NAATA and EKTA SANDESH

Naata: Directed by Anjali Monteiro and K P Jayasankar
Produced by the Unit for Media and Communication, Tata Institute of Social Sciences Hindi and English with English subtitles, 45 mins

Ekta Sandesh: Directed by Waqar P Khan
Produced by Waqar P Khan, Mohalla Committee Movement Trust and Dharavi Citizens
Hindi with English subtitles, 62 mins

Naata documents the activism and idealism of two residents of Dharavi, Asia ’s largest slum, which led them to make Ekta Sandesh , a unique film on communal harmony which uses images from popular Hindi cinema. The film is shown to communities savaged by manufactured distrust and prejudice

Screened as part of Vikalp: Films for Freedom organised by OPEN SPACE in Pune, July 31 - August 29, 2004

Khan and Korde are both long-time residents of Dharavi and both first-generation migrants to the city. Both count on Dharavi for their livelihood and for their perceptions of the nation. When the deadly riots of 1992-93 tore the city and their community apart, both were (separately) moved to act, to make sure that something like this never happened again. In Dharavi, as in other parts of the city, the Rashtriya Ekta Samiti and Mohalla Committees swung into action, soothing and repairing emotionally and materially fractured communities. While Bombay appeared to settle down and returned to business as usual, the communal cauldron continued to simmer, culminating, 10 years later, in the devastating conflagration of Godhra and Ahmedabad in 2002.

In the intervening period, Khan and Korde had been busy, thinking of new and innovative ways to bring the message of communal harmony to their neighbours, friends and enemies. Khan used local children to pose for a picture, dressed as a Muslim, a Hindu, a Sikh and a Christian, bearing the slogan, ‘ Hum Sab Ek Hain’, a poster that dominates the beach at Juhu Chowpatty even today. But over the months and years, Khan and Korde decided that film was the best medium for this message and, even as they were starting to shoot their film with the help and talents of local residents, the genocide in Gujarat began and their message and its dissemination became more urgent.

Naata follows these remarkable men and their personal commitment to secularism, a commitment that sets them on the challenging path that results in the making and screening of Ekta Sandesh. Woven through Khan and Korde’s story of Bombay, a city of dreams and a city of shattered hopes, is another story of first-generation migrants, the story of Monteiro and Jayasankar themselves, who also came to the city separately and met there, and then followed the path of their (henceforward) conjoined commitments and destiny.

Monteiro and Jayasankar use Naata and the documentation of Khan and Korde’s journey as activists for harmony as a moment to reflect on their own lives. We hear their voices without ever seeing them, as they construct a “self-reflexive ethnography”. Their young daughter (another unseen but fully articulated presence) provides the thread upon which the beads of identity and difference, of confusion and resolution, of questioning and answering, are strung. Her childish clarity sprinkles fairy dust on the issues that vex her parents, and this is where the personal story of the filmmakers collides with the determined idealism and activism of their subjects, Khan and Korde.

Naata is among the new generation of documentaries where filmmakers forcefully place themselves and their concerns at the margin (if not at the very centre) of the films they are making. The filmmaker revealing her/himself in the process of filmmaking, or placing personal history in the service of a narrative, cannot be regarded as merely a nod in the direction of intellectual post-modernism or a narcissistic acknowledgement of intervention: rather, we must agree to recognise the filmmaker as a creating subject and an object at the same time.

In Ekta Sandesh, Khan and Korde do not use personal narrative as the momentum for their film, instead, they make full and florid use of shared cultural narratives to make their point. Their film is unabashed in its exploitation of Bollywood: Ekta Sandesh is a montage of clips from Hindi commercial cinema, where heroes (Amitabh Bachchan, Dilip Kumar, Sunny Deol, Aamir Khan, Arvind Swamy and Ajay Devgan, to name a few), produce fiery and inspirational speeches about the secular nation and communal harmony.

The film strings together another set of hopeful beads on a commentary (written by Dr Ram Puniyani) and interspersed with messages of how to nurture and develop communal harmony from former police commissioners (including Julius Ribeiro and KS Sahni) and local celebrities like Ravindar Jain and Ameen Sayani. The opening sequence of Ekta Sandesh consciously employs the full-blown elements of Bollywood cinema to tell us that pain and suffering are not coded by religion or community, that they affect us all, equally.

Ekta Sandesh is much more than the sum of its parts. Khan and Korde themselves embody the message of secularism and communal harmony that they seek to spread. Traveling with a projector and a screen, Khan and Korde show Ekta Sandesh (at their own expense) in communities that have been savaged by manufactured distrust and prejudice.

More than any other self-consciously post-modern film that I have seen, Ekta Sandesh conflates filmmaker, form and content to the point where the maker, the medium and the message become one. Add to that Naata, a film about this film, and you reach the point where instead of your head spinning, you have utter and complete clarity about what is being said.

For more information contact:
Anjali Monteiro and K.P.Jayasankar at umctiss@vsnl.com
Waqar P Khan Tel No: (022) 32794550
Bhau Korde Tel No: (022) 24081053
Naata is also available in a hindi version (45 mins)
Ekta Sandesh is available at no cost with Waqar Khan
A shorter film "Hum Sab Ek Hain" in english & hindi ia also available with Monteiro & Jayasankar c/o Tata Institute of Social Sciences