Shaken, they star

Kunwarben Koli is a 36-year-old Koli Kutch woman, who is unlettered. In her first film, Our Life, Our Film, she approaches the Darbar commun...

Kunwarben Koli is a 36-year-old Koli Kutch woman, who is unlettered. In her first film, Our Life, Our Film, she approaches the Darbar community women hesitantly for information on how 2001’s earthquake changed their lives. ‘‘Sit down. That is your first information,’’ the high caste Darbar women inform her. It doesn’t intimidate Kunwarben or her seven friends in their quest.

Our Life… is a full-fledged visual narrative on Kutch, three years after an earthquake that killed 20,000 people on January 26, 2001. But it is a first film for eight women — aged 18 to 40 — from Kutch and Saurashtra, who didn’t even know that the camera had an ‘‘eye’’. ‘‘When we came to Mumbai to learn how to make the film’’, says Gomiben Koli in Kutchi, ‘‘we used to look down. It was only later that we understood that we had to look into the camera.’’

Produced by NGO Swayam Shikshan Prayog, Our Life… has been made by Gomiben Koli, Kunwarben Koli, Jamunaben Someshwra, Hansaben Someshwra, Anuba Jadeja, Ilaben Kubavat, Hansa Jadav and Kajalben Chauhan. Six made it for their first tiny public screening at the Jain school in Dongri on Thursday; Ila and Hansa with their toddlers hanging on to them.

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Editor Deepa Bhatia, who trained the women, says that the eight stepped forward from the several villages the team visited. ‘‘They did their own digging, research after learning how to conduct interviews. We didn’t focus on craft; they just knew that when the red light came on, the camera was rolling.’’

What emerges are forthright interviews from teachers, rehabilitation workers, men who want jobs, children who want education and women who want to step out of their homes. Our Life… may not have snazzy editing, but its subjects speak with refreshing candour.

But how has it empowered the eight? ‘‘It’s a difficult question,’’ says their tutor Bhatia, ‘‘in the end, they go back to their mothers-in-law. But there is a change in their body language.’’

We see it in their beaming smiles as their faces crop up in the credits.