Movie Murmur

Over the last few years some of us, in our honorary capacities, have off and on been involved in the selection, script and rough cut evaluation process at Films Division, India's prime organisation that makes documentary films. In this process we have been active witnesses to many a concept being turned into insipid movies. I mainly fear that this is primarily due to the fact that we have a default form of building up a documentary movie imbibed into our blood streams - the one that has a 'god's voice' of a narrator guiding us in a predetermined manner or off late the one that endlessly 'observers' and 'follows' the main characters at times to their death bed. Yet, a few of the documentaries commissioned by Films Division had stood out to me for their sheer brilliance of form, ie... the innovative way in which the content has been narrated. I would mention a few made in the last two-three years that were experiential in nature; and have also bro...

Kundu Saab, as we called Virender Kundu, was on deputation to Films Division from the Haryana state cadre of government civil services. He is a film buff, the indication of it was that every evening he saw a movie in his home theater that had 5.1 speakers, so we were told. After taking charge as the Director General of Films Division, as the post is called now as against the earlier Chief Producer, he quickly realized that the system that Films Division had developed over the years actually put off the spirited independent documentary film maker or kept them out of it's range.   He opened up the organization to people who otherwise would not have entered into it's premises at Peddar Road. Consultation with independent documentary film makers became the norm. One of the major reforms he had undertaken in his tenure was to streamline the online application process and make the process seem transparent. After the applicant submitted his / her proposal on line on to the ...

My association with Films Division first began when my school friends graphically described to me on how Sunil Gavaskar and Gundappa Vishwanth hit boundaries upon boundaries in the 1971 test match against the mighty West Indies team in the Caribbean islands on a newsreel that they saw before the main movie in a local theater, in the early seventies. A couple of days later I did sneak into the movie hall only to savor one of the most significant overseas test cricket victories that the Indian team had  since it started playing cricket Newsreels such as these were produced by Films Division, an organization under the aegis of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting of the Government of India. The exhibition of these newsreels were mandated by law - a practice first initiated in pre-independence India by the British, mainly to promote their war efforts. 'The Information Films of India', was what the unit was called then. After independence, this unit was transformed ...