Long live formal content !!
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...