It is time we censored the Censor Board

http://expressbuzz.com/opinion/op-ed/it-is-time-we-censored-the-censor-board/242944.html

Page 11 of Jan28,2011 Indian Express

Leena Manimekalai

First Published : 27 Jan 2011 12:30:00 AM IST

Last Updated : 28 Jan 2011 12:41:50 AM IST

On December 31, 2010, the Censor Board of Film Certification (CBFC) watched and refused the clearance certificate to my film Sengadal for the following reasons. “This film contains many present political references in a denigrative way and usage of many unparliamentary words. There are some denigrating references of the functioning of the Sri Lankan Government. As the film violates guidelines, certificate to the film is refused.”

This experience has only taught me a lesson that it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. When Article 19 of the Constitution says, all citizens shall have the right to freedom of speech and expression, intimidation of CBFC, which is an ‘attached and subordinate’ organisation of the Ministry of I&B, with the free-to-use scissors on every other film made in this country is disastrous. Is it not evident that censorship has lost its relevance, when people have access to all kinds of visual entertainment over various media? Is it not dubious that CBFC plays the ‘moral police’ just for the films to be shown in theatres.

Leena Manimekalai

As a poet and a filmmaker I have been suffering hurdles in the way of free expression all through my profession by extra-constitutional pressure groups like political party goons, ultra left and ultra right ideological outfits, market, religious movements and even academic institutions. My documentary Parai on caste discrimination which runs to 40 minutes suffered 19 cuts by the CBFC in 2004 on the ground the film shall create law and order problems. I joined the Campaign against Censorship/Vikalp — forum of 250 independent filmmakers and detested the cuts and screened Parai at almost 200 villages by alternative means and the film ultimately called for government intervention in the locality addressed in the film by gearing up people’s movements. And now, Sengadal, which is a people participatory cinema has been refused permission for public exhibition.

Sengadal captures the fragments of ordinary lives beaten by three-decade-long ethnic war in Sri Lanka. It unfolds in a fisher village at Dhanushkodi, the southernmost tip of India and talks of the travails of the fishermen risking their lives everyday in the border waters between Sri Lanka and India. Kambippadu, a village in Dhanushkodi, that was washed out by floods caused by a cyclone in 1964 is now a village of ruins and this is the focal place where the fiction unwinds. This place, where simple traditional fishermen ply their trade, is where Tamil refugees land either in boats or as floating corpses. The fishermen of Kambippadu and the Tamil refugees from the Rameshwaram Mandapam refugee camp form the bulk of the artistes in Sengadal.

It was a difficult mission to make a film because Dhanushkodi is a place under constant surveillance by the Coast Guard, the Indian Navy, CB-CID, Q Branch and the Intelligence Bureau as the Sri Lanka is 18 kms away. We overcame all these barriers, natural and man-made, to see Sengadal honestly becomes a portrayal of the unrecognised community, constantly insecure.

What the world knows is that the war for a separate Tamil Eelam was merely bloodshed, violence and terror. But little is known about the struggle of the poor common folk and of the innocent fishermen caught in an internecine war. They are forced to flee a war-ravaged land, battle the sea, and reach India only to confront increasing hostility and an uncertain future.

The lives of the fishermen on mainland India are no different. We learn it from our everyday headlines. They are often mistaken for rebels, spies and smugglers and are beaten, maimed or killed by the Sri Lankan Navy.

I felt that I should not be a silent witness to this discrimination and human rights violation against a vulnerable society. I wanted to register my dissent and share their true story through cinema. When the CBFC stops me from exhibiting my film to the people, it is freedom of expression and right to information which is at stake.

If the government thinks that its citizens are capable of watching thousand and odd advertisements bulldozing the drawing halls of their homes broadcast in hundreds of channels and select which shampoo will bring more lather, if it feels that its citizens can see through headlines and breaking news manufactured by the political mafia-run channels and get their daily dose of ‘truth’ and considers that its citizens are entitled to watch any soap or any television show, can hear any radio programme and browse anything on Internet and remain wise, how come it decides that the moment its citizens buy a cinema ticket they become idiots?

To be eligible for participation in film festivals in India, Indian films need a CBFC certificate while foreign films get away with censorship exemption. The broadcasting ministry has to agree to ‘censorship exemption’ for foreign films. Otherwise, there won’t be foreign films available for exhibition in Indian festivals. But it cannot risk ‘uncomfortable’ or ‘critical’ films being shown at festivals organised by the government. This is stupidity and duplicity at its height.

However much the Indian state machinery wants us to believe that the CBFC carries out certification, in truth it still indulges in censorship in the classical sense. Many independent filmmakers feel that the main censorship law — the Cinematographic Act of 1952 — is archaic and needs a thorough review, especially in the light of rapid changes in the last decade. It is baffling that the political mafia can run their propaganda channels telecasting their rallies and inflammatory footage for hours uncensored but when a filmmaker uses bits and parts of it to show the real side, he/she is denied a screening certificate.

I feel that the censor board should be abolished altogether. What we need is a rating agency, classifying films as being suitable for universal viewing or under parental guidance or only for adults.

                                                                leenamanimekalai@gmail.com

Film on Fishermen's lives hits Censor wall

Feature by Gopu Mohan, Indian Express, Jan 15,2011

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/Film-on-fishermen-s-lives-hits-Censor-wall/737142

go to page 9 in this link -- http://epaper.indianexpress.com/IE/IEH/2011/01/14/index.shtml

Of untold tales and unheard voices, Sunday Express, I - Witness, 26.09.10. Ranjitha Gunasekaran

http://expressbuzz.com/magazine/of-untold-tales-and-unheard-voices/209629.html

Tourists come to Dhanushkodi in Rameswaram to see ruins and the searing blue of the sea. Film crews frequently shoot there. And until last year, it was where Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka would be dropped at night with instructions to reach the nearest police station and eventually Mandapam refugee camp.

The people of Dhanushkodi are rarely in the news. In fact, few visitors know that a fishing community lives there braving lack of roads, electricity, transport, and intrusions from the Coast Guard, Intelligence Bureau, Navy and whoever else is tasked with safeguarding the state’s porous coastline. So, when Leena Manimekalai heard of the community, of their untold stories, she felt compelled to document their lives. The film made is called Sengadal.

The documentary filmmaker and poet had visited Rameswaram earlier, to profile a fisherwoman for her film Goddesses, which won the  Best Documentary at the Mumbai International Film Festival in 2008. “When I met the people living there, I found so many stories begging to be told. Each family has a widow, or has lost sons or is taking care of an orphaned child. Almost all the fishermen had encountered the Sri Lankan navy about six or seven times. They have such rich life experiences,” she explains.

Leena started with interviews of the people and then decided that to learn more of their lives, she would have to live with them. “It’s a very different life — no bathrooms, no electricity, no mobile signals. Even the dogs there are different because they feed on corpses. Their day starts at 3 am and ends by 9 am,” she points out. “As fishing folk, they are not used to borders and boundaries and for a long time they had a barter system with the Sri Lankan fishermen. But in recent years, their fishing has been restricted — each one has encountered the Sri Lankan Navy several times,” she says.

Added to this is the physical isolation they endure — no one is allowed to remain in Dhanushkodi after 6 pm for security purposes. Even though refugees have landed on its shores for years now, the people here have learnt not to extend friendship or help. “Their compassion has been tested by the authorities so many times that they know helping them would mean spending the rest of their lives facing enquiries!”

It is these nuances of their lives that pushed Leena into making the filmmaking process democratic and community-based. “Shobasakthi, the Sri Lankan Tamil writer and I worked on the script incorporating their stories within a fictional framework but after that we revised the script several times for the community’s inputs.”

Shobasakthi in dialogue training

Since the crew wanted the residents of Dhanushkodi to act in the film as well, Leena held a series of workshops for them. “They have seen technology only as outsiders, so there were problems when they had to participate with it. So we held workshops and shared each scene and dialogue with them,” she explains. This meant much argument, discussion and sometimes disagreement. “Sometimes, they would feel the situation was not as in real life or that a dialogue did not ring true and so we would make changes,” she says. The film also looks at another people whose lives are touched by Dhanushkodi — the refugees.“Again we worked with them, incorporated their stories and ideas — each person has a different story of how they reached that shore,” she says.

Of course such a collaborative process had its drawbacks. “Shobasakthi also played a role in the film. His character had a wife and a child and half their scenes had been shot, since he had only 60 days in the country, when the girl playing his daughter came of age. Her family wouldn’t allow her out for 30 days and the woman playing his wife had her period! With the limitations of time, we had to write both of them out of the script!”

Every cast member was paid daily wages as agreed to by their community — `350 to `500 — so once in a while, if they got a better job for the day they would not turn up. “Every day when we sent the vehicle to pick up people from the camp, someone wouldn’t be available — 17 would be part of the day’s shooting but only 13 would have turned up,” she laughs. However, if they got a better offer the crew just waited for them to come back. The crew itself started off with 60 members, dwindling to eight by the end of the shoot because of the harsh conditions.

The film was shot over 35 days in 2009 and survived despite the original producer walking out of the movie. “His team pulled out with 12 days left of the first schedule. I had to beg and borrow to raise enough money to complete the schedule. Now, there are people who won’t even take my calls,” she chuckles. Finally, Janaki Sivakumar of Tholpavai Theatres stepped in and helped produce the rest of the film that cost Rs 1 crore.

“The film is complete now but I am now worried about censorship. I don’t believe any part of this movie should be cut because the stories it tells are too important. If I don’t get to release it theatrically, I plan to screen it village by village through DVD. Let’s decentralise film distribution,” she says.

As of now, Sengadal has had a letter of interest from the Berlin Film Festival. “It is made for a global audience. It deals with language, ethnicity, borders and ultimately, the simple lives of fishermen and refugees,” she says. “But I would like our people in Tamil Nadu’s villages to have access to it as well,” she adds.

— ranjithagunasekaran@expressbuzz.com