The erasure of Dalit Bahujan history; drug abuse and criminality; female morality and sexual harassment; religion and fanaticism — the Public Service Broadcasting Trust’s (PSBT) Open Frame festival will bring together documentaries that hold a mirror to contemporary Indian society.
“We felt it was important to showcase some of the best public service content from around the world and discuss it,” says Rajiv Mehrotra, Managing Trustee, PSBT, a documentary filmmaker himself. The festival, which will take place between September 13 and 19, at the India International Centre, New Delhi will include a special screening of the 2016 documentary, I Am Not Your Negro , nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 89th Academy Awards.
Organic pattern
The festival prides itself on the diversity of films, and has no overarching theme. “Prescribing a theme restricts the creative process, feels Mehrotra. However, in his experience, documentary makers instinctively respond to changing social realities, almost organically creating a thematic pattern. “For instance, when Nirbhaya happened there was a spurt of films on gender,” he explains.
Documentaries and discussions are equally emphasised at the festival. The films Veil Done by Juhi Bhatt, a film about three Delhi-based women who join a gym in search of liberation, and The Sound of Silence by Bina Paul, which chronicles the voices of women who face discrimination on college campuses, will be followed by a conversation on what is it like to be “bad women” who reclaim their rightful space.
Gopal Guru, professor of social and political theory at the Centre for Political Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, will give a lecture on exclusivist versions of history after the screening of In a Shadowless Town by Gouri Patwardhan, a film documenting what the erasure of historic figures and buildings in Pune meant for the Dalit Bahujan community. The festival will premiere Shovana , a documentary on the eminent dancer Shovana Narayan, directed by Aparna Sanyal.
Since it’s inception, Open Frame has worked with the singular motive of propelling the documentary movement in India. “The festival hasn’t grown in size but in quality,” says Mehrotra. “For many years, we conducted documentary film appreciation workshops, but this year we’re looking at democratisation of the media”. In that regard, the festival will have a day-long workshop on using mobile phones for filming, and making the art form more accessible.
A different mark of success
Most films showing at Open Frame are new documentaries that have not made it to the film festival circles, thus limiting them in popularity. For instance, the festival will see the screening of National Award filmmaker Kamal Swaroop’s new documentary Atul, which tracks the life of artist Atul Dodiya through his paintings. The Trust encourages filmmakers to take risks and create content that bucks the cookie-cutter approach of awards. For the organisers, true success lies in mentoring and highlighting filmmakers who ask questions through their art; questions that help make sense of the world around us.
