Peter Calder is moved by a documentary that tells the story of a resilient slum community of artists and performers in Delhi who face eviction and relocation
Non-fiction film-making seeks to document the world as it is. But sometimes its more urgent duty is to record something as it ceases to be.
That's the task New York film-maker Jimmy Goldblum took on when, with co-director Adam Weber, he made Tomorrow We Disappear, which features in the Documentary Edge Festival now showing in Auckland.
The film's subject is Kathputli, a Delhi slum with a difference: since the 1950s, its narrow alleyways have been home to around 3000 families of artists - jugglers and acrobats, puppeteers and painters, folk singers and magicians. The documentary explores the colony as it is faced with the threat of extinction. Under an urban renewal scheme the inhabitants are to be relocated while the slum is cleared, and then rehoused in apartments.
It's a resounding culture clash that brings modern bureaucracy face-to-face with old cultural tradition and the echoes are deafening: not least among the artists' problems is how to rehearse with 5m-high puppets if your home, once open to the sky, has a 2.4m ceiling.
Weber says his interest in the story was sparked when he was working for a digital production house in Wellington and reading Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children in his down time.
"In the book, the main character lives in a magician's ghetto, and I was really taken by this idea. So one day I Googled 'India magicians ghetto' and I found a little article about the Kathputli colony being destroyed. I thought that is an insane story. What drew me there was the desire to capture the way of life and the culture that may seem a bit archaic and out of step with the modern world."
Watch the trailer below:
That he certainly encountered. The film shows us Kathputli through the stories of three main protagonists: internationally acclaimed puppeteer Puran Bhatt, who is fighting to preserve the colony as it is; street magician Rahman Shah, who keeps getting shaken down by the cops for performing without a licence and dreams of a life far away; and the young tightrope walker Maya Pawar, who thinks the relocation will deliver her from a childhood of deprivation and misery.
"I thought it was very important to capture artists who had a range of opinions," Goldblum says. "It would have been dishonest not to show all those points of view and make it about our agenda."
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, Goldblum and the team encountered suspicion, though not outright resistance, when they showed up.
"Trust was not a given. A lot of reporters had come to tell their story and had done so in such a superficial way, coming in with a preconceived romanticised notion of these lovely Indian slum-dwellers. But to not pay attention to the very human struggle they are dealing with is a disservice to them.
"We spent a lot of time there, day in, day out, and we were always very open about explaining our intentions. Also, we were working in April which in Delhi is about as hot as it gets, like 50 degrees celsius. So we were working six weeks in a row, every day, long hours and maybe they thought that if we were willing to put ourselves through that kind of hell they should probably get to know us."
Goldblum says he and his colleague were alive to the contradictions in their story, which defies simple binaries.
Urban renewal in Indian cities is urgently needed, but plenty of films other than the patronising Slumdog Millionaire have celebrated the vibrant cultures that have developed in the slums.
"These people have been in their artists' village for over half a century and then one day the Government can come in and completely upend and destroy it. In the West, people would respond to that with disillusionment, but I was really inspired by the way they undertook this whole thing.
"The people of Kathputli have a real confidence. They are nomads and the descendants of nomads, people who are used to living day to day. So they have this sense that they can make it work no matter what."
The latest, but by no means last, chapter in the Kathputli story unfolded after the film wrapped. You can read about it on the film's website under the "Take Action" tab. But see the film first.
What:Tomorrow We Disappear Where and when: Documentary Edge Festival Q Theatre; Today 3pm; Monday 2pm; Thursday 12.15pm; Also screening in Wellington from Sat June More info: www.documentaryedge.org.nz; www.twdfilm.com
