Of documentary films

Documentary films have contributed immensely towards evolution of the modern society. In fact the very first ‘films’ made by the Lummiere Brothers – ‘Workers Leaving a Factory’ and ‘Arrival of a Train’ – which date back to1895 – had laid the foundations for cinema, feature and all, both depicting for the first time through an entirely new medium what life and actuality actually mean. Since then however feature films and documentary films began taking two different paths, with John Grierson, himself a documentary film maker, first using the word ‘documentary film’ while writing – under the pen-name of Moviegoer – a review of Robert Flaherty’s ‘Moana’ in the New York Times on February 8, 1926. As the definition goes, a documentary film is a non-fiction film which intends to document some aspect of reality – primarily for the purposes of instruction, education, maintaining historical record, raising awareness and even running or initiating a campaign in the larger interest of human rights and human development. A documentary is a film of actuality. Reality on the other hand is its theme and its content. And the most important quality or aspect of documentary films is truth, and only truth. While feature films are generally concerned with our dreams, aspirations and longings which some pundits call ‘the escapist motif’, the documentary confronts the society with truth – truth about the people; truth about the people’s sufferings, joys, aspirations, hopes and rights or the violation of rights; truth about the country; truth about governance and/or the lack of it; truth that inspires; truth that hurts; truth that exposes falsehood and hypocrisy. The most interesting aspect with documentary films is that subject to this stipulation of telling the truth, documentaries can have infinite variety. While traditional documentary films once upon a time focused more on development – that was because media, including films, were sought to be used as tools of development in a new-born democratic country like India – documentary filmmakers have also done wonderful work telling the stories of the people, stories of joy, stories of hopes and aspirations, stories of suffering, stories of success and stories of conflict and intrigue. Showing the truth in a creative manner is the mainstay of documentaries. While a number of filmmakers like Sukhdev, Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Mani Kaul, Jagat Murari, Anant Patwardhan, BD Garga, Shyam Benegal, Prakash Jha, Mira Nair etc have over the decades taken documentary film-making to different heights, filmmakers from Northeastern India too have not lagged behind. Mention must be made of Bhupen Hazarika, Kulada Kumar Bhattacharyya, Aribam Syam Sharma, RK Binodini Devi, Dulal Saikia, Jahnu Barua, Gautam Bora, Haobam Paban Kumar, Mozi Riba, and others who too have enriched the tradition of documentary filmmaking in India.