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Home > Contents > Article: Paromita Vohra |
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Never a Master, Always a Servant
Speaking Of Independent Films
Paromita Vohra
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A long time ago, I was 25. I had never made a film. I had worked in all sorts of film jobs. In documentary productions: as a researcher, an assistant, a production manager, sometimes a writer. All too briefly in television as a writer for soaps and music TV, a director for a tacky music show, even occasionally an actor. When pushed to the wall I had assisted a stylist on an advertisement film. There was a need to survive in an expensive city like Bombay, and I had a curiosity about the different satellite worlds of art and media (yes, once upon a time we could say those two words as if they were indeed in a relationship, however troubled). But at heart, I had a desire to make documentaries, to be in the "independent world". Coming from a generation for whom there were far fewer options, and hence far less confidence and sense of entitlement than the ones that followed, I was quite hesitant about even saying out loud that I wanted to make films. At least a part of this fear came from the complete absence of information on how to get funding, where to show a documentary film. All that seemed to be esoteric knowledge passed on orally, and selectively. There were only a handful of independent filmmakers and they all seemed established. The world of independent films seemed very opaque and inaccessible.
In this frazzled spirit I went on some travels in the South with friends and at some point we landed up at the house of a famed, old astrologer. He examined my horoscope with a hard expression and then proclaimed with apparent satisfaction- you will never be a master, always a servant! This was all I needed to seal the feeling that making a film was an impossibility. In vain my friend tried to tell me that she had overheard the astrologer tell his friend in Tamil that I was an indecorous girl for sitting with my arm across the back of the sofa. His proclamations were coloured by prejudice. But his prediction seemed to correspond with what I sensed was the difficulty of making independent films in India.
I went around in a state of advanced gloom for some time until a young friend who dabbled in astrology burst out laughing on hearing my story. "But you want to be a filmmaker", he said. "And so in some sense, of course you will always be a servant, because you'll always be dependent on other people's money to make films." As you can imagine, this was only partly a relief.
In being always a servant in this sense, I was joined with almost everyone else who made films, no matter of what type. We were joined in it even when the 'digital' made a 'revolution' and the internet and cheaper foreign travel broke the hold of informed elites, making funding information more accessible. Even though we know that in the democracy of film, some are more equal, especially if they aren't independent.
What do we mean when we speak of independent films? Before the big media boom of the mid-90s the word more often used was alternative. Alternative basically meant everything that wasn't Bollywood. It was different from "parallel film" because besides the kind of film that was funded by NFDC or any other arts supporting body, it also referred to documentary films, particularly those made outside the government space like Films Division, and also loosely included television and advertising. True, the latter two occupied a grey area because they were clearly driven to an extent by profit. But a lot of filmmakers who did not want to make 'masala movies' as mainstream films were termed, felt that TV and advertising at least offered some space for artistic expression.
Today each of these different strands of film production has expanded into mini industries of their own. TV is no longer limited to publicly owned channels and has been taken over by big corporations, churning out daily soaps and breaking news in keeping with the economies of scale. Advertising, while it might strive for creative vibrancy, is (as it always was) unambiguously about profit.
The independent sphere now would be seen to include documentary films, shorts and small feature films.
Documentary production has seen amazing growth - there is a proliferation of filmmakers, filmmaking styles, funding sources - NGOs, the Public Service Broadcasting Trust, international funds and networks - and film viewing spaces. Side by side we've also seen an expansion of another form, the short film which was previously restricted to film school projects. With the rapid changes in and cheapening of video and digital technology, the growth of the internet and a greater exposure to work from around the world there are more and more young filmmakers, financing their own short films and showing them in the short film club and film festival circuit and increasingly, the internet, which serves as a commercial space for some.
However, at least within the bulk of 'general' conversation, when people speak about independent film they are often referring to small budget fiction films produced outside the mainstream Bollywood format, often with funding from independent producers rather than the typical big Bollywood banners. The term independent film in this sense really evolved from the US paradigm of films not produced by the Hollywood studios. In India in fact the term more commonly used is multiplex movie and it refers to a smaller budget film appealing primarily to a select urban audience.
Most recently the films in this category which have made a mark either critically or commercially and sometimes, both, in these areas are Manorama: Six Feet Under (Navdeep Singh) a noir story set in small town Rajasthan; Loins of Punjab Presents (Manish Acharya) a comedy about Indian expats in a song competition; most successfully - the comedy Khosla ka Ghosla about a middle class family's run-in with a crooked property agent. Especially important among have been the films made by Rajat Kapoor which have used more unusual funding strategies. These are the dark comedies Raghu Romeo (partly financed through the internet and contributions from friends), Mixed Doubles and Mithya, as well as a film by his colleague Sagar Bellary - Bheja Fry - which was made for the unimaginably small sum of 50 lakh rupees and was a runaway hit.
In many ways, making a film has never been easier than it is today. But the expansion of the space asks that we look at it with some attention to understand the discourse that emerges from it; we need to do it in order to constantly refine our means of recognizing where independence lies, and generate an ever more inclusive discussion and definition of the idea.
The notion of the independent film emerged through the work, efforts and as importantly, articulations of filmmakers who sympathized with the political thought and movement of the 70s - a range of left positions. It suggested that there were more stories to be told, different spaces to be explored and that a lot of this could only happen by breaking with the profit-driven, star-powered system of the Bombay industry film. As art with a political heart - which was valuable to society - this kind of filmmaking needed to be supported by the government because there was no source of funding in the private sector that would support such cinema.
Clearly this was an important intervention because at the notional level it iterated that art was not merely an elite indulgence but a vital part of any society. And it resulted in the creation of bodies like the National Film Development Corporation -for the producing of alternative films and 'developing good cinema' - and brought a new generation of directors, as also, actors and technicians to the fore. Another way in which alternative films grew was in direct relationship with an audience within political movements whose interests and needs were not present in the available media. This made up the bulk of the documentary film movement.
In an interview published in Deep Focus, a now lapsed magazine on independent cinema, the noted feminist documentary film maker Deepa Dhanraj describes her experience of making films within the context of the women's movements in the 70s-80s:
"We saw films as a way of documenting and expressing a certain thinking. We also saw the making and viewing of films as an emotional experience for other women. Why we chose films specifically as the medium as opposed to the theatre, we really were not clear about. We were unhappy with the films around us and we did feel the need to reach out and generate images than never existed and could counter the negative portrayals and manipulations of women in the media. India having such a strong audience tradition, films seemed to be a good medium to enable us to go into community and draw people together. That we were not going to screen these films to a neutral audience was very clear, so our audience was fixed. The whole process was an alliance with the people who helped us to make the film. So both in production and conception, the themes and concerns of these films originated with the activists of that area."
There is no question that this was a powerful moment. A group of people, unhappy with the exclusions of the market had pushed to create another type of market which functioned along different paradigms. But, as this work continued, it also began to locate itself in a particular way - the manner in which it had originated (for a good cinema movement, to uplift the people) over time became its justification for itself, its raison d'etre. A lot of this independent filmmaking, having situated itself in the somewhat passive world of patronage, became dependent on certain political orthodoxies and cultural frameworks. It frequently kept producing itself along lines of approval within the world of social activism, or the arts space or the film festival space. A certain set of understandings began to emerge from this. Filmmakers would often stress the importance of intent - wanting to speak about certain issues in certain ways, either in terms of creative freedom or didactic approaches - over the quality of the finished product.
Films originally made because they expressed something the mainstream did not provide a space for, soon institutionalized and ritualized their forms and modes. In this way, they not only fixed themselves, but they also fixed the audience as unchanging, thereby losing the reflexive relationship even with a certain alternative audience. As Dhanraj says later in the same interview in Deep Focus:
"In India, what has also happened is that we have got stuck with the form of socialist realism without the environment of revolution which bred this form in the first place.(as in say Chile, or the USSR).Many film forms created (in those contexts) have become radical genres which 'political' filmmakers have used and are still using in toto. Here in India, the prevailing ideological climate is reactionary and we seem to have got stuck with these forms without the specific historical circumstances that bred them in the first place. Today, by and large, these films only illustrate the individual filmmaker's politics and don't move into the realm of political activity." (Italics mine)
This orthodoxy bred a peculiar paradox. On the one hand many practitioners in this field preferred to gloss over the issue of money (i.e. funding) and markets (in the sense of a consuming, not only a paying, public) - although both things are an inextricable part of any public project in the arts. On the other hand a certain hierarchical tendency began to develop, a high caste moral superiority wherein a film's funding often became a way of judging its validity as independent.
For example within documentary film-making funding from abroad or from foreign founders became a source of much debate, suspicion and moralizing. This is a debate that rages on. In the context of this debate one of the arguments that are often put forth is this: with cheaper new technology, documentaries - and shorts - can be self financed or financed through no-strings friendly donations and can later be sold to foreign networks or distributors. This is not only fairly profitable but it also keeps the filmmaker uncompromised. The difficulty of this "source of the Ganges" type of argument, which ties independence to source funding, and is uncritical of the space of profit, is that it ends up being both moralistic and decontextualised. Although no doubt, a possible means of producing films as we like to, this is hardly without its own sets of dependencies.
Eventually foreign networks may or may not dictate the content of a film but they certainly dictate the duration (maybe with commercial breaks) and these must certainly require the filmmaker to make some alterations in their original statement. But even if that's not contentious, it is important to remember that in some senses this is a moderated strategy. Eventually, networks, larger distributors and film festivals will only acquire works which they feel somewhat conform to their preferred narrative styles ensuring universal accessibility, and interests or, if you will, agendas.
This again, is not to dismiss the approach - far from it - but to point out that it is in fact one of many negotiations and errs in imagining itself as the freest one. But in being the most frequently heard one it takes over the discussion about independent film and creates certain fixed and insufficient ways of assigning political value to independent works.
This argument has existed for a long time and most recently been reiterated in several public fora by, for instance, the film maker Rakesh Sharma whose investigative documentary The Final Solution, a three hour film on the Gujarat riots has used this approach with success. It is interesting to contrast this with another film also self financed - Mukul Kishore's Snapshots from a Family Album, a slightly meandering, but engaging portrait of the filmmaker's mother and the rhythms of family life. This film has also been rather successful, although in rather different ways - it has been very popular in several screening contexts and done steadily well on the festival circuit (some festivals also pay screening fees).  It has not however, been picked up by large distributors or foreign networks. According to the filmmaker this is partly a result of his own personality, the financial inability to devote a lot of time to distribution strategy as well as the understanding that in the particular market space where a film like The Final Solution, about a shocking, historic public event, having repercussions on national politics would be viable, a film like Snapshots from a Family Album cannot be.
This is not about a hierarchy of subject matter or aesthetic worth. It is, more crucially about the sorts of discussions that come up when one speaks of independence and the market. Independent filmmakers - and those interested in these definitions - may need to reorganize their rather hectic relationship with the term market and start to recognize that it is as vague a term as "the people." At a recent seminar about markets at the Mumbai International Film Festival, these classic fallacies quickly organized the room into three sections - one which passionately felt there's nothing wrong with the market, another which was shocked at the rapaciousness and callous competitive modes of the market and a third which tried to ask, which market are we talking about?
There are certain established frameworks in the existing buying market for documentaries (of more than one type). In the context two very different films, may both be self-financed, but it is not the self-financing that necessarily determines the independence. It's important to recognize that a film, whose issues and format for which a certain market may already have been created by earlier activism or processes is more likely to succeed in that existing space. Independence may lie in recognizing these frameworks and meeting them on one's own terms. But what does the film which is not quite part of this market's logic do? Or rather, what is it doing? There is another, perhaps more local market, where a variety of documentaries about different subjects and using diverse idioms, are gaining popularity, leading to several new distribution set ups, gradual telecast on private networks and so on. So, for instance, Kishore feels that these spaces where his film is so well received, are gathering momentum, and in the long term he will in fact recover his money and make a profit on the film.
In some senses I see the work of filmmakers like Kishore - and many others like that- to be an investment in another form of the market. By pushing to make films of a kind that aren't easily fundable; by subverting the agenda of the NGO funder; by deciding against the narrative constraints of an international broadcaster and choosing a local broadcaster with one-tenth the budgets - in order to be able to produce films of different political registers and personal styles with an increasingly diverse sense of its public. In this way, new connections are being forged, with a responsive market of consuming viewers first on an experimental basis and then consolidated in different ways. In this investment lies the independence - not only in the understanding of currently successful systems, but in the constant creation of new sustainable and successful systems.
The independent film exists in some sort of great churning place where the idea of the market intermingles turbulently with the idea of expression both political and artistic. It is an inherently contradictory and ambiguous space which tries to define for itself whether there can be an existence that is relatively honest, not constrained to distortion by a dependence on agendas. It's at the cusp of negotiation between these ideas that we discern independence and we can discern it in perhaps two things - the risk factor for the artist and the funder, quite simply expressed by Saeed Mirza in a recent interview as "we made films and we hoped they would work" and the degree of control the filmmaker is able to exercise over their vision in that negotiation with the market, the audience, the producer.
It is only when we - in opposition to a sort of generalized tendency which keeps saying THE market like it is only one entity - emphasise that there are various different markets with various different paradigms of success that we can introduce an element of critical choice and preference in our negotiation with those spaces.
In the end independence is about multiple audiences, not only multiplex audiences.
Which brings us to the area of the multiplex/independent fiction film in India - and the attendant euphoria of corporatisation, which is supposedly introducing a more systematic way of producing and marketing films so that there's lesser risk of money which brings in funding from banks and lending institutions. This is supposed to make it easier for the small producer to produce independent films.
However, there is a financial cap that lending institutions operate under - which does not allow them to make loans of less than 2 crores. The logic behind this is that a larger project can be mounted more safely (with stars etc.) thereby reducing the risk of returns. The risk, both creative and financial of small films then, is not seen to be worth it and in fact leaves the small film and the small individual producer in an uncertain, vulnerable space, where they must make a separate set of negotiations, and sometimes compromises, to survive. So while, with the opening of up of the multiplex space, individual producers now have many more possibilities than before, the bulk of work whose subject matter and aesthetic styles mark them as independent is increasingly being produced by large media corporations - UTV, Mahindra, Studio 18 and so on with Sony Pictures and Universal studios joining in more recently.
In fact, the multiplex movie, as with the 'indie film' in Hollywood, is a kind of co-optation by major corporates or their boutique companies. Corporates as they take over and modify the independent space, with their considerable resources, may also end up entirely defining it, eventually leaving out a whole other set of possibilities.
How do we in this constant dialectic of independence and institutionalization go about discussing the idea of independence and in fact keeping the independent space independent? Not perhaps by looking always at the mainstream success of the offbeat film - although that is doubtless to be celebrated. We need, instead to recognize the independent space is one to be nurtured and protected because it is in fact the space of innovation and ideas and formal, political, creative, financial risk. To acknowledge, that while its markets may be more volatile and far smaller, they are not in fact invalid.
This is important both for the practitioner and the observer/critic. For the practitioner it is crucial because it provides a confident understanding of their own space, which allows them to make the better choice. For instance a year ago the commercial news broadcaster CNBC India approached documentary filmmakers with the proposal to show their films for free (implying that there was no large market for these films but an element of enlightenment in the network had prompted this move). It is a recognition of the small but definite market that documentary filmmakers have built through a process of endless public screenings in alternative spaces that allowed them to refuse this (eminently refusable) offer, more charming because a corporate body was using the old world language of patronage and social values. In fact shortly after, NDTV, a competing broadcaster approached independent filmmakers with the offer of broadcasting their film for a low fee - but filmmakers recognize in this a worthwhile investment in expanding their space/market while retaining the gains made so far.
Some years ago I wrote a film called Khamosh Pani. It was made on a small budget financed from Europe, starring several unknown or lesser known actors. It went on to do well in the festival circuit, acquired some buzz and got picked up for distribution in India, North America and Europe and met an appreciative 'general' audience. A similar example would be the film Khosla ka Ghosla. This film was also independently produced by a small producer and languished without a distributor until some of those associated with the film became highly successful in the mainstream. Thereafter it was picked up by a larger corporate studio for distribution, proposing now a slightly lower risk (although still not a sure-fire proposition, which we must acknowledge), and it went on to become a runaway success. Two things strike me about these two examples- the sense of unexpectedness: to do something for the pure reason of it being something you feel convinced about and to have it meet an audience -Saeed Mirza's- "we just made films and hoped they'd work" approach. And second, the recognition that these films while they sensed they had a clear market, were not in fact funded by this market that we independent filmmakers work in. They did however expand the space of what was considered to be viable in "the market", thus bringing one more set of audiences into the mix.
Similarly, to go further back in time, whatever the critique of NFDC's bureaucratic ways and the disasters of distribution that strangled the very independent movement they sought to sustain - the fact remains that within that independent space there were films like Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron, Om Darbadar, Mirch Masala, Tunnu ki Tina, Siddheshwari and many others which have gone on to influence the language of narrative and image making in India which we can see everywhere from Channel V to Chak de India.
It is also necessary to remember that independent work may be resolutely local and it may not resonate beyond its locality - so we will in fact have to search for it if we are interested (as lovers of independent rock search for marginal, alternative bands). Aside from the flourishing CD-DVD movie trade in which local versions of Bollywood blockbusters are made, such as Malegaon ke Sholay, I am thinking more particularly of the highly successful Hyderabad Hindi films The Angrez and Hyderabad Nawabs. Irrespective of their quality, these films, made totally out of a local context did phenomenally well in the old city of Hyderabad from where they migrated to the uptown mutiplexes. A lot of short filmmaking also falls into this sort of category because it is perhaps the form with the least rules, highly personal, allowing for a huge range of ability (or not) - and via youtube or similar websites and local screening circuits, it acquires dedicated audiences - and is now slowly appearing on private television.
It is necessary then to accurately recognize and nurture the independent space which allows the maverick, the dreamer, the flamboyante, the politically impassioned artist to generate original work in direct relationship with unique audiences. It is from this independent space that ideas have grown and created markets for themselves - it is not the market that has generated those ideas.
What maintaining this independent space also requires is an eternally updated clarification of what constitutes independence in a constantly changing landscape. For this we need not only a recognition from filmmakers and funders - but also a strong critical culture which is only randomly present at this moment.
In a rather ill informed (or perhaps merely very old) essay called On Watching Documentary in his recently published book The Ugliness of the Indian Male, Mukul Kesavan denounces all Indian documentary as being tame, boring and safe ( so I do think it must be a very old piece, but still somewhat ill informed). "Nobody actually goes to see a documentary film. Documentary films are brought to them/People are bussed in to watch them."
It's safe to say that what Kesavan describes here is not accurate at all today- documentary films have diverse adherents as do all forms quite aside from film clubs where people do or don't pay there are increasing numbers of distributors dedicated to documentaries - Magic Lantern Foundation (New Delhi), Kriti (New Delhi), Pedestrian Pictures (Bangalore) and Metapor Media (Hyderabad) as well as distributors dedicated to shorts, like The Short Circuit (Bombay). Of late large distributors - for instance Shemaroo - have also begun to open some discussions with small filmmakers about distributing their films.
But we could however, turn Kesavan's remark around on writers to say that despite a growing sophistication of language about and engagement with the mainstream, commercial film, critics seem to write only about what washes up on their shores, sometimes through the route of well funded corporate delivery mechanisms and sometimes through the random encounter arising from their socio-economic context (for some that might mean the IIC or NCPA, for others, a college film club).
Within the critical and academic institution there is in fact little attempt to find and define the independent impulse, to argue about it and critique it - there are scattered efforts - Time Out magazine provides space for independent film (perhaps it's important that it's a local and not national magazine in that sense). On the internet there are a few websites like Upperstall and Phalanx which try to engage with these questions of independence and negotiation. There are a growing number of dissertation topics on filmmaking and film culture especially from those working within the American academy - of these a few do look at independent film but they tend to function in a space of limited information - one that does not locate the space or history of independence in film work, as much as identify the response through film content or trends to a particular, larger socio political instance and to identify the work that fits with a certain Nehruvian socialist thinking as the radical work of the time. So for instance, there will be a default thinking which will say that Anand Patwardhan made the first independent documentary film in India. And in one sense that's true. But then, what then of experimental filmmakers like Sukhdev or SNS Sastry working within the state funded Films Division and their subversive works, which just as surely embodied independence using very different forms?
Writers will no doubt cite their own lack of independence or space within the political economy of the media but in the end, without a critical culture, the independent space is that much less vibrant. We need a writing which helps to arrive at defining something of the spirit of independence, helps us evolve ever more relevant categories to recognize independence - always a shifting, but yet a necessary definition to keep shaping for each time we find ourselves in.
In the end the task of those who write about culture is to engage practitioners in self-appraisal, and direct audiences to things that could possibly interest us, to recognize points of interest as they form. Without this place of vibrancy and independent assertion, the space of independence remains scattered and vulnerable, defensive and divided, with those who succeed clinging to their success.
Paromita Vohra is a filmmaker and writer who works and lives in India. She works independently and with organizations and several of her films have specifically focused on gender and feminism. She is also part of A Woman's Place Project an international collective of women using media for social change and @Culture a collective centralizing the discussion on cultural practice and political art in the space of the World Social Forum.
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