[Reader-list] Excavating Indian Experimental Film; Shai Heredia

[Shai Heredia]

Excavating Indian Experimental Film 

posting by Shai Heredia



The western experimental film movement has arisen primarily from within a context of visual art. In stark contrast through my research I have found that the only distinct modern movement of film as art in India, in terms of experimentation with form, was that which occurred in post colonial socialist India at the Films Division in the late 1950's through till the 1960's and early 1970's. The films made during this period moved away from story telling and looked to create a space outside of the great Indian narrative film tradition. I have previewed and studied a number of these films and have also presented them at Experimenta - the annual festival of experimental film that I curate. Also, I have discussed these works with archivists Amrit Gangar and BD Garga, and have read archival essays on this exciting time at Films Division. 

 

The visionary Chief Producer (1954-57 and 1965-67) of Films Division and filmmaker Jean Bhownagary was key to this movement. As he understood the social need of nurturing film aesthetics, he focused on encouraging the growth of a radically new syntax for ethnographic/documentary films. Thus, at this time, a group of filmmakers including Pramod Pati, Vijay B Chandra, SNS Sastry and Biren Das to name a few were encouraged to innovate with found footage, animation and stylised montage in the Films Division studios. These films looked to transcend mythology and folk traditions by shifting interests away from illusionism, and by revealing the aesthetic possibilities of the materials and processes of the film medium. These were filmmakers whose experimental approach and fearlessness with creating new forms was much in the innovative style of Dadasaheb Phalke. The films they produced, in my opinion, are some of India's most progressive and aestheticised experimental shorts. 



"When Pati (Pramod Pati) began to explore newer narrative possibilities, cinema the world over was bubbling with creative urges that time had given the necessary space for or space its time. Generally a capital-intensive market-oriented medium such as cinema always feels shy of taking risks. But in India, the public institutional domain - the Films Division, the Film Finance Corporation, the Film & Television Institute of India - challenging the monolithic popular art rhetoric, has interestingly provided this risqué-space." Amrit Gangar.

Some of the films are listed below:1. 'Trip' by Pramod Pati; India; 1970; 35mm; Sound; B&W; 4 mins  A film on Bombay, which uses pixilation to depict the transitoriness of daily life in an urban context. This spectacular film with its abstract soundtrack of tweaked city sounds is the quintessential urban Indian experimental film.    2. 'Claxplosion' by Pramod Pati 1968; Sound; B&W; 2minsUsing pixilation and electronic music, this is an experimental family planning film 3. 'Explorer' by Pramod Pati; India; 1970; 35mm; Sound; B&W; 4 mins  This is a psychedelic trip through youth culture within modern India. The film focuses on exploring, probing, questioning and analysing science, technology and modernity by abstract referencing through symbols, faces and moods. 4. 'Abid' by Pramod Pati; India; 1972; 35mm; Sound; Colour; 5 mins   "Unlike a cartoon film, which is a rapidly moving series of photographed drawings, in pixilation, a moving object is shot frame by frame, and then through clever editing made to appear in motion. By its nature, this movement is agile, energetic and unpredictable just like the pop art movement." [Pramod Pati]5. 'And I Make Short Films' by S.N.S.Sastry; India; 1968; 35mm; Sound; B&W; 16 mins   An impressionistic portrayal of short film making by a short film maker. The film explores the process, ideas and the context of documentary filmmaking in India at the time -art or documentation of reality. The views expressed in the film are sometimes bitter, often humorous, at times satirical but seldom complimentary.  6. 'Expression' by Biren Das; India; 1969; 35mm; Sound; B&W; 9 mins  Set in Bombay in 1969, this is a film about city life and the activities occurring around a busy city square in South Bombay. Narrated from the perspective of the female statues at the centre of the fountain, the film opens with animated statues stepping out off the fountain and into the city to explore the art and culture of Bombay.7. 'Child on a Chess Board' by Vijay B. Chandra; India; 1979; 35mm; Sound; B&W; 8 mins  This abstract narrative short film is a powerful psycho social exploration of nationhood, industrial progress and scientific development through the eyes of a child.  
Through my continued research, I hope to find more films and information on the exciting beginnings of the modern Indian experimental film - one that was uniquely created from within the ethnographic/documentary film genre. Also, I am looking to draw together the extremely fragmented contemporary context of Indian experimental films .ie.films made by individuals or through film institutions across the country - so as to highlight new ideas and forms that have existed on the margins and only inform  very few underground filmmakers. 



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 What is a good documentary film? by JEAN BHOWNAGARY (June 1960)
A good documentary must be an observation of reality - interpreted in terms of film. In substance it must have something useful to say - useful to such and to such, alone and together. In form, it must say it usefully, efficiently.

If its audience is to take what it has to give, to assimilate what it has to say then the film must be able to move its audience - for there is no true assimilation, no true making something a part of oneself without emotion.
And then for the filmmaker himself, for the artist - as in all art - the film must also pose a problem, a problem in art which interests and impassions its maker.
 In making the documentary its maker must solve this problem to his satisfaction. The blank canvas and the virgin, unexposed film are the same - on it the maker of films paints not with brush and oil but with light; not only on space but in time at his cutting bench; not only with colour but also with sound.

 

In this - in facing a problem and solving it, a problem of style and form and content - documentary making, again as other arts, calls for experiment, grows with experimentation.

 

As for the documentary filmmaker, the first essential thing is that he be an artist - that like Picasso he leave the sun in his belly.

 

But this inventive artist, with the sun in his belly, exploring new techniques and lyricisms, must also be capable of digging into and presenting true problems, either individual or social, in terms of all mankind. 

 

His airiest flight must be based on a firm bed- rock of involvement and analysis.

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