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"Filming And Screening Of Cinema Is A Form Of Martial Art"

An Interview With B Ajithkumar

23 February, 2013
Countercurrents.org

B Ajithkumar is one of the most accomplished film editors in India. He has already won three national awards, one for feature film and two for short fictions. He also has won two Kerala state film awards for feature films. A graduate of Film and Television Institute of India, Pune, he also has innumerable number of documentary films to his credit. An avid reader and political thinker, his understanding of Cinema and its politics is deep and insightful. He is also an associate editor at www.countercurrents.org. We caught up with him for an interview on winning his second Kerala state award.

Countercurrents: Under what kind of political context an editor like you work?

B Ajithkumar: I consider a film as an artefact, created by human beings, which serve certain purposes in the social system. It is a material product, that accomplishes communication, with purposes that we generally term “cultural”. In the current state of the world, these cultural products serve a very important function. They are important products that circulate within the social system, and are tools used by various agents to manipulate and control the people. These are tools of control, as well as weapons of resistance by the people, as art has always been. I conceive the field of art / cinema as a battle ground, where works of art are weapons. So filming and screening form a martial art, to borrow the words of Pierre Bourdieu in a similar context.

The fact that films are produced and are circulated within a social system, this process cannot be segregated from the social dynamics of the contemporary society. Whether it be fiction films or documentaries, I believe that a film is always placed politically. It functions as a political instrument. Documentaries are directly so, feature films often indirectly. My background in working for documentaries has influenced the way in which I see films, and also how I see the world.

In the present scenario, where gags are being placed on all free expression, directly by the state (as exemplified in the current spurt URL blocking), and indirectly through corporate control of media, any film maker worth the name has a political responsibility. I believe that the distortions of reality being propagated by mainstream media in many issues like human rights violations and people's struggles need to be addressed by the community of film makers with commitment to human values. To turn a blind eye to the reality, will serve only the powers that are intent on subjecting people to their will, to serve narrow vested interests.

Countercurrents: Documentaries are directly political. Has your experience in doing a load of documentaries influenced the way you see fiction?

B Ajithkumar: My experience with documentaries have been eye-opening for me. While going through hours of footage of people victimized by “development”, I often marvel at the cleverness of people who invented this term, the most used euphemism for exploitation. I am currently working on a film on Koodankulam struggle. The people who are agitating against the establishment of a nuclear reactor there are branded as anti-development. Those who are anti-development are anti-national too. The dominant discourse of the mainstream is bombarding the general populace with propaganda, all of which is centered on the concept of development. “We need electricity, development, growth.” (Ofcourse, somebody has to pay the price, not we, but the poor fisherfolk of Koodankulam). Watching the raw footage of villagers, speaking out their minds powerfully, it doesn't require any special skill to see that they are speaking from the depths of their hearts. The authorities say that they are poor people who are manipulated by foreign forces.

But their robust common sense evokes the precautionary principle – that a single out of the way event might do irreversible harm to life and environment. They just want to preserve their livelihood and the sustainable way of life. Their words are much more simple and profound than that of the pundits of scientific establishment with their formulas and statistics. The question that we face is how to communicate simple truths to the public, swimming against the current, opposing the barrage of complex lies that are daily fed to them by media conglomerates and official propaganda. The film maker or editor doesn't have an easy job at all.

Another example is the film that I just finished editing - one about fabricated cases in India, concentrating on Abdul Nasser Maudany. Here again, nobody is interested in truth. Those who control public opinion through various means only want to suppress Maudany at any cost – at the cost of the basic values of natural justice, because he dared to speak truth about them. This man who was in jail for almost a decade without trial was acquitted without even an apology. Nobody who caused his suffering was prosecuted. His suffering was characterized as the result of a pardonable and inevitable shortcoming in the otherwise perfect legal system, which is the price someone has to pay for all of us being “safe” from the bogeyman - terrorism. Later he is again imprisoned on fabricated evidence, which a journalist – K.K. Shahina has already exposed before us. Now she is being targeted, branded as terrorist and anti-national. The image of Maudany as a terrorist was created by the media. When some hindu fundamentalists threw a bomb on Maudany, it was reported that, “Maudany hurt in bomb explosion”. I still remember reading a small headline in the newspaper. As if Maudany was holding a bomb, or making one, and it exploded by mistake and he lost a leg. This is how through the clever use of language they make the victim into a terrorist. While editing this documentary, we had to bring to foreground the plight of this human being as well as the putrefied nature of our political legal systems and the field of media. Again this is an uphill task. To repeat cliches like development, terrorism, national integration, growth, energy crisis, financial reforms etc. etc. is easy. But getting to the core of the matter is difficult. You have to wade through a universe full of muddy lies, and with truth, forge the weapon that is your cinema.

B Ajithkumar can be reached at [email protected]

 




 

 


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