Trajectories of interactivity in Indian documentary practice.

Kapur, Anandana ; Sharma, Sonali

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Interactivity has variously been defined as a 'feature that is best perceived through use' (1) (Ji Hyun Park 2009, 540); as facilitation of '... communication rather than ... the technology of the medium' (Fernando Arturo Torres 1995, 3) (2) as well as engagement of auditory, visual and kinesthetic skills whereby the audience is transformed into an 'immersant' (3) (Char Davies 2005, 47). Each of these definitions points to the methodological need to understand interactivity as a 'process'. This conceptual cornerstone when applied to the documentary practice helps one understand interactivity as experiential evidence of a dynamic relationship between the content, the filmmaker and the audience. Therefore, while there is a technological dimension to the emergence of the interactive documentary in India, there is an equally emphatic impact of socio-economic, political and cultural contexts on the nature of interactions between audiences, films and their makers.

Indian cinema traces its roots to the 1899 actuality footage 'filmed by H.S. Bhatwadekar wherein wrestlers Pundalik Dada and Krishna Navi are shown going head to head in Bombay's Hanging Gardens'. (4) (Ian Aitken 2013, 400) By agreeing to be filmed, the two wrestlers unwittingly became the first symbols of subject-filmmaker interaction in the documentary genre. Exposure to colonial modes of representation (photography, actuality films, etc) initiated a series of experiments on film by 'F.B. Thanawala Sawe Dada, Hiralal Sen, R. G. Torney and N.G. Chitre and Dada Saheb Phalke'. (5) (Vanita Kohli-Khandekar 2010, 138) The exclusive preoccupation of Indian filmmakers with cinema as a technological and experimental artifact was challenged when a series of independently produced films on Gandhi and his satyagraha (non-violent revolution for truth) were banned in the 1920s and 1930s. The bulk of non-fiction films produced in that period never received any public screening. The British empire introduced censorship in India via the Cinematograph Act of 1918 and the Indian Cinematograph Committee of 1928 to control the content of films. Most documentary production in the 1930s remained patronizing and out of touch with the social conditions of the time. (6) (Ian Aitken 2013, 400) This not only prevented audiences from accessing the films publically but also negated the potential that communities of audiences may have in terms of interacting within their own community (demographic, language, location, etc) as well as across communities with cinema texts.

Ironically, Indian audiences were re-invoked as a category by the imperialists themselves when anxieties about weakening of British hegemony gained ground as 'India saw an influx of foreign (especially Hollywood) films'. (Barnouw and Krishnaswamy 1980, 43-58) The Government of India Act of 1935, recognised that the Indian objective of complete independence was no longer a utopian dream and

'documentaries that had been banned were now made available for public screenings, among them were Mahatma: March for Freedom (Sharda Film Co), Mahatma Gandhi's March, March 12 (Krishna Film Co), and Mahatma Gandhi Returns from the Pilgrimage of Peace (Saraswati)'. (8) (Erik Barnouw and S. Krishnaswamy 1980, 123)

The exaggerated contrast with earlier restrictions foregrounds a certain sociality of the viewing experience. Audiences of these films were also interacting as political allies outside the screenings. Reciprocity with the filmmakers' political intent points to a mode of interactivity not fully realised in techno-centric discussions on the documentary genre. It is the socio-political-cultural context that helps understand this dimension of interactivity in Indian independent documentary cinema. Michael Renov writes:

'It becomes very clear in the examination of the documentary film that the formal characteristics that define the cycles or styles of this filmic form are historically and ideologically contingent. The film "movements" that have so frequently functioned as the motor force in the development of documentary have been, in every case, deeply politicized--as one might expect for such a capital intensive (and frequently state-sponsored) cultural practice. (9) (Michael Renov 1993, 19)

Post-independence, the host of production, distribution and archival bodies set up by the Government of India such as Films Division (1948), Federation of Film Societies of India (1959), Film & Television Institute of India (1960), National Film Archive of India (1964), and the National Film Development Corporation (1975) under the aegis of the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, India resulted in diversification of the audience both productively and perversely! Films were dubbed in more than one Indian language (English, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil and Telegu), and fiction film goers were subjected to mandatory screenings prior to feature films in cinemas across India; regardless of the audience's disinterest. 'Many of the audience responded by waiting outside the theatre till the main feature began'. (10) (Ian Aitken 2013, 402)

Contemporaneously, the 'Central Board for Film Certification was formed by the Government of India to certify films for public exhibition under The Cinematograph Act, 1952'. 'Documentaries' were excluded from certification formalities as they were not considered 'commercial'; with the early years witnessing the state control of non-narrative cinema." (Sridala Swami 2008) Viewership mostly grew organically and several film societies were formed in schools, colleges and communities. Interactions now included discussions on form, focus and purpose leading to great self-reflexivity among practitioners. SNS Sastry in I am 20 (1968) discussed with Indian youth their personal and social lives, their dreams, and hopes for the future. Sukhdev in India 61 (1967) introduced his viewers to the complex negotiations between traditions and modernity in contemporary India.

The assertion of choice and willful consumption of documentary material was most emphatic when National Emergency was declared in June 1975 by the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Shaken by violation of civil and individual liberties guaranteed in the Constitution, filmmaker Anand Patwardhan made a short film called Waves of Revolution (1976) capturing some of the massive student protests and the popular resistance preceding the Emergency. The raw footage was smuggled out of the country and edited. 'A significant development in the aftermath of Emergency was the political comment film'" (Manjunath Pendakur 1995, website article) which sought to extend the movie-going experience to political debate and interactions. The form of interactivity aspired for was to 'to facilitate the properties necessary in an ideal conversation'. (13) (Fernando A Torres 1995, 3)

For a long time after its inception,

'Films Division remained among Asia's biggest documentary and short film producers. With a few exceptions, the heavily bureaucratized system of production and distribution saw little creative expression and innovation; and hardly any contact with world cinema' (14) (Ian Aitken 2013, 402)

Also, there had been restrictions due to the prohibitively expensive 35mm film stock and cameras earlier. The 198090s saw new technologies such as 16mm film cameras and lightweight digital camcorders being preferred. '... a far greater number of people had access to (them), and (they) could be updated and re-edited at any point in time.' (15) (Manjunath Pendakur 1995, Web article)

As a result, the number of documentaries being produced in India skyrocketed and many began to appear in film festivals around the world. Within India, these documentaries provided an alternative perspective to the typically jingoistic projects produced by the state. According to Thomas Waugh, documentary filmmakers had become 'audio-visual witnesses ... (to) a whole spectrum of socio-political dynamics'. (16) In Anand Patwardhan's documentary film Bombay, Our City (1985), there are several sequences where the camera has to zoom out to include the community of hut dwellers who are being evicted by the city. In one such scene, where women have gathered outside the City Commissioner's mansion to protest these evictions, a poor woman asks the filmmaker a penetratingly troubling question about filmmaking.

'You have come to take our pictures. What will you do for us? We don't have a place to stay tonight. Will you be able to get our houses back?' (17) (Anand Patwardhan, Bombay, Our City, 1985)

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

We see how in this scene she wonders aloud about the filmmaker's limited role in social intervention. By retaining this scene, Patwardhan provides a critique of the process of filmmaking as well as the filmmaker and amplifies interactivity to be both a narrative and an extra cinematic comment.

Years later, the same theme of 'accommodating the poor' is revisited by another filmmaker. One can see an 'evolving database' (18) (Sandra Gaudenzi 2013, 56) in this trajectory which is outside the the logic of a hypertext economy and within the framework of inter-textuality and bricolage sensibilities. Avijit Mukul Kishore's Vertical City (2011) intersperses excerpts from from S.N.S. Sastry's film The Burning Sun (1971), produced by Films Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, while reflecting on contemporary slum rehabilitation projects in Mumbai, India.

While laying out the tenets of the well-intentioned scheme, with public parks, schools, hospitals and recreation centres for the public, the film gives an ill-informed and smug state-official (from the earlier film) a long rope to hang himself with, by letting him speak at length of his views on slum dwellers--that they are thieves, drug-peddlers, prostitutes--the "flotsam and jetsam of society", as he says. (19) (Avijit Mukul Kishore 2015, email)

As a filmmaker and former audience of these state funded films, Avijit Mukul Kishore's inscription is not of the manyto-many mould of contemporary web-based interactive projects but certainly evokes a cognitive and experiential engagement that links both cinematic history and socio-political reality. The polemic lies in the juxtaposition of the state view through 'film in film' with intimate portraits of the 'poor' and it in itself encourages subjective, plurivocal and dynamic approaches to the reality of city spaces, citizenship and state role.

In terms of creation, some of the strategies used in the Satellite Instructional Television Experiment of 1975 in India are valuable cues to modes of interactivity deployed in collaborative and feedback driven content creation. A combination of actuality and fiction narratives, the experiment was a longitudinal study of the impact of communication design on behavioural change. The daily and continuous interviews with audiences of the educational and agricultural content shown via satellite transmission provided a repertoire of engagement strategies used by development documentary makers in the years to come. Participatory communication projects began recognizing the need to engage audiences more pro-actively through all stages of the production cycle including distribution.

'... there were budding efforts in India to make video a tool for die "oppressed" to document dteir situations. CENDIT, SEWA, the Kheda project were getting underway ... focusing on the outcomes of the "process" as well as the "product"...[W]e learned., that when they are in control of their own "storytelling", they paint a different picture.' (20) (K. Sadanandan Nair and Shirley A. White 2003, 212)

There was a deliberate eschewing of linearity as distinctions between sender and receiver are collapsed. Consensus building was also hinged on interactionism and degrees of participation were at play across various phases. Documentary design and development began to be seen as a

'transactional model' i.e. a 'dialogue wherein sender and receiver of messages interact over a period of time, to arrive at shared meanings. (21) (K. Sadanandan Nair and Shirley A. White 1994, 347).

Redefinition of needs of audiences based on their experience of the cinematic artifact and re-designing of modes of interaction are best encapsulated by Sandra Gaudenzi when she writes:

'Behind every type of interactivity lies an assumption of our power to intervene in/with what is around us. When the interactor can just explore, and choose within a closed number of pre-determined options, the assumption is that our world is pre-determined, although full of options, and that our power lies in choosing our path, not in creating or changing such world.' (22) (Sandra Gaudenzi 2013, 55)

The political and esthetic functions of an expansive narrative and its implications are not just foreshadowed by development documentaries in India but are also at the heart of contemporary projects that seek to extend co-creation to the site of consumption.

'There is also a tangible dialectic to any narrative strategy in the form of property regimes--technology, class, caste and ownership patterns. Thus, a homogenous user/viewer/participant is difficult to imagine for any interactive and especially expansive documentary project.' (23) (Anandana Kapur 2015,4)

The technological implications of interactive design are also a result of digitization of cinema and the resultant evolutions in documentary practice. Intersections of digital art and documentary material have led to addition of

'new affordances to the ... participant-environment ... one can generate new understandings, and new forms, of both the environment and the participant.' (24) (Sandra Gaudenzi 2013, 63)

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Until the satellite television boom in India in the early 1990s, the state broadcaster Doordarshan's two channels were the only TV networks in India where documentaries could be screened. International broadcast networks like Discovery, National Geographic, etc reinforced the need to access and interact with wider audiences. However, exposure to international TV audiences or film festival goers did not lead to creation of an effective distribution machinery for documentary cinema. The constant battle with censorship meant that interactions with audiences were severely restricted by lack of outreach options outside of the state/ capitalist broadcast apparatus.

The rise of the 'consumers' of digital content and new media explosion led to a call for innovations that disrupt traditional cycles of viewing and consuming. Artists and documentary makers responded through a variety of engagement practices. CAMP, an experimental studio, set out to

'... develop new or reconfigured distribution platforms: cinemas, libraries, exhibitions, books, websites, performances: for both new concepts and materials, sensibility and sensuality.' (25) (CAMP manifesto 2015, About Section)

Seeking to re-appropriate technology by shifting the viewer's perspective closer to the subjects by "troubling" traditional methods of creation and dissemination in their 2007 project Al Jaar Qabla A! Daar (The Neighbour Before the House), CAMP challenges the triangular relationship between the author, subject and technology. CCTV cameras are setup to film the houses where eight Palestinian families had been forcibly evicted. They are linked to remote controls in new homes or refugee places where the families now live. The complexities of the power relations between the observer and observed give energy to the otherwise hopeless situation of displaced Palestinians in Jerusalem. They are able to zoom and tilt the cameras to spy. The constantly watched and patrolled are given the ability to return the gaze on the very people whose presence and visibility had evicted them from their homes. Those who film remain unseen. Only their voices are heard as they trace the lines of personal memory in their old neighbourhoods or stalk the new inhabitants of their former homes with the remotely operated CCTV placed on nearby rooftops. The Palestinian families may be physically invisible in the places they once lived, but their voices and ability to control how we see with even the crudest of cameras, is an inscription of interactivity that acknowledges and celebrates the democratisation of the camera.

Further, in collaboration with Point of View, Majlis and Oil 21, CAMP helped create Pad.ma i.e. a Public Access Digital Media Archive in 2007. A densely text-annotated archive of video footage, it contained footage filmed by documentary filmmakers from Mumbai and Bangalore, but not necessarily used in their finished films. The archive was later opened to the public for individual contributions. An open web archive that is searchable under various categories such as video art, activism, intellectual property, sexuality, and public lectures, it is a web documentary generated by metadata and hyperlinking.

'The emphasis in recent art on provisionality, narrative and self-reflexivity [found] expression in an increasing presence ... in screen based art: large scale video installations, immersive environments and cinema'. (26) (Russell Storer 2014, 44)

Projects by the Raqs Media Collective, Khetro and Majlis also optimised the ability of current mobile and media technologies to facilitate an individual's ability to participate simultaneously in multiple interactions. Raqs Media Collective's approach to the concepts of interactivity and participation in the early 2000s is recognised as a significant departure from traditional global platforms by Anthony Gardner and Charles Green:

'Geography, culture, injustice, globalization., rendered traditional the kinds of new-media practiced by artist-experts in favour of discursive, sceptical, less phenomenological, and more instrumental hybrid-space practices ... Raqs Media Collective was aware of this. Their installation 28f28" N / f15" E :: 2001/02 juxtaposed video and still images, sound, software, and performance documentation on urban dispossession and displacement in India, bringing into an installation format the kinds of activist work the collective had developed through Sarai ... in New Delhi ... Through this dual yet interconnected method Raqs could moderate (rather than be moderated)'(27) (Anthony Gardner and Charles Green 2014, 31)

The leveraging of a networked universe to create, disseminate and develop discursive critical knowledge are all aspects of interactivity emerging from convergence of art and documentary. Also, websites, blogs, social media and YouTube are helping create/extend alternative interaction niches.

'Theoretically, the increased degree of interactivity should enable practitioners to use the multilinear framework of the internet for effective communication with viewers/users/participants--with enhanced opportunities of multimedial richness and depth, inclusion of multiple voices and perspectives; responses, participation and collaboration.' (28) (Sonali Sharma 2015, 10)

Interactive documentary design can certainly be highly advantageous in a heterogeneous culture like India. Machine mediated/computational design algorithms may yet be able to help inter-link varied communicative tastes, responses and ownership tiers. There is certainly potential for a more meaningful physical, social and emotional engagement with audiences and it would not be incorrect to say that Indian documentary practice is geared to using interactivity as means to create

'"portable new publics" that lie outside state control and corporate interests. These new publics may not reside within concrete venues but may appear anywhere, albeit temporarily, as people and ideas converge.' (29) (Shohini Ghosh 2002, Web article)

While it is challenging to provide a framework that applies to practices pan-India, there is certainly a greater thrust for enabling audiences to engage with cinema texts. Complementarities are sought in creation, consumption and distribution despite bandwidth restrictions and technological divides. Hence, interactivity in the Indian documentary practice today is both esthetic and technical. Use of multiple platforms, cross media device activation and self-reflexive dialectics of interaction and representation make it varied and vibrant albeit different from other global counterparts.

Notes

(1) Ji Hyun Park. "A Study of Design that Understands the Influences on the Changes of Information Processing Ability of Users" in HCD 2009 International, ed. Masaaki Kurosu. (Germany: Springer, 2009), 540.

(2) Fernando A Torres. "Towards A Universal Theory of Media Interactivity: Developing A Proper Context". (California State University: Fullerton, 1995), 3.

(3) Char Davies. "Landscapes of Ephemeral Embrace." Unpublished PhD Dissertation. (CAMA: University of Plymouth, 2005), 47.

(4) Ian Aitken. The Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film. (Routledge, 2013), 400. Also see, Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Paul Willeman. Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema. (New York: Routledge, 2012), 17.

(5) Vanita Kohli Khandekar. The Indian Media Business. (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2010), 138.

(6) Ian Aitken. The Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film. (Routledge, 2013), 400.

(7) For comprehensive discussions on history of Indian Cinema, see: Erik Barnouw and S. Krishnaswamy. Indian Film. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 43-58.

(8) Ibid, 123.

(9) Michael Renov. "Towards a Poetics of Documentary" in Theorizing Documentary. (New York: Routledge, 1993), 19.

(10) Ian Aitken. The Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film. (Routledge, 2013), 402. Also see, Manjunath Pendakur, "Cinema of Resistance: Recent Trends in Indian Documentary Film," accessed from http://www.yidff.jp/ docbox/7/box7-4-e.html, (1995).

(11) Sridala Swami. "Indian Documentary: Introduction, "Pratilipi: A Bilingual Quarterly Magazine 1, no. 4 (October 2008), http:// pratilipi. in/2008/10/indian-documentary/.

(12) Manjunath Pendakur, "Cinema of Resistance: Recent Trends in Indian Documentary Film," website article accessed from http://www.yidff.jP/docbox/7/box7-4-e.html, (1995).

(13) Fernando A Torres. "Towards A Universal Theory of Media Interactivity: Developing A Proper Context". (California State University: Fullerton, 1995), 3.

(14) Ian Aitken. The Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film. (UK: Routledge, 2013), 402.

(15) Manjunath Pendakur, "Cinema of Resistance: Recent Trends in Indian Documentary Film," Documentary Box 7 (1995).

(16) Thomas Waugh, "Independent Documentary in India: A Preliminary Report," Visual Anthropology Review 4, no. 2 (September 1998), 13-14.

(17) Anand Patwardhan, Bombay, Our City, Film, directed by Anand Patwardhan. (1985, Brooklyn: NY, Icarus Films)

(18) Sandra Gaudenzi. "The Living Documentary: from representing reality to co-creating reality in digital interactive documentary". Doctoral thesis. (Goldsmiths, University of London: Goldsmiths Research Online, 2013), 56.

(19) Avijit Mukul Kishore, in an email to Anandana Kapur, 21 September 2015.

(20) K. Sadanandan Nair and Shirley A. White. "Women take control of video storytelling, in Participatory Video: Images that Transform and Inspire, ed. Shirley A. White (New Delhi: Sage, 2013), 212.

(21) K. Sadanandan Nair and Shirley A. White. 'Participatory Message Development: A Conceptual Framework', in Participatory Communication: Working for change and development. eds Shirley A White, K. Sadanandan Nair and Joseph Ascroft. (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1994), 347.

(22) Sandra Gaudenzi. "The Living Documentary: from representing reality to co-creating reality in digital interactive documentary". Doctoral thesis. (Goldsmiths, University of London: Goldsmiths Research Online, 2013), 55.

(23) Anandana Kapur. 'Invoking the 'collaborative' and the 'interactive' documentary forms to (re)imagine the city'. Paper presented in Visible Evidence XII. (Toronto: 19-23 August, 2015), 4.

(24) Sandra Gaudenzi. "The Living Documentary: from representing reality to co-creating reality in digital interactive documentary". Doctoral thesis. (Goldsmiths, University of London: Goldsmiths Research Online, 2013), 63.

(25) CAMP manifesto, http://studio.camp/index.php. 2015, About Section.

(26) Russell Storer. 'Dots in the Domain: The Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art.'in Art in the Asia-Pacific: Intimate Publics, eds Larissa Hjorth, Natalie King and Mami Kataoka. (New York: Routledge, 2014), 44

(27) Anthony Gardner and Charles Green. "Mega-Exhibitions, New Publics and Asian Art Biennials." in Art in the Asia-Pacific: Intimate Publics, eds Larissa Hjorth, Natalie King and Mami Kataoka. (New York: Routledge, 2014), 31

(28) Sonali Sharma. "Indian Independent Documentary Films and Interactivity in the Digital Age". Paper presented at Visible Evidence XII (Toronto: August 19-23, 2015), 10.

(29) Shohini Ghosh. 'Redefining Public Space: Ushering in the age of portable new publics' Web article accessed from http://www.sabrang.com/cc/archive/2007/sep07/media.html. (2002).