Early in 2016, two Kerala youths went to the Kashmir University during their college internship. There, around a fallen chinar tree on the campus, they bonded with musicians, artists, and photographers.
The unrest that would blind or kill many a youth was still months away. In the relative calm, the young students shared their art and their dreams with the visitors, N.C. Fazil and Shawn Sebastian, who made a beautiful documentary out of it, titled In the Shade of the Fallen Chinar .
Though slated to be screened at last year’s International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala (IDSFFK), the Union Information and Broadcasting Ministry denied censor exemption for the film. But, thanks to the ban, the film ended up being watched by far more people, as it was shared online and screenings were organised in more than a 100 locations across Kerala and in universities outside.
Now, a year later, Fazil is back at the festival with a new film, which takes off from where the first film ended. Titled Poets of the Past , the film looks at almost the same set of people from the first film, tracing the impact of the long drawn-out unrest in the valley on them and their art.
“Though all of them chose art, and stayed away from violent resistance, the unrest did have its emotional impact on them. The images in our national media on Kashmir are very selective, repetitive and problematic. Kashmiris, despite their class differences, have a shared history. They think that they have been oppressed for long and denied justice. It is there in everyone, though they express it in different forms,” says Fazil.
A student from the first film, Ali Saifuddin, is now a youth icon, with his songs of protest and pain. The title of the film is inspired from one of Saifuddin’s live shows titled ‘Poets of the past, Songs of the present.’
“This documentary looks at how Saifuddin interprets the Sufi songs his grandmother used to sing. In his interpretation, one of the songs becomes a lament for a pellet gun victim,” says Fazil.
Poets of the Past has already been screened in universities in Basel and Berlin, before its trip to the IDSFFK. This time, it luckily didn’t have a problem with the higher-ups.
