The first task of the newly formed iLEAD film club was to organize inauguration of the FD Zone@iLEAD. FD Zone is a platform for viewing and appreciating the best documentary films from all over the world. The Indian audience is starved of documentaries because practically none of the Indian television channels have slots for documentaries and sporadic attempts at getting documentaries released in movie halls have drawn a blank so far. The generation that is in its 50s and 60s has grown up watching Films Division documentaries in movie halls. For the present generation, documentaries are synonymous with Nat Geo and Discovery Channel. However, the form and content of documentaries has undergone a sea change over the last decade with the coming of digital technology. One may even say that the genre of documentaries has got redefined at the hands of the digital generation. The Indian audience has been blissfully unaware of this quiet revolution. Ironically, many an Indian filmmaker has been a part of this revolution. Their films have won accolades all over the world and have been released in movie halls abroad. But in India these films are viewed and appreciated only in limited circles.
Films Division has initiated FD Zones precisely to bridge this gap between the filmmakr and the viewer. FD Zone@ ILEAD,the latest in the series of FD Zones operating all over India, was inaugurated by the Deputy Director General of Films Division, Mr. Joshy Joseph. In his inaugural speech Joseph said that iLEAD should organize screenings twice a month – once for iLEAD students and once for outsiders. He also showed a seven minutes film he had made after MIFF 2014. The filmMiffism drew a parallel between Ananya Kasaravalli, the daughter of Girish Kasaravalli and the daughter of filmmaker Peter Wintonick of Manufacturing Consent fame.
Fr. Gaston Roberge, the renowned media scholar, was also present to grace the occasion. The film that set the ball rolling was Saurav Sanangi’s Bilal, a featurelength documentary about a young boy born to blind parents. Saurav Sarangi, the director of Bilal, was there to interact with the audience after the screening. He spoke about how he conceived this film in a moment of inspiration at a hospital where he went to see the eight months old Bilal and his mother, he spoke about how he followed Bilal with a camera for more than a year and how he has tried to bring out the beauty in the life of Bilal growing up in a dingy room in a Kolkata slum. Sarangi shared the strange relationship that develops between the documentarian and his subject and how it becomes difficult to maintain objectivity and distance with the subject.
A handful of students who were patient enough or passionate enough about documentaries stayed back till the end and were enriched by the discussion. Hopefully, the documentary fever will spread at iLEAD and there will be a bigger participation at the next screening.
The first efforts of the two film club co-ordinators – Harsh Doshi and Adnan Shakil Faroukh was commendable. All in all it was a good beginning for the iLEAD film club and FD Zone@iLEAD.