Reciting History

While Dutta’s I Live.. was a documentary on a Muslim ghetto in Bombay during the communal riots of 1992-93, Memories of Fear was a film on the relationship between growing up of young girls and domestic violence. They both reflected the legal side of Majlis, a socio-legal organisation named after the Hindi word that means Association. Even Kya Aapko.. was a series of five spots on legal rights of women shot in the form of comic strips narrating stories about women learning their rights. But Dutta’s cultural flexes took over again — she did theatre all her life in Calcutta till she started the organisation with advocate Flavia Agnes in 1989 — with Sundari… Premiered last year, the film documented female impersonation in early 20th century.

"Yes, this is my first of its kind. The take-off point was my intention to make a film on poets of different eras. But it didn’t materialise," she says. The reason being that she started the long-pending film with Mahadevi Akka and got so hooked to her unconventionally chiselled poems "which were mostly based on unorthodox use of female body as a metaphor, which was strangely not a taboo in those days". And how does it hold the general interest? The film, says Dutta, is visually and cinematically related to all times. "Either Akka wrote for all characters played by Biswas or she survives in all of them. A reason why every woman will be able to relate to it. For, every woman has an ascetic and domestic person in her."

Beginning with a scene in Mumbai, the film inquires into the multiple construction of Mahadevi Akka played by Seema Biswas as in the conceptions that’ve evolved through community rituals, readings and representations in the works of contemporary artists. And cinematic representation of her Vachanas (poems).

So, while Dutta’s soon-to-be-released film has her interviewing artist Neelima Sheikh who is painting a series on the poetess, Ilayiraaja, also a devotee of Akka, has composed all the six songs for the film. But do documentaries have an audience? They obviously don’t suffice the commercial interest. There was a time when it depressed Dutta. But, over the years, she has worked out an answer for people and herself. No longer choosing to compare documentaries with commercial cinema, she say: "We don’t have those kind of resources and we don’t choose the same subjects. But with whatever we have if we are able to screen the film in ten cities for 1,000 people each, then according to our budget we have enough audience." A feel-good statement!