IDSFFK | Deepa Dhanraj interview: A lifetime of raising pertinent questions through documentaries

Deepa Dhanraj's debut docu 'Kya hua is shahar ko?' (1984) on religious riots in Hyderabad still relevant today. She formed Yugantar Film Collective to make films on women's struggles. Her 1991 docu 'Something Like a War' on forced sterilisation & unethical trials of contraceptive medicines on poor women. She feels her films start with material on ground & form determined by it. Lifetime Achievement Award shared with her partner Navroze Contractor for his "tender camera" & immense contributions to her films.

Images that stand the test of time do so not just aesthetically, but they also open up our understanding of events or situations, years or even decades later. Kya Hua Is Shahar Ko? (What Happened to This City?), Deepa Dhanraj’s debut documentary made in the mid-1980s on the religious riots that ravaged her hometown Hyderabad in 1984, still looks very prescient, going by the history of communal polarisation that has spread across the country since then, and by how similar images are seen from multiple cities in contemporary India. It was one of the first documentary films from the country to carry such an autopsy of a riot.

In an interview with The Hindu, Ms. Dhanraj says the documentary began as an idea to study the reasons which attracted young men from different castes to join the Ganesh processions, a phenomenon of recent origin, which were followed by riots. But, it morphed into something else while they were doing it.

“While we were there, riots broke out. So, we just continued filming. Later, we abandoned our initial idea, and the film shaped up on the editing table. We looked closely at all the players involved and mapped out the events. We cannot talk about riots as spontaneous acts. We have to understand the context, the players, their agenda and what they stand to gain,” says Ms. Dhanraj, who is in the capital to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 15th International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala (IDSFFK).

She sees her landing up in documentaries almost as an accident, after her literature and journalism studies, and getting a basic understanding of feature filmmaking, working in the sets of the likes of Pattabhirama Reddy and M.S. Sathyu. “These were fiction films, but it was a kind of education, though I would not recommend it to anyone to start learning about filmmaking in this way. It’s very tough, because what you learn is totally dependent on the project that you are part of, what the director’s vision is, and the kind of role you have been assigned,” she says.

Around the time, the Indira Gandhi government declared an Emergency, which was a political awakening for many young people from her generation. It was a period which also witnessed the emergence of an autonomous women’s movement, led by women who came out of mainstream organisations which were not receptive to the women’s question.

“It was at that time we thought about making films on women who have mobilised on their own, because their struggles were invisible. It was a modest intention, maybe even a little naive. We were filming what was happening and showing it to other women from the same kind of constituency, and aimed to start a conversation about their working conditions,” says Ms. Dhanraj.

In 1980, she formed Yugantar Film Collective with cinematographer Navroze Contractor (her partner who passed away recently), activist Abha Bhaiya and writer Meera Rao. The four documentaries the collective made on 16mm film set the tone for her later work. Maid Servant, on the unionisation of domestic workers in Pune, had its ripples elsewhere, with its screening inspiring the formation of the Bangalore Domestic Workers Union.