Documentary cinema: Long way to go

September 15, 2024 | By Suresh Nautiyal
Documentary cinema: Long way to go

THE future of documentary cinema in India has to be promising and bright given its role of educating the people at large. Undoubtedly, a section of the documentary filmmakers is already adapting to the international filmmaking trends and some of them have found success as well on the global stage by adapting to the international trends like focus on the characters and taking the dramatic curves. For example, “The Elephant Whisperers” won the documentary short Oscar in 2022, and “All That Breathes” won both the Sundance and Cannes documentary awards the same year. The digital revolution is also helping the documentary filmmakers to compete on a level playing field, as the cost of digital acquisition is lower than that of the traditional film stock.

Dr John Grieson, the sociologist turned filmologist who was a pioneering Scottish documentary maker and often considered the father of British and Canadian documentary films coined the term “documentary” in a review of Robert J. Flaherty’s Moana in 1926. He was much inspired by the French word documentaire. This genre, however, reached India soon after Dr Grieson, Paul Rotha Basil Wrighty, Harry Watts and others launched the documentary movement in Britain.

But even today the destination has not been reached and still miles and miles to go because in a time of alluring networks, it seems there are no takers for the documentaries. Unfortunately, this is a worldwide phenomenon in general and in India in particular.

Despite some success stories, the documentary filmmakers in India continue to face challenges, such as a lack of funding and lack of producers coming forward to support the documentary cinema projects. Some filmmakers also turn to the online crowdfunding but only a few have succeeded in this.

While the purpose of the mainstream cinema is to communicate through artistic excellence and entertainment, the objective of the documentary cinema remains fulfilling the purpose of educating the people and the government leaders. But regrettably, the Indian documentary cinema hardly has the government patronage. This is evident in the film festivals held in the country where documentary cinema is given a step-motherly treatment.

The film festivals of short and documentary films, where the filmmakers get into the serious business of screening films, holding seminars and workshops, do not have the resources to attract the larger public. All this does not speak of a very bright future of the documentary cinema in the country. As mentioned already, a lack of adequate funds has been hampering the natural growth of documentary cinema.

The Films Division of the Government of India is supposed to produce most of the documentary films but lately it has hardly produced significant documentary films. The Film Division needed to establish its own small theatres throughout the country to screen only the documentary and short films made by it as well as by the private filmmakers to make the documentary films an awareness movement. Instead, it created a kind of monopoly of screening their films in the commercial theatres, which is no longer in vogue. The documentaries produced by the Film Division and other government agencies only served as breaks for the majority of the audience or they simply ignored these films. Through the Defence of India Rules, the British had made it mandatory for every commercial theatre in the country to show either a documentary or a newsreel in every show. This practice continued till the recent past.

As mentioned earlier also, the lack of proper distribution system of the documentary films further hampers the growth of documentary films in the country. This has led many private documentary filmmakers to cater to an overseas market. With such an uncertain future, some very well-known documentary and short filmmakers have had no option but to switch over to the feature films.

The documentary filmmakers will definitely welcome creation of an autonomous institution to take care of their needs. The lack of a proper distribution network has already stifled the growth of documentary films. When documentaries are used as prosaic and subdued sermons or shown at the film festivals occasionally, how can a documentary filmmaker survive in a climate where there is no demand for their films?

A documentary film has to document something, not succumb to be a tool of the government propaganda. Earlier, the audiences were quick to notice that politics and propaganda were intelligently mingled with the documentaries and other short films. They also lost the charm of being the documentaries. Most of the Film Division films thus resulted in artificial portrayal with no sense of reality.

When the multitude of entertainment channels sprang up, the documentary cinema almost became a thing of the past. Today, the multitude of the digital platforms have posed further challenges to the documentary cinema. Another reason is that the documentary cinema has not seen a transformation similar to the feature film over the decades, of course, except a few exceptions.

People generally are not interested in documentaries because of their boring content, and then they have the choice of more alluring and entertaining channels. This means the documentaries come at the fag end of the priorities. Nobody is interested in nostalgic history about the times when short films on mass movements automatically led to a political consciousness, as in the filming of meeting and procession of the Bengal Partition movement. A concerted effort can change this attitude.

Now, the time is ripe for the documentary filmmakers to rebel and let their cameras and microphones roam the streets and houses of today’s life. The poetic, the humanistic and the sociological attitude of the documentary cinema can only be reflected prominently through the documentaries. Moreover, it has now grown into an instrument with a thousand serious jobs to train doctors, nurses, soldiers, mechanics, astronauts, teachers, scientists, biologists and the like.

Kudos to the documentary filmmakers who are working against all odds to make quality films. That they face problems at every step was evident when Anand Patwardhan’s film “Bombay Our City” ran into problems with the Doordarshan and finally could be shown at 11 O’clock at night.

Dada Saheb Phalke, who initiated the industry of feature films, himself made a number of short films on the subjects like the funerals of national leaders, Gokhale and Tilak, or on the Indian National Congress meet of 1918. Even after the advent of feature films, documentary films based on Mahatma Gandhi’s life, the Prince of Wale’s visit to India and similar events remained strong attractions for the viewers. Gradually, all social realities in cultural activities and above all political upheavals came within the purview of the short films which were to definitely evolve it into a distinct genre propagated by Dr Grieson.

In a nutshell, the documentary cinema, which is a medium with an immense power to move people’s mind for good, is yet to be explored fully so that it is not treated with great contempt and disdain. We need to remember that the short films had their day before the feature film was born, and in the western world, the short films were announced and advertised as prominently as the feature films.