AMAR KANWAR
Small and cheap digital cameras first appeared about 20 years ago and it wasn’t long before TV news reporters, cinematographers and documentary filmmakers started using them in a variety of cost saving productions. When footage was compared between the higher end broadcast camera and the little cameras, the image quality of the little cameras were surprisingly good.
But there was something else that happened along the way. The non-professional, the activist and the victim also found these cameras, and began to use them to overturn the politics of the gaze, of the news, and of images of resistance. It forced everyone to acknowledge the existence of another lens and therefore another point of view.
The most recent and striking illustration of this has been in Burma. In the last ten years the Burmese activist in exile shifted from resistance radio and Internet journalism to video and then finally to the extensive use of the small camera inside Burma. In 2007 the world saw graphic images of the Saffron Revolution –hundreds of monks confronting army tanks, armed squads on the streets – followed by the military crackdown. Several of these activists have since been killed or suffered torture and lengthy imprisonment, and we are indebted to them for showing us images of the most remarkable non-violent resistance in recent times. It was a reminder of the meaning of courage and the need for presenting a point of view that had the power to cut through the multi-dimensional image spectacle that governments and companies surround us with.
India and its conscience has also been struck several times by the little camera. It is impossible to forget the images of the 12 disrobed mothers confronting the Indian army at the gates of the Kangla Fort in Imphal, Manipur. It was perhaps the most powerful anti rape protest ever, and was documented on the little camera. The series of short films recently released by Samadrushti Televisions in Bhubaneswar, Orissa stands as yet another striking example.
Initiated by Sudhir Pattnaik, coordinated by film maker Surya Shankar Dash, and filmed mostly by activists, journalists and amateurs, the video series Madhyantara is now traveling from person to person as it reveals images of an Orissa rarely seen. Nolia Sahi, about a fishing village slated for displacement by POSCO and the experience of industrial propaganda; Ashen Life, about the meaning of living with fly ash in Kalinga Nagar; The Human Zoo, about how tribal girls are exhibited as museum pieces in a state sponsored Tribal Mela and The Real Face of Vedanta, with images of devastated rivers and un noticed public hearings; are some of the films that come together in the video series Madhyantar.
These are images with a raw power that are seldom seen. They show us the real impact of the monster that the extractive industries have become. They present before us evidence of a scale of destruction that is hard to believe. In the context of Operation Greenhunt, they also show us images of a strong non violent resistance by villagers who are desperate to protect their lands and rivers. One unforgettable image is the red flickering glow of the fire on the faces of men and women as they burn the documents of a rehabilitation package in a silent collective ceremony of resistance.
Writer's Email: amarkanwar@gmail.com
From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 7, Issue 05, Dated February 06, 2010
great piece of writing, telling the readers how activists and journalists are using the medium of video camera to tell what the mainstream media has been deliberating shunning under the influence of money, mafia and muscles.
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