Few documentary films might leave such lasting footprints on the mind. A director who is no more, trying in her first and only film to convey a message that will be relevant as long as greenery remains on earth, and of which there are daily reminders, will be the focus point at Nila Theatre on Sunday.
At 9.15 a.m., when friends and family of Usha Zacharias get together on her second death anniversary, her documentary, ‘On the Trail of a Rain Song’, will have an emotional first public screening at the theatre. The film, completed towards the end of her life, just before cancer took her away, has never been screened for the public, though the Public Service Broadcasting Trust (PSBT), for whom she made the film, has released it on YouTube and other social media.
“Though she had submitted it to PSBT, she had asked us to release it for the public only two years after her death,” said Chandran Zacharias, Usha’s brother.
The 52-minute documentary, on the missing footprints of monsoon, makes reflection on the ‘human project of development’ inevitable. The adverse impacts of development on nature and several one-person struggles against such disastrous development are documented in about five segments.
The frail, aging Darly, who had to take refuge in government-provided shelters after the sand mafia’s relentless mining saw her little hut collapsing on the banks of the Neyyar, the green army of women known as Vasantha Sena protecting the Periyar Tiger Reserve, the ex-poacher Pandyan and similar narratives bring up the rest of the film.
The making of the film was not too easy, with Usha facing a few threats, especially while shooting the story of Darly, filming the mining activities of the sand mafia. Still Usha, a former journalist who was an Associate Professor of Communication at the Westfield University at the time of her death, hung on to complete it.
The only documentary of a director, who died two years ago, poses questions about the missing footprints of monsoon
