TNM LIVE: From the Mediastorm

Duration: 01:01:45; Aspect Ratio: 1.778:1; Hue: 358.776; Saturation: 0.210; Lightness: 0.114; Volume: 0.154; Cuts per Minute: 0.243; Words per Minute: 150.277

Mediastorm, India's first, woman-only, documentary collective revisit their history and prescient video practice.
In 1985, six batch mates in their early twenties, at the newly established AJK Mass Communication Research Centre (MCRC) at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi formed MEDIASTORM, likely India's first documentary collective. The MCRC over the next decades would go on to become a premiere media institution, and the six women would invest themselves deeply in film pedagogy, shaping a generation of media practitioners and theorists.
They were indeed part of a new moment. In an environment of rising fundamentalism, the desire to organise collectively and counter dominant mass-media hysteria, with committed inquiry and through diverse cultural fora was taking shape. Video as a medium was making independent filmmaking and distribution possible. In their own words, "A new media culture was gathering storm".
In five years, the Mediastorm collective made three significant films. In Secular India (1986), From the Burning Embers (1998), and Whose Country is it Anyway? (1991). They were on the field, traversing the country, an all-women film crew, "crowdfunding" their productions. The films were deep, incisively crafted and collectively authored and produced. All six members were honoured with the Chameli Devi Jani Award in 1991 for "exemplary dedication, deep conviction and sensitivity in the use of a relatively new journalistic medium in India for critical commentary on live social and political issues of our times." We are delighted to revisit this history and prescient video practice with members of the collective.

Shikha Jhingan has written extensively on cinema, television and aural cultures, and has been a documentary filmmaker.
Sabina Gadihoke authored Camera Chronicles of Homai Vyarawalla (2006) and is a cinematographer and curator of photography.
Sabina Kidwai co-authored Crossing the Sacred Line: Women's search for Political Power (1998) and combines academic work with media practice.
Ranjani Mazumdar wrote Bombay Cinema: An Archive of the City (2007), and is an academic and a documentary filmmaker as well.
Shohini Ghosh directed the documentary Tales of the Night Fairies (2002) and is the author of Fire: A Queer Classic (2010).
Charu Gargi is a filmmaker researching the relationship between gender and mainstream Indian Cinema.

SA: The second live event in a somewhat fringe but important programme of the MAMI film festival. My name is Shaina Anand and I am the curator of this programme that is called The New Medium. I just want to take a minute to explain the curatorial concept. It basically looks at cinema and the moving image as an inherently new medium. And I want to just think about this for a minute because cinema and the moving image is only 125 years old. And art historically if you compare this to say the other 6 6 arts, because cinema and the moving image came to be called the 7th art, you have sculpture, painting, architecture, dance and musics - spatial arts as well as temporal arts which are millennium-old, right. They're really old art forms. So, what is this 7th art that is only 125 years old? People say this medium is exhausted, technology changes, and what are the newer newer things? I want you to pause for a minute and realize that it is only 120 odd years old and therefore, fundamentally and inherently a new medium whose vocabulary and language is far from exhausted. This is somewhat the overarching theme of The New Medium programme as such. It does't really just bring you... it is, of course it does bring you cutting-edge artists and new media work, but it also encourages you to look historically back at things made in the 1910s, in '20s and so on, and to just look at that moving image as historically as a new medium.

SA: This year's theme is footage films. And we're trying to somehow bring into this programme somewhat of an archival approach. Not just by way of curating but actually for the film makers themselves - what they do with the material, how they go in search of archival material and how they can craft it into something formally provocative and new and also in content.

SA: It gives me great pleasure in this framework to somewhat be witness to a historical moment here in Bombay to bring 4 members out of the 6 who belonged to the Mediastorm collective here. I thank them for their time and really, I am glad that you all are here to be part of something that's very dear to me. I have been bugging Mediastorm for many years now to locate their missing tapes. And their films I was dying to see and I realize now after having seen them that they are films the world should be dying to see.

SA: Mediastorm needs not much introduction. They're here and will personally takes us through their formation, what informed them in the 80's, their early trajectory, and for us their history. It is... you know I was discussing this with Shohini and Ranjani over the phone and I said 'you actually are India's first media collective' and they thought about it, and you know they're academics, so you do not make false claims. And they said 'er... maybe say arguably India's first'. And so we pondered about it a little more and we threw up - you know there's Odessa collective - but it was also '84 around the same time - they formed and the Odessa collective was to collectively organise funding and the distribution.
first media collective

SA: For the production still or the direction and the crafting of the film remain an auteur-driven exercise and John Abraham made 2 films under Odessa. And that's it. So, they do get touted as now India's first all women collective and really let's have flat ontology here and flatness - they are India's first collectiv, and it just happens that they are 6 fantastic women who have emerged as extremely rigorous researchers and academics doing extraordinary work. Almost all of them have published books but more importantly have emerged as pedagogues.

SA: And from the time they left and abandoned Mediastorm continued almost each one on their own, mostly based in Delhi, Bombay is lost - Charu will come to Bombay I hope - but have shaped generations of practitioners as well as theorists. And I am really happy to have 4 of them here. We of course miss the Sabeenas - Sabeena Gadihoke can't be with us - she's in New York, and Sabina Kidwai had a prior commitment in Chennai. I will just read out their bios for those of you who aren't already ardent admirers of their work as researchers, writers, academics and pedagogues, not necessarily as film makers because I bet - who's seen their films?

SA: Just want to read out their bios very quickly. I begin with Sabeena who is not here but she was here in quite an embodied way - she curated an extraordinary retrospective of Jitendra Arya which came down from the NGMA less than a week ago. I hope some of you managed to catch it. Sabeena teaches at the Anwar Jamal Kidwai Mass Communication Research Centre at the Jamia Millia Islamia. She is the author of Camera Chronicles of Homai Vyarawalla. She is also a cinematographer and photo curator, and her areas of research include multiple histories of Indian photography, media archaeology and the intersection of cinema and photography.

SA: Sabeena Kidwai also teaches at the MCRC in Jamia Millia. She combines academic work with media practice. She is the co-author of Crossing the Sacred Line: Women Search for Political Power. Her current research focuses on the presence, circulation and representation of minorities.

SA: One of my favorites, Ranjani Mazumdar teaches Cinema Studies at the School of Arts & Aesthetics, at JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University). In her bio she says she has been a documentary film maker and now works as an academic. She is the author of Bombay Cinema: An Archive of the City. Her areas of research include the cinematic city, media theory and the intersection of travel, design and colour in the 1960's Bombay cinema. See how much Bombay gets from these people. I mean Homai Vyarawalla was based here, Ranjani writes about Bombay... we're really happy to have you here.

SA: Shohini Ghosh teaches at the Mass Communication Research Center at Jamia Millia as well. Now, remember this is their alma mater, they came from there. Mediastorm I think was the second batch of a newly formed MCRC, which I hope they will take us back to in their presentation. She is the director of a documentary we've all seen, and if you haven't seen you must see Tales of the Night Fairies, and the author of Fire: A Queer Film Classic. Her areas of research interest are contemporary media, popular cinema, documentary films, queer sexualities and the cultural politics of action in cinema.

SA: Charu is affiliated with the School of Media and Cultural Studies, TISS. At present she is making a short film on the concept of homeland and ethnicity documented in Estonia. Her current research focuses on the relationship between gender and mainstream Indian cinema.

SA: Shikha Jhingan teaches cinema studies at the School of Arts and Aesthetics at JNU. She has been a documentary film maker and now works as an academic. She has written on cinema, television and oral cultures. Her current areas of research include sound technologies and cinema, music, stardom and media archaeology.

SA: I have to say, as media archaeologists - you heard 3 of them were media archaeologists - they seem to have cared very little about very important bit of media history. And maybe there's something there right. We don't necessarily look back at our first works and our early works, specially when we do a shift and invest in another kind of career and another kind of practice. And this sumehow brings me to the question of time in both cinema and time in the archive, and time within us and time of the image. And I hope today you will see why that... is so important, to revisit these images and to see them as fresh and urgent images.

SA: Speaking of the images there's a small rider here. They found their master tapes and it really takes you back to a moment where that analog image breathes so much life and has a certain depth and a quality that perhaps, digital pixels don't have now. And they look pristine and the colours are wonderful, but somehow in the projection here we are missing the density of red - its a bit dominated by the green and blue. So, we all apologise for that. And just to say that we are not screening all the 3 films in entirety, but we're taking you on a single journey through excerpts from all the 3 films. And I hope in doing this journey you will see a through line of their incisive inquiry and deep political commitment in documenting, chronicling and presenting to us a very important and scary time between 1985 and 1991. What happened in 1992 and where we go on from there we all know. But somehow looking back at those 5 years is extremely urgent now and we thank them for their prescient commitment to making these films.

RM: This is a presentation written by all of us and each of us will read a section of the presentation. Can you all hear me?

RM: Okay. I'm Ranjani Mazumdar. We would like to begin by thanking Shaina Anand who has been entirely responsible for giving the Mediastorm films a new life. Having made the films and showed them around we had put the tapes of ours films away in places that even we could not find. More than 25 years later, after Shaina's dogged persuasion, we searched and found our Umatic and Betacam masters. She then took the responsibility of digitizing them. She also digitizing the slides that Shohini shot during the period. Today if you are able to see this material it is because of Shaina's interest, perseverance and deep investment in cinematic archive. Thank you. Now I will hand over to Shikha.

SJ: So, I am Shikha Jhingan and I'll carry from here. We who become part of Mediastorm were students who joined the Mass Communication Research Center at Jamia Millia Islamia in 1984. Founded by the university's former Vice Chancellor, Anwar Jamal Kidwai, the MCRC was a new institution set up as an Indo Canadian collaboration between York University, Toronto and Jamia Millia Islamia, financially supported by the UGC in India and the Canadian International Development Agency.

SJ: Anwar Jamal Kidwai was an intellectual, a visionary and an institution builder. Kidwai wanted to build a media school that would create professionals with a sense of social responsibility. For this he relied on the active participation of James Beveridge, (slide 4) famous documentary filmmaker and teacher from Canada and his wife Margaret Beveridge, a distinguished film editor. When the liberalisation of the economy and the onset of satellite television dramatically transformed the mediascape of India in the 1990's, the MCRC was ready and waiting to confront the winds of change. We were the second batch of students at the MCRC.

SJ: Given MCRC's newness, a large share of the teaching fell on the Beveridges who exposed us to a range of cinema across the world. There was a strong emphasis on documentary. During this period we also encountered at the International Film Festival in 1985, a section called DOCUMEDIA that showed a number of documentaries from across the world but mostly from the NFB or the National Film Board of Canada founded by John Grierson. These films and the teachings of Jim and Margaret Beveridge gave us an imaginative alternative to the Films Division documentaries that we had been routinely exposed to - through their mandatory screenings before every feature film in theaters.

SJ: Our first year at MCRC proved to be significant for our future development. The 1984 pogroms of Sikhs following Indira Gandhi's assassination happened very soon after we joined the institution. This event made us aware of the cruel incongruity with which the Congress-owned media was going about its business. AJK encouraged us to feel the discontent and raise our voices against it. During this time, a visiting filmmaker - one among the many vibrant visitors we had - left a lasting impression on us.

SJ: It was Anand Parwardhan who screened his documentary, Bombay: Humara Shahar about the city's response to slum-dwellers. The film opened out a new audacious political attitude for all of us. We were blown away! The film had a catchy recurring song that commented ironically on the inequalities in the lives of the city's inhabitants. After the film ended, we insisted that Anand teach us the song, which he did. Songs were to become an important leitmotif in the films of Mediastorm, sometimes to great affective purpose as in In Secular India, at other times to our peril, as in Kiska Dharm Kiska Desh.

SJ: In the emerging mediascape of the 1980's, video had carried out a revolution. Its user-friendliness, immediacy and portability transformed some of the practice of production and distribution. The cameras continued to be heavy, but video tapes and allowed us to economise on shooting - we could rewind the tape and shoot again if the images did not satisfy us. The proliferating video libraries in every neighborhood also expanded the range of films that we were watching. But video - like all emergent forms of popular media - faced its share of flak because celluloid was still the gold-standard. There was an idea that 'real' filmmakers made films on film while amateurs made films on video. Sadly, even the documentary film movement was not free of this prejudice.

SJ: The camera, in comparison to what would be considered portable today, was heavy and attached to a cumbersome audio-video recorder with a long, thick cable. The U-Matic tapes were large and heavy - so the recorder had to be capacious enough to swallow, spool, play and record. Unlike film editing video editing in those days was entirely linear, relying heavily on the CONTROL TRACK - the video equivalent of sprocket holes. If the control-track was broken - which pressing the wrong button could result in - the edit had to be started all over again. The original edit mattered because copying to another tape resulted in a GENERATION LOSS which means that the resolution and strength of the audio and video signals would deteriorate dramatically with each copy. Apart from an overall loss of quality, a Generation Loss aggravated whatever problems the original tapes may have had. Terms like gen loss, drop outs, tape scratches, broken control track, are part of our embodied memory of working with analogue video. I think at the screening today you will see elements of all these technical problems that we battled with.

CG: Hi, I am Charu. The forming of Mediastorm Collective was accidental and emerged out of the controversy around the Muslim Women's Bill, following the now famous Shah Bano Judgement. Shah Bano, a 62-year-old woman, was divorced by her husband according to the procedures of Muslim Personal Law. But, after the divorce, she moved the courts to claim alimony from her husband since she had no other means to support her children. After 7 years, the Supreme Court ruled that, under Section 125 of Criminal Procedure Code, Shah Bano, would have to be provided maintenance by her ex-husband with an upper limit of Rs 500, a month.

CG: Although, it was not the first time that the court had passed such an order, its unwarranted comments on the Quran caused a furore. The Muslim orthodoxy saw this as an attack on their personal law and the congress government responded to this crisis by reversing its public stance on the judgment. It chose instead to support an independent member's bill, thereby enacting the ironically named Muslim Women's Protection of Rights on Divorce Bill in May 1986.

CJ: Women's groups reacted sharply to the Bill, and several vocal protests were organised outside the Parliament. One of which involved women chaining themselves to the gate of the Parliament on the day the bill was passed so that they could not be forcibly removed by the police.

CJ: The shooting of this protest outside the Parliament was one of the first things we did as a collective. Then one thing led to another. AJ Kidwai permitted us to make the film as part of our graduation project, but the permission was withdrawn when the university took a stand in favour of the bill. Kidwai told us that since Jamia would not be able to support this controversial film, we should make it independently and that he would help us with it.

CJ: Our collective was formed in response to this need to organize ourselves for production. We became a voluntary, non-profit organisation. None of the filmmakers made money through the collective. For fund-raising, we relied entirely on the massive support and solidarity of our various fellow travelers and well wishers. Not withstanding difficulties, we felt an excitement in the air. We sensed, that a new media culture was gathering storm. The premonition was contained in naming the collective 'Mediastorm' an acknowledgement that we were indeed part of a new transformation moment.

CJ: The first to make a donation for the collective was the publisher of Sage Publications, Tejeshwar Singh. Kidwai had requested Mike Pandey, the acclaimed wildlife filmmaker to help us. Mike generously extended to us his technical facilities. But we could only work when the facilities were free, so In Secular India was made while the city slept. We would edit in shifts throughout the night, taking turns to work and sleep on the studio floor. With the generous help of numerous individuals (whose names appear on the credits), our first documentary film was made.

CJ: As a group of filmmakers, we made many allies and some of them become friends for life. But one friend and ally we lost very early on in life was the talented playwright and street-theater activist, Safdar Hashmi. Safdar was a friend and we had asked him to write us a song that would be a leitmotif in In Secular India. Initially, Safdar was reluctant because he said he had never written a song before. Then one day, in a tea shop, he sat and wrote the whole song. Sung by our friend, Sumangala, in the film, Ek Pardanashin (The veiled one), it remains for many of us, as moving today as it was then. Safdar went on to write some powerful songs for Mediastorm's second film.

RM: In Secular India was made and shown to a packed auditorium on 14 September 1986. Prior to media liberalisation and the advent of cable and satellite television, the regular source of news and current affairs (apart from newspapers) was Doordarshan. It was common knowledge that Doordarshan was the mouthpiece of the government. So, predictably, the national debate on the Muslim Women's Bill had found no place there. That so many people showed up at the capacious AIFACS auditorium to watch a film made by 8 unknown students was evidence that people were ready for a dissident visual media.

RM: In Secular India was the only film that was made by eight of us because two members soon got married and left the country.

RM: The form and style of In Secular India had emerged from a convergence of influences. The Griersonian legacy carried into the MCRC through the Beveridges, the energy and audacity of Anand Patwardhan, the issues raised by the women's movement and the possibilities inaugurated by the New Media moment driven by the video revolution. In our first film we understood the idea of collective film-making too literally and took turns to perform every technical job. Having seen the less then satisfactory results, we decided that for our subsequent projects we were better off designating work according to people's individual strengths and aptitude. Sabeena Gadihoke and Charu became our designated camera-persons and the rest of the work we shared.

RM: In 1987, Roop Kanwar, a young Rajput widow, decided to burn herself on the funeral pyre of her husband. The 'sati' event had taken place in the presence of the villagers and the police did nothing to prevent it. What was horrifying was the powerful Rajput groups along with the family of the in-laws had decided to organise a chunri mahotsava glorifying the sati, turning the sati sthal into a pilgrim spot. Women's group in the country were outraged.

RM: We decided to take a train to Jaipur. Armed with a hired studio camera, we traveled to Deorala. As we emerged from our hired car, the desert stretched endlessly in the distance, broken only by the sight of a stream of people - men in colorful turbans and veiled women circling the sati sthal in silence. In retrospect, we must have been very odd to them, wearing ethic salwar kameez in an attempt to 'merge in' (that misplaced assumption and attempt has been laid to rest since!). We were immediately cornered by a gang of men, subjected to interrogation, and asked to leave. But we succeeded in gathering a spectrum of views that become significant for the political vision of the film.

RM: From the Burning Embers receive considerable Media attention including from Bhaskar Ghose, the director of Doordarshan at the time. Amita Mallik wrote strongly about how the film should be telecast. We had meetings at Doordarshan and were subsequently asked to attend another meeting at the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting to meet the Secretary. Clearly the media attention was embarrassing and the Ministry meeting became a negotiating moment! We finally agreed to edit our a section to ensure a telecast and on Roop Kanwar's death anniversary, the film received a national telecast! This was indeed a sweet victory.

RM: Our Rajasthan shooting generated a major archive of footage. Not all of this was used in the film, but we preserved the footage.

RM: A few years later, when Kalyan Singh Kalvi got elected from Barmer district and become the minister for energy, we found an old interview by him in our archive, where the politician had not only defended sati but also placed it as one of the major aspects of Indian culture that had to be defended. Women's groups used the footage to hold a press conference since, in this new avatar, Kalvi was denying his role in defending sati.

RM: If songs had been one of the elements that inspired us, for Burning Embers we decided to include a major street play by Jana Natya Manch. One of the richest memories of working as a collective was the way people helped us in whatever way they could. Vidya Rao sat through the night to sing a song that was composed by Kajal Ghosh. The songs for the film were penned by Kalindi Deshpande.

RM: In Secular India and From the Burning Embers were driven by our involvement in the Women's movement. We use the term 'women's movement' to talk about our association with a range of groups - autonomous as well as politically affiliated - and individual feminists who were academics, scholars, writers and cultural practitioners. We had started reading feminist literature and resisting the sexism that surrounded us. We realized only too quickly that production work was deeply gendered. Women were tacitly encouraged to take - up editing and not the camera. When after graduation, we worked as producer at the MCRC for the UGC's countrywide class room projects, Sabeena Gadihoke's insistence that she would do her own camerawork, outraged many. Once again, it was AJ Kidwai who intervened to set matters right.

SG: Hi, I am Shohini Ghosh I hope you can hear me. Can you?

SG: Sabeena and Charu become the designated camera people for Mediastorm. A number of filmmakers and TV producers patted us on the back for having broken a glass wall - if not a ceiling. But the appreciation would almost immediately be followed by apologies and explanations about why they could never hire a woman camera-person because it was simply not a practical proposition. In the late 80's and early 90's, it was hard for a woman camera-person to get work in order to improve her skills. In Mediastorm, we did away with any reliance on men by performing all the technical jobs ourselves.
shilanyas

SG: However there were occasions, when the assumed incompetence of women served us well. During the shooting of Kiska Dharm Kiska Desh. Sabeena was the only person who was allowed to enter the sanctum-sanctorum of the Babri Masjid with a camera on her shoulder and that is how we managed to get the rare footage of the 'garb-griha'. Similarly, few were allowed to shoot the exhibition at the Shilanyas site at Ayodhya. And the Mediastorm was one of them.

SG: Kiska Dharm, Kiska Desh, the English title being Whose Country is it Anyway?, made in 1991, was Mediastorm's most difficult and ambitious project. The film sought to track the rise of Hindutva forces and the deepening communal divide in the country by forces unleashed by the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. Kiska Dharm was shot before the demolition of the Babri Masjid. We decided to place the Babri Masjid dispute at the center, but sought to understand its reverberations across the country. It is for this film that we traveled the most - we went to Bhagalpur, Ahmadabad, Bombay, Faizabad, Lucknow and Ayodhya.

SG: Everywhere we noticed how memories of violence had marked the site. The last leg of the shooting covered the Shilanyas or the bricklaying ceremony at the Babri Masjid and L.K. Advani's rath yatra which had wreaked havoc across North India. The mosque, as we saw it during our several tips, was heavily barricaded with barbed wire and virtually inaccessible to the media. Only Hindu devotees could go in and offer prayers at the Ram chabutara where the idol had been kept.

SG: A number of pamphlets with colorful covers were being sold outside. They had names like Ramjanmabhomi ki Rakt-ranjit itihaas - The Ram-Janmabhoomi's Blood-soaked History. One of the slides that we have been unable to locate for this event is a giant hoarding of a pictures of 'Ramlalla' with a calf and a text that says: 'Gau hathya karne walon ko hathya karna, har Hindu ka dharmik kartavya hai' ('To kill those who kill cows is the religious obligation of every Hindu').

SG: When we trooped inside the Babri Masjid, with Sabeena carrying the camera on her shoulders, the police let us through. They cursorily instructed as not to shoot inside. The camera was already on and we did not put of off. Consequently, we ended up with footage of the activties of the garb-griha.

SG: It is with Kiska Dharam that we began to see the limits of just focusing on the 'event'. We had to access a subterranean world of memories, suspicion and hatred. It is for this reason that the film, which we originally began with the dispute at the Babri Masjid, became something much larger in its scope. We did away with comments from 'experts' and observers, letting the story emerge from the people themselves.

SG: The film was made with the intention of screening in North India, so was made in Hindu. Today, the vocabulary used by the narrator seams difficult for even us. The songs sit uncomfortably within the narrative. Despite its failings, of which one is the hopeful conclusion about an idealized alliance of forces defeating communalism, the film is a strong testimonial to a particular moment in history. Most importantly, the film made us realize how difficult it was to analyse the complex experiences of communal conflict.

SG: A year after we had made Kiska Dharm, Kiska Desh, the Babri Masjid was demolished. Jubilating mobs dances in joy over the ruins of the mosque. Something in India had changed. Something in us also changed. We were overwhelmed by the force of history. Our utopic faith in the will of people to resist the tide of right - wing, authoritarian forces had been brutally overturned. The political coherence and interventional certitudes that had driven our documentary work had been put in crisis. New journeys had to begin for each one of us.

SG: In the decade of the nineties globalisation radically transformed the mediascape. New modes of making and disseminating documentaries had emerged. All over the world, documentary filmmakers were experimenting with the language of cinema. We began to move further and further away from the form of the three documentaries we had made. Documentary was no longer just about the content, it was just as much about form and style. Each one of us engaged with this moment in our own ways. A number of us took up teaching while simultaneously pursuing higher studies. The canvas of our individual interests widened. Our notion of collective practice had also changed. And how that worked out in our lives, is a subject for a another day. Thank you.

RM: I just want to say one thing that maybe we didn't say in our original narrative, that all these were shot on used tapes, used several times because we had no money to buy new tapes. So, every film has used old tapes. And which is why the deterioration is even more rapid in these films.

Audience1: ... What are your latest activities?

RM: Most of us are teachers now in University.
Audience1: No... Are you still in film production, or... ?
RM: We don't do collective work anymore like that, as a collective.
Audience1: Okay okay, you are individually...

Audience2: Thank you so much for showing these films from the archives. I just have 2 questions. 1 is, as women filmmakers were you conscious at the fact you have to make films which - I mean 2 of them are womens' issues so, were you conscious of the fact that women have to speak in the film? Considering that lot of the experts were male experts as we see in the first film and how difficult was it for you as female filmmakers to bring out the voices of women subjects? When today also we see there might we lot of hesitance... like its more difficult to get women to talk on camera rather then men. That's what I have found in my experience.

Audience2: And the 2nd question I wanted to ask was that, given that even in terms of cinema studies and cinema history its been dominated by male directors and writers, so, were you conscious of the fact that you have to watch certain kinds of films to build like a certain sensibility of cinema while before you were making these film or where you formed the collective?

SG: Its hard to say what we were all thinking at that time because maybe we were all thinking different things. But, while obviously women's voices were very important we never really though that men's voices should be excluded. So, its more about feminist politics than just women speaking. Because if you watch the whole of Kiska Dharm Kiska desh there's Sadhvi Rithambara speaking - she is a woman and she is really not embracing feminist politics. So, I think that we were actually looking at a certain kind of politics, and that didn't necessarily mean that we were kind of... we only wanted the biological woman to speak.

SG: But yes I think that more than... the voices of women were definitely important, but as far as a collective is concerned, I think it was very important for us to be, as women, be part of the practice or be part of the industry. So, you know there were women filmmakers at that time when we were making films, but a lot of the technical work would be done by men. That is an area that we felt that we needed to reclaim.

SJ: I just want to add that it did help us... the kind of interviews we were able to take. For example the interviews that you have seen (?) when women are responding to Sati and talking about why is it that the man... the kind of interviews and the kind of spaces that we were able to access as women we were able to interview women in their homes and in the bastis. I think that was quite unusual as women that was a great advantage, that we could get those voices. And I don't think it was difficult to be able to get those voices. The technology and the accessibility allowed us to do that, and so they were certain advantages as well and way we could access certain spaces.

CG: Even spaces like we talked about in the presentation that Sabeena could enter in KIska Dharm Kiska Desh you could enter the inner sanctum. Similarly in Sati we were once told by those guys themselves that why don't you go in as bhakts and you can carry the... we carried the camera hiding it and went in. And I think it was because we are women we were allowed into that thing because they didn't expect us to do these kind of activities. So, they thought that we'd be just going as devotes. So, I think that also helped.

SG: Just wanted to say that when you... the question that remained unanswered about watching films made by women. And I guess as we said in our presentation that we watched a number of films that influenced us. Anand Patwardhan as we said was a very important influence. That we were also watching lot of films made by women. And I think one film that really inspired us, one movement that really inspired us was the one in Pakistan and the film by Sabi-has-Umar. And I think that was actually a very big influence on us.

RM: I'm not sure we answered your second question about... as women filmmakers its always very difficult to get people to speak, and you were raising those issues. I just wanted to place this in perceptive. We were making films in the 80's. These films were done in the 80's, when we hadn't even fully become grown up adults about what film-making was. This was our first encounter with a medium, and with video. But one thing we recognise now and we've all been talking about it - the kind of places, sites and people we were able to meet as women at that time. We entered all these large fundamentalist processions. We went everywhere and we were allowed to shoot. I don't think its going to be possible for us to ever encounter those faces easily or make people speak. And that gives you a sense of the changed media landscape, because one has to really look back at that time from the vantage point of what we are today in this digital world where the media has a very different kind of presence. So, that space... there are new things that are possible today, but there are some spaces that have gone... absolutely.

SG: The other thing I would like to respond to is that I'm not sure I agree with the fact that women don't speak. I think that... I have made a film called Tales of the Night Fairies - its all about women, but I made it over five years. So, it depends on what kind of a relationship you build with the people with whom we are making the film. And once we have a relationship of trust, they will speak.

Audience2: I did't mean to say that they don't speak... but... in place where you've gone where events have just taken place...
SG: Ya, more like a news reporting kind of thing? Yes, perhaps.
RM: And also these are only edits - excerpts that have been used.
SG: This is actually not the full film - you realize that they're all kind of chopped.
RM: So, when you see there are lots of women actually who speak in all the...
SG: ...in Kiska Dharm..., and ya there are quite a few women.
RM: Even in In Secular India.

CG: And also I think to some extent it was that our forming the collective was an accidental... because you talked about that... The forming of the collective was also an accident because it was a student project. And then because it was told that okay they cannot support us so, so we went ahead and formed an independent collective.

Audience3: Thank you so much for showing us your work. I am a big fan. I read a lot of your work. In seeing these films there's so many things that we recognise in these days as well, and looking back at the comment you made. This was a time when television was changing, the films being shown now were digital... this was also the moment when the change started happening. What are some of the films that you're watching that are making you excited again about the future of films? Especially for about women and by women.

SG: Tough question that one because I think for many of us the category of woman is not that important anymore, at the biological women we've moved on, its the post-queer moment... So, I think there is a lot that we watch that inspires us, but not necessarily made only by women in the way we've known women at that time.

RM: Ya, I think the key here is that our ideas changed. And when we revisit this time we revisit ourselves and our own growing up and transformation that took place over the course of the last 30 years. The first film was actually - we began shooting in 1985 - 86, that's literally 31 years ago. And we are pretty much now in a different place, and that has to be recognised. And it requires some guts from our side to open out this past to a world today because we ourselves have gone back on so many of these things that we see now. Sometimes we cringe at the way we made some of these arguments. But at the same time I think there is real archival value in what we produced at that time, and this testimony. In that sense one thing that I think is a continuing feature that archives - which is also Shaina's great contribution - that we have to keep going back to the these moments in whichever way we've captured these things. Because this story is not over, its only taken a very different and more violent turn in these days, in our own time. Nothing seemed different when we were watching the sequences from Kiska Dharm kiska Desh at all. So its hard to really capture where we are in terms of what kind of film-making, but form is something - how to make films in a different way is something that preoccupies all of us.

SG: Just to add one thing, and that is - one of the amazing things in In Secular India that strikes us now is the presence of the women's movement, standing shoulder to shoulder with Muslims women - that didn't happen during Tripple Talaq. It was only a battle that was being fought by Muslim women and Muslim women's organisations but we were never really present. And nor was the Muslim liberal voice taking so much space in the public domain. That is something that I think... we really need to rethink the strategies with which we handled the Triple Talaq case, why we were not there with all those women - Because we were so overwhelmed by the moment of this - that this is a right wing project and some how if we became part of it then we were actually going to lead them to victory. And I think these are the kind of difficult tensions we still must contend with, be part of, but not allow women's rights to be taken away because we don't quite know in what language to intervene in. And I think that In Secular India reminds us that there has been a way in which it was done and there is a way in which it continues... needs to be continued to be done.

SJ: I just want to add one thing that this question has come out and Shohini has also raised it that when I was watching these films today, the clips that we saw, that in today's media ecology we see most of the time we are watching the television debate, everything is happening in the studio. While in these films you see the kind of verses that are there on the streets and we are going to all these places. And you don't get those kind of voices, those kind of images, most of it is actually studio-driven debate that is happening... Everything thing is polarised - you will have one person from BJP.... everything is polarised. And I think what Ranjani was saying this archival value and how some of these debates were being visible-ised by us in the public domain is something that... we need to also revisit what is happening in media landscape today and how important it is that some of this is done again.

SG: And to have a cross-section of people participante in public debates. The television debates are now driven by people who are either party loyalists or people we've heard before. But you know, people on the streets also have a point of view and how do we get that? Even NDTV had a program called 'We The People' but the we were pretty privileged we. And I think that there needs to be a cross-section of views that have to came back into this kind of a public debate.

ND (audience): Thanks a lot for bringing this back because we've all in someways been engaged - many of us have been engaged with similar issues, but we've also had some amount of amnesia in the sense, that it just everything just seems so fresh when we revisited all of that with a lot of pain and a lot of discomfort that despite whatever little we all have been doing things and in a way its just gotten worse. Where, in the same vein because they've gotten worse, we have to probably speak louder and do more of all of this. Do you feel that the idea of collective - now you're all individually working - do you feel especially in times like this there is a need for collectives and for like minded people not based on gender or anything but just that many of us have similar angst, similar yearnings, similar dilemmas, similar maybe ways of thinking - that we need to come together to form that collective? Because I am sure you learnt also a lot from each other and the debates... could you throw some light on that?

RM: Ya I think all forms of collective actions when its possible are important and have become more and more important now. But as we say, we did a write up about ourselves a few years ago and at the end of it we said that the media landscape and the ability to own a camera on your own and make films, actually allows the individual person to work much more easily. That was a time of great difficulty. We had to hire cameras. It was very very expensive. It was very different from our contemporary landscape. And we couldn't subtitle the films. And so the pressures of film-making and the shortage of funds that we were facing on a daily bases in our production, that really forced us into this situation that we had to hold each other's hands to do things. And it was a good thing that we did this and we've heard so many stories of many collectives who have - rise and fall of collectives - people keep asking us 'why didn't you do a film again?' And in 2002 when Gujarat happened, there was again pressure on us to go to Gujarat. But by then we were already in a different place where we knew, to make a film on Gujarat at that point would do more violence than actually help the situation. And we were in a different place all together then. So, if we are talking about collectives again and we want to do collectives, those collectives also have to reflect on these processes of change that have emerged because of a changed media landscape.

ND: That time it was more of a necessity but now I am saying as a conscious choice and not just the five of you... an idea that should there be...
SG: And there can be all kinds of collective practice. It doesn't necessarily have to be making a film together, there are all kinds of things.
CG: ...and that would be a confluence actually of various kind of things that come together.
SJ: And people are making efforts, in the sense even film makers are using crowd funding, there are different ways in which people are coming together. That is also...

SA: I just want to expand on Nandita's question a bit and also somehow now take it to the role of pedagogy, because you do teach and you teach film studies as well as film practice and documentary making. And there this notion of what do we do and what is the documentary form today becomes quite important. And for me the collective act can happen here. You mentioned 2002 Gujarat, there was a ontological question right there. There are 263 hours of footage filmed by the Shared Footage Group collectively authored - anonymously authored, rather, and we spent 2 years getting them out of shoe boxes across India and digitising them. But in order to make it public, it was sensitive material, it needed to be vetted. There was perhaps your thread that can some of this material do more harm than good - it lies digitised at the backend of an archive like pad.ma. Where there is a potential, we watched mutely, we launched the archive when it was 10 years of Godhara and the pogrom in 2012 February 28th - and then it just lies there. And this takes me back for a second to the years 1986 to 1991 and I encourage you all to see the full films, because perhaps in the cut the throughline hasn't come through but it begins... in one sense there is the reference to the Sikh riots and then Rajiv Gandhi comes in after Indira Gandhi's assassination with overwhelming Congress mandate. And the door to the Babri Masjid is opened - its unlocked. And in order to then appease the Muslim fundamentalists they renege on the... and bring in the protection of the bill. And how that then... how Congress's own popular vote agenda then follows through. Even in From The Burning Embers, I think there is a part where the Congress says 'yes we will cordon off this area, no one can come within 5 km of this sati sthal' - and yet they allowed the julus in and then we see this happen all the way till the demolition of Babriu Masjid. So, how do we look back at the archive I think is an extremely valid question. And I was staring to see... and then there was a mandal in the middle...
RM: there was a lot... on that anti mandal agitation.

SA: So, and then you can see few films made along these parallels upto contemporary times. I really wonder then what a collective picture might be, and is that some kind of research? We try to tell this to the TISS students here. Year after year you're sent to one basti to learn your video project. So, instead learn from the archive, learn from... there is in-depth analysis, there is a critique of the documentary form itself that may emerge. So, as padagogues, I just want to ask you how this sort of archival excavation of a time that your students perhaps were not born in, but how could they be able to think politically and creativity by looking back...

RM: Well, its a difficult question and it deserves a thought-out answer. But one thing I do want say is that when we were making these films - and we had a process, that from the first to the third we had already made some kind of a journey, not good enough but we did make a journey - but there was a very strong belief that we could actually access a certain kind of analytical mode that would allow us to communicate something strongly to the audience. We actually believed that. The coherence of our argument is something that we believed in. We don't always have the same confidence in the form in which we communicate it at all anymore. And so, even in the wake of all that has happened not just in this country but all over the world, we ask these questions about - many of these questions have to be discussed in a manner where there is space for reflection, there is space for discussion, and trying to come some kind of an understanding collectively then. And politics - and when you make political films this is the period - at the center of this political spectrum is the state. Our work became a way of trying to unmask the state. And really after Kiska Dharm... in our own individual works we shifted. For us politics meant something much more white and intimate, and to talk about everyday questions that we were also battling with. And that's a shift we made, but we have come back to a situation where the state is again very very powerful. And its probably the most dangerous period of India's history that we are witnessing. And in that context - its not a question that anybody can have an easy answer for. Its something we think about all the time. How do we do like Nandita asked this question, we keep asking this question. I am from JNU, Shikha's from JNU we are in the eye of the storm since the last.... since last year. Its relentless, its a daily battle.

RM: And everyday we are trying to think of situations - what can we do to stem the tide? what can we do to try and push this in a different way? Answers are no longer very easy. So there is a certain change that has taken place. And I don't want to sound dystopic, but at the same time we were in a utopian space when we were making those films, we believed that we could actually play some kind of role. And we may be able to play some kind of role again. But we have to have a different kind of way of imagining our togetherness in this fight.

ND: (How did you) get these films?
SG: Shaina I believe.

RM: She is actually heroine of the day.
SG: She is, really. She deserves a huge applause for this. Because after all we had lost our tapes. Pretty much. Its her perseverance.

Audience1: These are not available on youtube?
SG: No no no. There is no mention of Mediastorm on YouTube, I think - sorry! on the internet. One Mediastorm I found was some studio in New York - that's not us.
RM: We are pre internet.

SG: I just want to quickly go back to the archive question... in the archive and the pedagogy. And I think that the way it has worked for me is that to talk about documentaries to my students, and to take them through a certain history of debates on the documentary. And I think that for me that comes from actually all the questions that were raised by the Mediastorm films and the journey that we undertook from there. Of course my students don't know that, but the fact is that, that is where the questions all began from. And I think so therefore in the classroom when we look at a diversity of films and the kind of narrative strategies that have been used, the issues, the form and style - I think all that should teach students how to understand the archives.

Audience: This is almost like a recreation of history.. if you put these documentaries on YouTube at least it can be a kind of path breaking thing for those who are struggling to do similar kind of work. What you feel?
SG: I hope that they are inspired by the energy and passion with which the films were done, and they actually do a better job of it. I think that's a good suggestion. We have no problems making it public, but I think Shaina is in a better place to do it well.
SA: It will be done very soon.

Audience: I just wanted to know that during Sati of Roop Kanwar, how were you able to get access to their family? Because from what I have learnt, it is like they used to get offensive even when you spoke to them about their family. So how difficult or easy was it for you access that?

RM: Okay, Shohini was just whispering in my ear that television has ruined the ability to access anything, you see. There was no television like this, it was only Doordarshan.
SG: Its become too intrusive now.
RM: Actually our shooting for the Sati film was quite interesting and we first landed up and we said that in our presentation that we landed up at Sati Sthal, and actually we were whisked away by a gang of thugs to a room and there there was full interrogation 'Aap log Mahila Sanghatna ke hain? Ya Aap log patrakar hain?</I>' the 2 enemies over there at that point because it was a big controversy. And we were all a little... you have to understand, we were in our early twenties. And we were a little rattled by that experience but we came out and I realise now the difference between that time and now time. Women had greater space to go into these situations, do certain things, and come out. Today the violence has increased so much that its sometimes difficult to confront those kinds of situations. But it is after that, that the driver and certain political groups took us to actually meet Roop Kanwar's parents and they were very hesitant initially because the controversy had become major. But then slowly we managed to persuade them to speak to us. And we also have a photograph that the father gave which I sent to Shaina 2 days ago, because its only because of Shaina we stared opening out all are lofts and all and found all these things. So, its a photograph taken in 1987 of her on the fire, but they've artificially created the flames. She herself is there, but the flames have been created artificially, its a photograph. And he even gave that photograph to us. So we managed to get things. But we were moving through - you have to understand this kind of film making couldn't have happened without NGO's and political groups who opened the doors as networks through which we... We couldn't just land up somewhere from the city and expect people to speak to us. Only television or news people are able to do that.
SG: And now they don't do it well.

SJ: Even when we were able to shoot in Bhaganpoor we were really helped by the local NGO's and some of the political groups over there.
SG: So, I think see that's also part of some kind of collective activity... creating networks is very important.

SA: We wish a fantastic screening at both JNU and Jamia soon. Full house.
SG: Thank you Shaina.

Pad.ma requires JavaScript.