In November I will deliver a paper at the University of Salford on the ostracism of Indian cinema in cinephilia. If Indian DVD labels have categorically failed to distribute films adequately to the consumer then filmmakers like Anand Patwardhan who has only the most tenuous of links with the Indian film industry has worked independently to make documentaries and distribute his work through his website. Patwardhan’s work has been available for a while in India and he has always been careful to whom he licenses his work. Patwardhan’s documentaries have been screened in the UK at film festivals and he most recently toured with Jai Bhim Comrade, participating in a masterclass at the Sheffield Doc Fest. Nonetheless, getting to see his work has been problematic in the past. Some of his early work including his shorter documentaries is on YouTube.
The UK release of War and Peace, Patwardhan’s critically acclaimed 2002 documentary on the nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan, made available for the first time on home video by Second Run, a specialist UK DVD label, has bravely released four major Indian films since they started ten years ago in 2005. This may seem slight compared to the many European films they have released on DVD but when you put a stellar label like Second Run up against Arrow Video, Masters of Cinema and many of the other major specialist labels then Second Run having introduced the films of Adoor Gopalakrishnan and now Anand Patwardhan to UK film audiences is a major achievement indeed. Second Run also released Celluloid Man, a tribute to Indian film archivist P. K. Nair, in 2014, directed by Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, a leading figure in the contest for Indian film preservation. The DVD of War and Peace includes a newly recorded interview with Patwardhan, a debate that was aired on Pakistani TV after the documentary was broadcast and deleted scenes. Also included is a booklet of essays featuring an interview with Mark Cousins, a supporter of Patwardhan.
Since Patwardhan is a social activist who has campaigned against the many of the injustices he has documented his uncomplicated approach to filmmaking makes his work very accessible. Though War and Peace focuses on the nuclear standoff between India and Pakistan that reached its peak during the Kargil war, Patwardhan’s journey is a global one, which sees him go to both America and Japan, exploring the terrifying legacy of the Atomic age. Patwardhan made War and Peace over four years and it is an exhaustive work, touching on casteism, fundamentalism, propaganda, corruption and the toxic fustian jingoism of the BJP, a right wing political party sadly back in power in India under the dubious leadership of Modi, a man who stoked the fires of communalism in Gujarat. War and Peace belongs in the canon of great documentaries and so does Patwardhan who continues to be a defiantly radical figure in the world of documentary cinema, actively raising the ire of the global elite for his unquestionably resolute collectivist politics. It is Patwardhan’s interviews with the ordinary people of India and Pakistan that reveal an essential truth, pointing to an underlying class struggle glossed over by the machinations of mixing nationalism with religion. War and Peace shows hegemony at work, the enforcement of the status quo, and the conservation of a disquieting cross border social and political paralysis.
Movie Mahal 