By Frederick Noronha Oct 26, 2007, 6:17 GMT
Panaji, Oct 26 (IANS) Vijaya Mulay has seen two generations of documentary filmmaking but instead of calling it a day, the 87-year-old is waiting for her book on cinema to be released and also plans to study how the poor have used technology to 'speak to others'.
Mulay has made documentary films and TV programmes for mostly educational purposes. She bagged the V. Shantaram lifetime achievement award for documentaries in 2000 and has also won the Vikram Sarabhai lifetime achievement award for educational communication.
'My days of filmmaking are over. But I am glad that my film 'Ek, Anek, Aur Ekta' is still very popular and being seen on the internet,' Mulay told IANS.
Mulay's book 'From Rajahs and Yogis to Gandhi and Beyond: India in International Cinema' will be published by the Seagull Foundation of Kolkata this year.
'My book is not about documentaries alone. It is about how we all see the 'other'. I firmly believe that learning to discover the 'otherness' of the 'other' without being frightened is a key to universal understanding and a weapon against corporate globalisation.
'The scope of my book is quite wide and covers world cinema from Japan to the US and from Australia to Canada for the entire 20th century - the century of cinema. I have been working on it for the last seven years,' she said.
She is also planning to undertake a research project about motivated people, 'especially the marginalized ones like subsistence farmers, tribal people and women', who have been using new technology, films or visual representations to communicate with others.
As chairperson of the focus group on educational technology set up by the National Council of Education Research and Training (NCERT) in 2004 for preparing the framework for a national curriculum, Mulay said she 'realised many other dimensions of the problem of reaching people'.
She says documentary filmmaking in India has undergone a sea change since 1946, when she entered the field. 'User-friendly recording equipment has changed the documentary scene tremendously. It has given a voice to those who per force had to remain silent.'
But she added that there are some pressing challenges as well.
'There's a lack of facilities to show documentaries as widely as they need to be shown in theatres, private screenings, in lectures on pertinent topics and television channels,' she said.
In the past, Mulay said filmmakers cared more for the craft of cinema and the artistic aspects of lighting, photography, audiography and editing.
'Not only is the depth and graduation of colours not the same but many of the films made today are really slap-dash affairs. There was also a better collaboration between the director and the crew in those times,' she added.
Mulay is also worried about 'the vagaries of censorship that has scant regard for freedom of expression guaranteed by the Indian constitution'.
She noted with regret that over time the Indian Documentary Producers Association (IDPA) has become 'racked with internecine warfare with accusations, counter-accusations over very petty things'.
'There was a real danger that it would be closed down. I have been its member for long and personally knew its first founders - Paul Zils, Jag Mohan, Clement Baptista and Vijaykar. I knew how well and with what care they had tended the fledgling in its early days,' she said.
Mulay herself 'spent some time in stabilising IDPA' but stepped down two years ago.
'I have no interest in holding posts per se and coming from Delhi every month at my expense by air as I was quite old - 85 to be exact - was a serious drain on my finances,' she said.
Mulay made about 35 films in her career. Her first film was 'The Tidal Bore' (1967) on the phenomenon of tidal waves coming into the river in Kolkata like walls of water on some days in summer. The last was an 80-minute film on Hindustani classical music exponent Gangubai Hangal, now 94.
© 2007 Indo-Asian News Service
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