However, it was not as an audience member, or even a filmmaker showing their work, but as part of the documentary film jury, which is a complicated business
Illustration/Ravi Jadhav
I spent some part of last week in Thiruvananthapuram, at the International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala. However, it was not as an audience member, or even a filmmaker showing their work, but as part of the documentary film jury, which is a complicated business.
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Being on a jury is fun because you get to see all the films in competition. But it's also complicated because you watch and judge the work of your peers and friends at times; and because you need to retain your subjectivity and innocence in watching a film, while also being objective and detached. You need to engage with and take into account the views of your co-jurors while at times arguing fiercely for your own preferences. Hence, the act of watching the film is not only an act of watching with others, but watching almost as others too.
Many filmmakers don't like to be on film juries. Some have told me in lofty tones that they are artistes and cannot perform such bureaucratic roles (yaniki I'm sure they will say that when they're asked to be jury at Cannes, too). I think being on a jury, as a practising artist, is important because through such service you contribute to building a context of excellence, which you believe is necessary for a vital independent film scene. Filmmakers often grumble about prizes — and they should. A friend of mine likes to joke: the only fair prize is the one you win. Critiquing the entrenched structures of taste-making and opinion-building, which are often conservative or even, as Kangana Ranaut might put it, nepotistic, about what's worthwhile and what's not, is important. The world of art constantly renews itself, even as more classical forms remain valid. As practicing artists we contribute to resetting these understandings by being part of juries; we bring an artist's way of looking at films and join it to other approaches — critics', producers', curators'. This idea of joining our views — of watching with others in that sense, and having them watch with us is very important.
Someone asked at one point —why have film festivals when today we can watch more or less anything on ever-expanding new digital platforms? There is something very precious about the idea of people coming together to watch new independent films at a festival. As an audience, we are introduced to new films, new perspectives and the greatest thing of all, the sense of discovery — not only of new art, but our individual tastes and preferences which may converge with or diverge from others. It is a reflective space where passionate arguments and open-minded engagement co-exist, and we are willing to have our boundaries expanded. We may watch as one group, but we think as individuals within it. This is in contrast to how we watch, say, the news, where we watch isolated from each other, but are somehow ground down into a homogeneous opinion. As filmmakers, too, we are sometimes directors, sometimes audiences, sometimes jury member. These shifting roles enhance our sense of community and our investment in the arts, make our perspectives and identities more layered. Watching so deeply linked with others, is what makes us a more mature audience and over time, this is the kind of thing which can give us a better cinema, maybe even a better society, more than anything else.
Paromita Vohra is an award-winning Mumbai-based filmmaker, writer and curator working with fiction and non-fiction. Reach her at www.parodevipictures.com
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