Screening documentaries critical of power becoming increasingly difficult in recent years: Anand Patwardhan

Anand Patwardhan discusses challenges in screening critical documentaries at Puducherry International Documentary Short Film Festival.

Documentary filmmaker Anand Patwardhan said on Friday that screening of documentaries and short films critical of power had become progressively difficult in recent years.

The filmmaker who was speaking at the inauguration of the 12th Puducherry International Documentary Short Film Festival hosted by the Puducherry Film Forum, related his own experience of making films often critical of the government, communal ideology, or the over enthusiastic development planning which does not consider the fact that the planet has finite resources and sacrifices the interests of the poor.

“These kind of films have never been easy to show in our country, but they have become much more difficult in the last 10 to 12 years or so. In getting a censor nod for a film, the problem remained that a documentary does not get seen in the absence of a mechanism to show such films. On the experience of turning to Doordarshan as a screening platform, Mr. Patwardhan recounted how it had to be argued in court that even a national award-winning film was rejected by the State broadcaster and successfully challenging the lack of merit in denying the public a chance to see a film that was given a national award by a State-nominated jury.

“In the early days, we had to fight to get our films shown...but we often won those fights,” said Mr. Patwardhan, who recalled how he had successfully battled seven court cases against censorship in the country. All the court cases were won on the grounds of freedom of expression and public’s right to information, something which is much more challenging to achieve now, he said.

Mr. Patwardhan recalled how similar efforts had been launched in 2004 with an organisation Vikalp, a network of documentary filmmakers who believed in the concept of “films for freedom”.

The government in those days tried to impose censorship on films shown at the Mumbai International Film Festival, which used to be a space where censorship certificate was not required. The government, which was concerned about films that were critical of its functioning, introduced a norm where Indian films required a censorship nod while foreign entries did not. Filmmakers responded by hosting a parallel festival that attracted bigger audiences than the official festival, he said. Since then, Vikalp, now renamed as Vikalp@Prithvi after the theatre offered its venue, has been screening documentaries every month.

While hailing the organisers, Mr. Patwardhan said, “the tradition you have started is vital for documentary filmmakers as without an audience, there is no point in making films.”