Machines , which will be premièred in India Gold section at the upcoming MAMI Film Festival, amalgamates the expository way of documenting life with a unique observational style through impressionistic and imposing visuals. Directed by Rahul Jain, a Delhiite, it is a detailed, poignant examination of factory culture and labour processes at a textile factory in Gujarat through acute observation and astounding aural experiences designed by Susmit Bob Nath.
Rahul attended California Institute of the Arts after which his desire to make “something real” took him to his childhood memories of machines at a factory in Gujarat. Having already won the World Cinema Award for Excellence in Cinematography at the Sundance Film Festival and several other critics’ prizes at various global platforms, Machines has garnered rave reviews across the world. Recently in Delhi, the young filmmaker took out time to discuss what led him to make a film on workers, his process and his upcoming documentary on Anthropocene.
Excerpts:
How did you get into filmmaking? Was there any personal association in choosing the subject?
It took me years to understand that art is not something romantic or a feeling but it is political, something which I learnt in my college. I used to complain that Bollywood films are fake and I desire to make something real. In California, I could not relate to the life around me and used to feel very distant. Then, the Rana Plaza incident happened in Bangladesh where textile industry collapsed killing thirteen hundred people. At the same time, I was introduced to Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado’s 1993 work called Workers in which he just travelled and photographed workers around the world. It broke all my understanding of what art could be. My childhood memories from my maternal grandfather’s factory in Gujarat were still present in my mind. I asked my mom and maternal grandfather connected me with someone and then Machines happened.
Why was the documentary titled Machines ?
The first title was ‘Machines do not go on strikes’ but I felt that it was giving away too much of what I feel. As a child, I was fascinated by the bigness and vastness of the machines. It started as chasing my childhood memories but when I went back it was more about telling stories of human beings.
The selection of cinematic gaze was pretty much evident from the visuals...
The cinematographic style was due to my association with cinematographer Rodrigo Trejo Villanueva. He is a very calm person while I am chaotic. He forced me to have a static perspective instead of very mobile.
A scene from “Machines”
What about the ethnographic gaze?
I was certainly interested in ethnography and I did inherit some of the techniques of sensory ethnography which mixes visual and sonic anthropology. It was just curiosity, which I think is the primary method through which I look at the world.
The static framing with lengthy shots gives stillness to it…
In Bollywood, they have fourteen to fifteen hundred cuts per movie in 80 or 90 minutes but my documentary of 70 minutes has only 140 cuts. It was an opportunity to make you see something forcefully; pushing you down to your seat where you sit down and wait and that wait . I wanted time to weigh you down and evoke empathy of a certain kind by just looking at something directly for a long time.
The workers seemed to have trust on you…
For two months, my deal with my cinematographer was that we will not make any images, we will just talk to people and observe them . During that time, people get desensitised to our presence. In the beginning, they used to come around that big gigantic camera but over time they got conditioned to it.
But in the second half of the documentary, there was a suspicion among factory workers and they equated you with political leaders. How did you tackle that?
This was outside the factory and these people had never seen me before and their suspicion was completely legitimate. Right before shooting that scene, I was in my car vomiting because I was really afraid that somebody can punch me, stab me even because of the kind of questions I was going to ask them. I was giving the same rhetoric that they are lazy people, spend their salaries on alcohol, something their boss told me about them. They were angry but I told them that I was just a young filmmaker.
There is no voice over nor are the subjects directed towards an idea...
I actually wanted it to be a silent film without any interviews but I realised that I have this opportunity of giving these people a voice. Giving space to say what they want to say made the real difference. For me, observing them and not giving them a voice would have been a bourgeois perspective.
What was the intention behind keeping yourself out of the frame?
If I have kept myself in this movie, it would have been like rich kid goes to the poor factory to save people. It was not about me or my privilege. My lack of presence in the film makes people put themselves in my perspective. When I am not inside the film, audience feel that the subject of the film is talking to them.
The film also does not look for a logical solution…
It is the job of an artist to reflect life as it is. I made this film not to tell what it should be but about the feeling of what should it be. Art should be a manifestation of your experience.
Effects of migration on employment have many facets. What did you realise from your encounters?
There was no person from Gujarat whom I met inside the factory. Most of the lowest kinds of jobs were being handled by migrants from other states including Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. What does migration do to you when you move? It sucks the human life out of you and humanity. You literally become a machine who goes back and come on time. There is too much pressure that you may be laid off, if you make a mistake.
One scene reminds of the Workers Leaving The Factory , the Lumiere film.
It is an inspirational film for everyone. It is so political without even trying to be one. It depends on how you see it. For someone, they could be just workers leaving the factory but so much meaning can be derived from the image.
What are you working on next?
I am working on a film about the Anthropocene, that is on the status of the earth in the era of man and how we just keep taking from the earth without giving it anything in return. Delhi is already one of world’s most polluted cities. As an artist, I feel that I should do something on it. It is about evoking consciousness in people.
