Historian & Filmmaker Uma Chakravarti On Why It Is Important To Visually Show History

Before Uma Chakravarti became a professor at the Miranda House (Delhi University) and subsequently a renowned historian, she was a cinephile. Her family did not have much money but Chakravarti's mother somehow managed to take her and her six other siblings to watch films, often. She grew up watching good old-time films. This practice has influenced her filmmaking as well.

Eighty-year-old Chakravarti remembers loving the film Do Bigha Zameen, a sequence of which is even present in her recent feature film titled, Ye Lo Bayaan Humaare (And We Were There From 1967 to 1977). The film archives the journey of women across India into the political sphere during emergencies. It is about women who were politically active and had to go to prison for their alertness.

Emphasising the need for films like Do Bigha Zameen, she states that as urban people, we do not have much to do with rural India, exploitation and land acquisitions, amongst other things. However, cinema, like literature, was a way for her to access society outside of the urban middle-class framework in which one was located.

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This reflection and time invested in watching films during her growing up phase has influenced her filmmaking. She shares with SheThePeople that the reason why she took up filmmaking was to visually show the history. She also discusses her style of telling the history and why she focuses mostly on telling the stories of women, particularly political women. Apart from detailing her recent film, she also talks about the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and how she believes that it reverses the statement--innocent till proven.

Uma Chakravarti's Introduction To Filmmaking

Growing out of the phase where she used to go to watch films only with her mother, Chakravarti never gave up the habit of visiting theatres and watching them on her own. "I would watch films that were older than my time. There would be re-runs in the morning and I would go to watch them. I grew up, for a certain time, in Bangalore. During that period, I watched lots and lots of old films at half the rate," she remembers fondly.

Soaked in the emotions of the Hindi cinema, she was interested in the art but only from the outside, as a viewer. It was during her time as a professor at Miranda House that she met younger generations of students and started to engage with them. Particularly after she became associated with the women's movement and feminist issues, young people from Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) University would come to discuss the art with her. This way she became more attached to documentaries.

During these discussions, her presence would be as a subject expert for gender. However, her association with cinema was such, that she even ran a film club at college.

Then on one occasion, in the 2000s, while she was researching about women, she stumbled upon another woman who was writing the story of her grandmother.

"She came to see me. She was not a historian but had reviewed one of my books earlier and she knew of me, so she came along to see me and we chatted. She started talking about the material that her grandmother left behind in a trunk with all sorts of odd things. It was an archive of papers all stuck inside this trunk. Wherever she went, this trunk of hers would go along with her," says Chakravarti.

The granddaughter had inherited the trunk, which had a diary. It encapsulated her grandmother's life for two years. Mythili Sivaraman had started writing about her grandmother when she came to see her. At that time, she showed Chakravarti the diary. Seeing that, she got really excited and suddenly wanted to make a film about her grandmother. Chakravarti laughs and says, "My friend who was struggling to even write the book thought that I was mad."

But regardless, an idea of archiving this started whirling in Chakravarti's head. She has always found the idea of archiving important, particularly as a historian. And this subject was particularly fascinating to her because there were different scraps of paper like receipts of books bought, amongst other activities available.

"This woman’s archive was based upon her passion for reading. There were lists of books that she wanted to acquire and bits of correspondence, letters and stuff like that. But it was interesting to see how her mind was working from the point of view of the world that she was accessing through these published materials. I found it fascinating because she was self-taught. She was born in 1898. She was not taught but she stumbled upon education because girls were not taught at the time. But her grandfather was going blind so she was taught to read so that she could read the newspaper to him," says Chakravarti.

Adding, "This accident of history was how she was introduced into the world of reading. I felt that writing about it was one thing, but to visualise it, show it and actually film it. To put it in the cinematic medium would be very fascinating."

This was the thought that was seeded and now she needed to find ways in order to execute it. She asked her younger friends but when no one took it seriously, she chose to do it on her own. And just like that, without any training, she decided to make the film.

The Beginning

Her first plan of action was to get an all women's team. So, she contacted Sabeena Gadihoke, who is a faculty member at Jamia Millia Islamia. "She kind of agreed because she was fond of me and then I learnt how to think in pictures through Sabeena’s training," says Chakravarti.

It was interesting for Chakravarti to know how a cinematic person sees things, with the camera’s eyes. She remembers writing a sequence in the film, where the protagonist, named Subbalakshmi joins the nationalist movement by secretly participating in the non-cooperation movement. For the scene, she thought that they will fill the screen with black flags. When she and her team went for the shoot in Chennai,  Sabeena suggested that they instead show the hands of the protagonist sewing flags for the protest.

Ek Inquilab Aur Aaya

"She crafted this beautiful scene in which the hands of the protagonist are simply used to cut the clothes. To give you the image of the flag that is being made out of the material. I learned many things from Sabeena, through her eyes." says Chakravarti.

Ye Lo Bayaan Humare...(And We Were There From 1967-77)

Chakravarti had decided that she will make a film on women who go to jail for their political cause. She was not going to do the story of men because they tell their own stories, women do not.  "From 1977 onwards, I had become involved with the democratic rights movement. In a sense, it was logical that I would want to make a film on that. Everything that I did was around women. I know that women do not tell their stories," she said.

She started by interviewing women and in the end, she had some 30-35 interviews. She said that she could make the film on the entire period because she had begun from Naxalbari and had gone to 1949 already, she divided it. She has another film called Ek Inquilab Aur Aaya, which is set on a 17-year-old woman in jail in 1949. (Available on YouTube.) The film is interesting as the aunt of the protagonist who no one knew about was a poet. She used to have spells of madness where she used to tear up the poems. But some poems had survived. They told the story of two generations–the aunt and the niece. The niece goes to jail. She found her own space post-1949.

"Because I am a historian, all this is happening, I do not think if I was not a historian, the film could have happened in the way they had happened," she said.

When the film was being shot, Priyanka Chhabra, who is the co-director and editor for the film was not on the set. "There it was me and my vision that let the storytelling in a certain kind of way. I crafted them. Sabeena had taught me that whatever interview material you have, you should have a B-Roll, which is a background roll. One cannot base the interviews solely on the basis of the interview, there need to be narrative and visuals that go into the making of the storyline. So by then, I had gotten good at saying shoot this and that to the cameraperson," says Chakravarti.

Ye Lo Bayaan Humare

Chhabra played an important role as an editor because she crafted the film to speak the way it did, says Chakravarti. "She is the co-director simply because she executed my vision very effectively. She has the skills to tell the story in visuals," she said.

Now that the films are done. Side by side, Chakravarti is transcribing the full interviews of the women and is going to write a book out of that. "Their stories as told by them," she says.

Sharing Trauma

Chakravarti always felt that the interviewees should share with her what they feel like sharing. She did not want to take them into directions by making them raw.

"I am not asking about the traumatic moment. You should not ask because they have a right to choose the direction of the interview and the manner in which they want to narrate their relationship to politics in their own way. I am wondering if the men would feel the same way. There are three men shown in the film. One of them is talking about being tortured but he describes it in a completely different way. There is some way in which the emotional filter is put by the men and in some way in which the woman might feel like sharing emotions," she says.

This is one reason why she likes showing her rough cuts to the interviewees, so that they can respond and if they do not like something, then she will take it out and not be invasive.

"I am not pulling the trauma out, if it comes naturally then okay. So you see that all my protagonists are speaking quite organically," she says.

Chakravarti gave the example of Rajashri Dasgupta, who is one of the protagonists in her film. She said that Dasgupta did not physically describe the torture but she described the consequences of the torture. She told her that she is not going to be in it and then she jumped into the story of her own accord.

(Feature Image Credit: Indian Cultural Forum)