In the post-truth world, when everything is fiction and fact has no value, where polemics is fun and arguments boring, documentary as a genre faces an existential crisis. Who is its addressee? To which powers-that-be is it talking to? When the whole world is inundated with images, news, information and visual narratives, what are the strategies to capture and hold the attention of the viewers? In this age of digital excess, how and where do documentaries find a foothold? What form and format should it adopt to express, argue and reach out? Many films at the just-concluded 11th International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala (IDSFFK) 2018 seem to probe at and ponder upon these vexing issues. IDSFFK presented a cross-section of documentaries from around the world, experimenting with forms and exploring and posing uneasy questions that mainstream media ignores or is deaf and blind to for lack of entertainment, and, obviously, political and economic reasons. There were overtly political films that looked at the ways in which global capital works hand in hand with states to wreak havoc on the democratic fabric, lives, livelihoods and the environment. One interesting theme was migration; about the willing and forced movement of people across the globe, thrown, pushed and pulled by economic, ecological, political and ethnic churns. Two documentaries that dealt with the issues of war, violence, nationality, ethnic and gender identity in an interesting manner were Demons in Paradise by Sri Lankan filmmaker Jude Ratnam, and Abu by Arshad Khan, a Pakistan-born filmmaker. Coincidentally, both filmmakers were born in Asia and now live in Canada. Both films are about journeys, internal and external, geographical and temporal. Past continuous Demons in Paradise follows the journey of an former Tamil Eelam fighter returning to his homeland after more than three decades. It is a journey through present-day Sri Lanka where death and destruction, scars, wounds and losses of war are mourned, memorialised and politicised in different ways. His is a journey through the ruins of the past, dilapidated buildings, desolate houses, ravaged landscapes, spots where murders were committed once, the dungeons where they hid themselves and their weapons and the like. He meets his old comrades who reminisce about the times and the traumatic experiences they lived through. During the journey through the physical and human ruins, the film poses some poignant and politically disturbing questions about war and violence: While the Tamils now demand the Sinhalese government investigate war crimes and tell the truth about missing persons, what about the people who were killed by the Tamil fighters, those who belonged to different rival groups amongst them? This is a question that films about ethnic genocides seldom ask, and it needs a lot of courage to ask it. As Jude Ratnam says, “It was important for me to have this introspective look at the conflict, because I realised that in a war, no one is innocent. When you watch a documentary made from an outsider’s point of view, you tend to have this feeling that one side is innocent.’’ Coping with the crisis In Abu, 43-year-old Irshad Khan narrates his family’s story from his childhood to the present, especially his troubled relationship with his father. It turns into a time travel through the history of Pakistan, its political turmoil, coups and assassinations, and the impact of this on his father’s career and their family. The film has an interesting narrative structure that is held together by the personal monologue of the protagonist that is woven with visual strands like home videos, animation, personal interviews and clips of scenes and songs from Hindi films. It also turns into a diaspora story, as the family shifts to Canada in search of a better life. There, Khan finds himself alienated in multiple ways, as a brown skin, an Asian, a Pakistani, a Muslim and, on top of all, as a homosexual. The film is about the multiple identities that the nation, ethnicity, region, political philosophies and sexual mores thrust upon people and their struggles to cope up with this. A still from ‘Abu’ | Photo Credit: Special arrangement At one level, these films are intensely personal as they follow the memories, experiences and journeys in the first person. On the other, all these bleed into the life-world of families, religious communities, political organisations, ethnic minorities, resistance groups, diasporic communities, sexual minorities.... In terms of form, there is a radical shift here from the conventional modes and models of documentary filmmaking. It is one that imagines and defines itself as a ‘balanced’ and ‘objective’ account that most often than not carries certain political messages or advocates certain ethical positions and argues for well-argued causes. In contrast, these films place the filmmaker himself at the centre of the narrative, not as an objective witness, acerbic commentator, voice of civil society or crusader for social justice, but as someone who too is implicated in the world, someone who himself is in doubt and is ready to be vulnerable to reality. Here, personal experiences and memories transform into knowledge and vice versa, prompting the viewer not to judge but be empathetic to the other and to be self-reflexive.

Stay updated with all the Latest Thiruvananthapuram headlines here. For more exclusive & live news updates from all around India, stay connected with NYOOOZ.