True to its name, there is something almost ritualistic in the motions of Prabhat Pheri , a documentary that takes rounds through the past and present to tell the story of the FTII campus in Pune.
Formerly, the space belonged to a studio called Prabhat Film Company (PFC), which moved there in 1931 from Kolhapur, where it was established in 1929. A fully functional studio with state of the art facilities, PFC (founded, among others, by V. Shantaram) produced some of the masterpieces of the early talkie era, such as Sant Tukaram , Duniya Na Mane and Manoos . In 1959, the Government of India acquired the Prabhat campus and, two years later, set up FTII. Along with the premises, the equipments of Prabhat Nagari were now engaged by the new film institute.
Directed by Samarth Dixit and Jessica Sadana, both filmmakers from FTII, the film began as a documentation of these equipments. “The strange and nice thing about FTII is we use old machines for our work, some of which goes back to the Prabhat days. Because of digitisation, these were being phased out slowly,” says Samarth.
Once Prabhat shut down, FTII also absorbed a lot of the staff, who, like the equipment, were in their twilight years or had already passed away by the time the film started. It became urgent, therefore, for the directors to document these people and their stories too. These include a dhobi on campus, and the only remaining technician from the Prabhat years.
The film also chronicles the protests against the attempts to privatise FTII. These protests became an organic part of the film because of what they represented: the latest crisis in a series of crises for the campus, the filmmakers say.
While film exercises often require students to disguise FTII, “make it look like another space”, the directors' intention was the opposite. “We approached the film like a home video,” Samarth says. “To make a wholesome, objective film was never our intention. We decided to shoot it in the way we relate to the space,” adds Jessica.
While Samarth passed out of FTII last year, Jessica is a final year student there. And like every other student, their relationship with FTII has been haunted by its past. “It was the ‘ghosts’ of the campus: the studios, the equipment; ghosts as anecdotes, memories and tales heard from those to whom the space has been familiar since decades, and dear and sacrosanct. And, lastly, the images themselves, of films and photographs, the ghosts of past years, that we attempted to document,” they say.
Commissioned by PSBT in 2011, the film was shot over one and a half years, and shaped from over 40 hours of footage. During its making, the directors realised they were rediscovering the campus. “Small movements, small actions became invested with meaning.”
The film was screened in the Forum Section of the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year. It is now in the process of being sent to other film festivals.
