music – a prerequisite given the subject matter – were absorbing too.

 

 

 

 

 

Director: Chaitanya Tamhane

Genre: Drama/Psychological Drama

Language: Marathi

Country: India