Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Hyderabad
Wrecker’s ball
|
Ironeaters is a compassionate look at the lives of the workers at ship-breaking yards
|
Run aground The film demonstrates the tenacity and fortitude of the workers
Even great ships die and when they die they go to their graveyards — massive ship-breaking yards in ports littered along the third world. Some go to Alang in Gujarat while others go to Chittagong in south-eastern Bangladesh where our story is s
et. Men, like ants, then crawl over and swamp the ship, cutting it, carving it, disembowelling it, till only the carcass and then a mere skeleton remains and even that is then slowly and steadily chipped away till nothing remains of a grand ship that once floated like a city on the sea.
Shaheen Dill-Riaz’s film “Ironeaters” looks at the lives of the workers at the ship breaking yards in Chittagong. With the tautness and the plot of a feature film, the documentary won the prize for the best film from among 45 documentaries at the Film South Asia held at Kathmandu last year. It was also the inaugural film at the recently-held Travelling Film South Asia held in the city by Pedestrian Pictures, Maraa and Vikalp Bengaluru.
The film uses the story of Kholilur Rehman and his gang of labourers from the famine-stricken parts of north Bangladesh to tell the tale. Kholil and his fellows are forced to travel across Bangladesh and come to the port of Chittagong to pull steel cables attached to large pieces of ship that have been cut away by welders. The cables cut through their shoulders as they squelch their way in the marshy sea-side sand. A different gang of men then loads massive pieces of steel on to waiting trucks.
In the nights Dill-Riaz’s camera pervades the shoulder-high lodging quarters of the many workers sharing cramped spaces and hopeful dreams. There is Djabor, a lanky youth with a pencil moustache, who dreams of saving enough money to buy geese and sell eggs and others who just want enough money to send back to their families. Indebted to local grocers in Chittagong for their daily food, they usually take back very little money.
They take back injuries and swear to not come back to such work again. But they are back again the next year as their fields dry up in the north.
“Ironeaters” is a film that demonstrates the gritty tenacity, the hopelessness and the fortitude of these workers’ lives. As one of the workers puts it, “Either I can jump in front of a train or I can work here”. The ship breaking industry in Bangladesh provides iron for the whole country besides providing employment to thousands of people but Dill-Riaz raises some pertinent questions by exploring the veiled world of the workers at these ship breaking yards through this terrific document.
VIKHAR AHMED SAYEED
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Hyderabad
|
