It would seem censorship of creative artists begins right from educational institutions that are supposed to nurture free thought and expression, going by the experiences of a group of filmmakers who presented their work at the short documentary competition of the 13th International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala (IDSFFK).
“We are not satisfied with the cut that you have just viewed here, because it is censored by our University," said Ameen Barif, one of the five directors of Ruuposh (Wrapper) after the screening of the documentary on Friday.
Ruuposh is a kind of diploma film for Ameen Barif, Mohammed Fehmeed, Zeeshan Khan, Aqdas Sami, Mohammed Althaf, and Faraz Fakhri, students of the Jamia Millia Islamia university. While the film is a deeply personal story about Mohammed Fehmeed’s own family, the story has wider meanings in the current political context. But, it was some CCTV footage of the alleged forceful entry into the campus by Delhi police personnel and the attack on students that the filmmakers had added to the end of the film that had to be removed under pressure from the university.
“We had edited it several times, but it was not being approved. In the end, we had to remove the CCTV footage after we were told that we had to do it if we wanted to graduate,” said Ameen.
The film itself was born out of Mohammed Fehmeed’s mother Ruksana Begum’s personal diary, in which she had traced out the history of how her father Mehboob Khan had stayed back in India after partition even as his entire extended family relocated to Pakistan. Old photographs from the 1970s and 80s of the families visiting each other in their neighbouring countries, tell a story of how normal it was for people to have relatives across the border in Pakistan not so long ago. In some of the photographs, the visiting family is seen celebrating Holi with Ruksana and family.
“The whole idea behind the film is to raise the question as to why I have to be so conscious about the fact that there are relatives in another country. Someone having a relative in Canada or another country need not think about it, while I have to. It has become taboo. Every day on national media, there is someone shouting ‘Go to Pakistan’. How can the thought of a thing as normal as sending a letter to a relative in a neighbouring country create fear in us?” asks Fehmeed.
He reminisces about the stories that he used to hear from his mother in his childhood about their relatives across the border. But, in recent years, she had stopped talking about them completely. Even his questions regarding them or suggestions to search them out in online platforms were dismissed.
“What changed in recent years for my mother to stop talking about her memories?” asks Fehmeed.
