Just a few days before the 94th Academy Awards ceremony, Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh’s documentary Writing With Fire, the first ever Indian nominee in the Best Documentary Feature category, is finding itself in the eye of an unseemly controversy.
On three intrepid journalists — Meera Devi, Suneeta Prajapati, and Shyamkali Devi — of Khabar Lahariya newspaper in Uttar Pradesh’s Bundelkhand, the film covers the time between 2016, when the country’s only Dalit women-led paper was transitioning to digital, and the 2019 general elections. A period of seminal political shift, substantial rise in the Hindutva forces, and polarisation in the state.
Khabar Lahariya, in a statement published on its website on 21 March, claimed among other things that the film misrepresents its work. While saying that the film is a "moving and powerful document," it states that the “representation of Khabar Lahariya as an organisation with a particular and consuming focus of reporting on one party and the mobilisation around it is incorrect”.
“In our 20 years of practising independent journalism, it has been a foundational value to be deliberate about how and who we include in the frame or story, about corroboration, about multiple perspectives. These values are not reflected in the version of ourselves we see in the film,” it goes on to state, claiming that its story is much more complex than the “one going to the Oscars”.
The allegation does not just question the freedom of expression of the filmmakers but also their responsibility and duty towards the protagonists of their story.
In a statement issued on 22 March, the filmmakers have stated that KL has a rich legacy as a grassroots media organisation, yet a film must take a focus to tell a story of one aspect or another of the whole picture. “We respect that this may not be the film that they would have made about themselves, but we stand by this portrayal of Khabar Lahariya, which focuses on the range of the important work that they do — and their hopes, fears, vulnerabilities, and dreams,” they say.
According to them, in January 2021, they travelled from Delhi to Banda in Uttar Pradesh to set up a screening in person with the key contributors before the world premiere of the film at the Sundance Film Festival. “The protagonists of the film expressed joy and support for the way the film represents their work and their lives. Soon after seeing the film, Khabar Lahariya's Bureau Chief (Meera Devi) joined the filmmakers for a post-screening conversation at Sundance in January 2021,” the statement says.
They claim that in the 14 months since then, the Khabar Lahariya team has joined them in many virtual panels and post-screening conversations around the film and their work. In November 2021, the Bureau Chief joined them in person to present the film with a live audience at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA).
“KL’s statement is an acknowledgement of the fractured and complex times we are in. While their statement is deeply disappointing to us, we remain committed supporters of their mission, work, and onward journey,” they say.
In a telephonic interview, given a week ago to Firstpost from Los Angeles, Sushmit Ghosh had spoken at length about the process of making the film, editing hours of footage, and the warm response given to the film by the Khabar Lahariya team. Interesting in retrospect, in the light of the unfortunate controversy. Edited excerpts below:
Writing With Fire is about electoral, gender, caste, media politics and more. Which one of these threads made you embark on it?
When we discovered the story back in late 2015/2016, we were intrigued that there was a Dalit-led news organisation being run entirely by marginalised women in Bundelkhand. You have a newspaper in print that is not only edited and designed but also physically distributed by the same women who are its reporters. Then there was the larger conversation about what is happening with news, not just in India but globally.
And then we met them. Unlike a documentary where you have no control over the reality that you are a part of, we were super lucky that the first time we filmed the team, the first day we were in Bundelkhand, they invited us for the meeting where they were taking the significant decision (to transition to the digital medium). It was a sophisticated conversation about the future of journalism that could have played out in any newsroom of the world. But it was happening in a little attic in a corner store — kirane ki dukaan ke oopar.
We were interested in seeing what was going to happen next. I think one of the things that gave us a sense of something will happen is that they had not only existed but had grown as an organisation for 14 years already. This was not just another shot in the dark, we realised that we would be able to find a way to pivot [the film]. The success or failure of digital transition was like a larger narrative. We knew we’d dive into themes of media, gender and journalism, caste, class and all of that. It started to get more complex as we started to find out more about each of these journalists in their own personal life.
What made you pick up these three specifically — Meera Devi, Suneeta Prajapati, and Shyamkali Devi — from all the journalists in Khabar Lahariya?
On the first day (of the shoot) itself, there were three of us on ground — Rintu (Thomas), Karan (Thapliyal), our co-cinematographer, and I. They were sitting in a circle, and we kept silently moving around, filming them. Meera immediately stood out because she was going to lead this transition. She was a natural leader, a quiet visionary of sorts. She was able to rally the group, the nervous energy around. She had to be like the sutradhar because she also represented everything that the newspaper stood for. She was an automatic choice.
Suneeta, at that point in time, was amongst the youngest reporters in the group, and a total bad ass. She was in love with the print edition of the paper, and for her, that was the core of her identity as a journalist. She resisted the idea of the transition. She was not scared of challenging systems. Between her and Mira, there was a very interesting chemistry going on and we wanted to see how this mentor-disciple thing would play out.
Shyamkali was very nervous of technology. But to be very honest, any woman in that room who we would have picked up, would have had a rich, wonderful story but that day, it was the three of them.
We spent a week on our first recce with just the three of them. We had two camera units, and on any given day, we were covering two of the three journalists on the ground. By the end of the week, we got a sense of staying with them because there were enough stories to pursue with each of them.
Four years is a huge time to spend on a film. I would want to know a bit more about the process —how often did you go to Bundelkhand, how long did you spend on each visit, did you have a broad narrative in place, or did you just shoot, and everything emerged on the editing table?
I think we went back four times or so — once in every three months — in the first year. Our average time on the ground ranged from 10 to 15 days. The longest we stayed was three weeks, around 20 days or so.
In the first year, we shadowed Meera, Suneeta, and Shyamkali on ground, and filmed it. When you are beginning to work on a documentary, you don't necessarily have an anchor point. We were consuming their experiences as our own. Third year onwards is when we became much more specific and strategic on what we were going down there for. We knew how they operated as journalists, and a sort of story structure had begun to develop.
We based ourselves out of Banda, which is Meera’s hometown. There was no concept of a hotel there. There was a hostel that evolved into a hotel during the time we were there. There were some cots, a shared bathroom, and hot water was available through an electric rod. Now, it has ACs.
Suneeta was living in this place called Mahoba, which is a mining town about 65 kilometres away. So when we would visit her, a lot of times, we would end up staying with her at her home. Buses would stop operating at 8 pm. There was no way to get back to Banda if you were doing a late-night shoot.
In the early years, it was more about the cases that they were doing, and which ones we would follow them on. For instance, the mining story became significant because of Suneeta’s own personal life, and we knew there was something we could stitch there. Why would you risk everything to pursue a story? It evolved quite organically, and we realised what was going on.
But we knew that we wanted to focus more on the process of journalism, and less on cases. That is one of the reasons why you have a multiplicity of cases to get a sense of the kind of work they're doing but the closing loop may not be there for all. We don't deep dive into the cases per se. We wanted to make sure we were focusing on how they do their journalism, what their journalism is about rather than what are the specific results of it except, of course, early on when we show that their journalism does have impact on the ground — schools are built, roads are built.
How many hours of footage would you have?
Insane amounts. I never got down to calculating but we have roughly six terabytes of footage on us. It was voluminous but what we also did was each time we shot, we would come back to Delhi and create a patch edit, break down every day on the ground into stories — what were the highlights of the day, what was the case that was done, what was interesting in the interview. These were little bricks that we manufactured. So when we started editing in 2019, we already had these pieces in place, and then it was like creating the super architecture. We spent a month or almost six weeks working on paper before we went into editing the film. It is quite a beast of a narrative so we had to be very, very specific in terms of what we were trying to say.
There is the whole approach of following the three journalists on their assignments, whether they are taking the train or the bus or walking. We see the stories from their mobile cameras, their point of view. Did this form emerge once you started shooting them?
We very consciously went into this filming like this. In our previous work, the form has evolved from an understanding of what was the story that we were trying to tell. We did this film called Dilli, which essentially is a visual essay on what the city is all about. It is shot in five segments set in five different parts of the city, but you don't see any anybody in it, you only hear voices of people. It's a portrait of the city.
Timbaktu is about a village in Andhra Pradesh which through Green Revolution evolved itself into something completely organic. So the story had already happened in the past, and we had to redesign it visually. With Writing With Fire, we were very sure it had to be an observational piece. How to give the viewer an experience of what it meant being a Dalit journalist in these parts of the country. The physicality of the exercise of journalism in these parts itself is excruciating. It’s physically brutal. How do you exhaust the audience as well — the amount of walking, the travel. The counterbalance is the weird stoicness of these women.
These women are about five feet tall. We decided to shoot the film from their point of view, so the camera was always their eye level. It was kind of slightly tilted up so everything looks slightly big. That's the whole point. That is what the world looks from their perspective.
Then there was layering the film with a sense of danger. The sense of risk was always there in the air. When you're going back home late at night, or when you must pursue a case after sundown or within your home, the complexities that you need to deal with. We knew that you could have someone say it to the camera. Or you could craft it as a scene, and for us, that approach was much more interesting. How do you show but not necessarily tell?
There is a sense of distance and yet an intimacy in your approach…
It was a complex choreography because we were working with journalists. And it was a bit meta because when we started filming them in 2016, they were discovering the power of the visual image and the edit language. As a film crew, we had to create a process where we were not interfering in any which way in their reality.
When the three of us started filming, we created these rules of engagement with each other that we will not interfere in whatever happens on the ground. Banda is such a hot and dusty region that the camera conked out one day. But we never went back to shooting again because it would become diluted.
Then there were questions going back and forth in our minds. As filmmakers, we are shooting journalists in pursuit of truth but the very act of pointing our camera at one person and not the other is an abstraction of that truth. It was their story, but it became ours too.
There are some stunning moments in the film like the patronizing way in which the male journalists give tips to Suneeta. Did all these happen fortuitously?
This could have been like an episodic series. Our first rough cut was about five hours, and everything to us looked compelling. You know, we had so much material, but you know, as they say, you kill your darlings on the edit, and there were many, many things that had to be pulled out.
On the ground, a lot of things happen, essentially, because you never know what you're going to get. For instance, the murder scene that Suneeta covers. We were going somewhere else in the rickshaw, and she got a call and asked the driver to turn around. That’s how Suneeta works. She is best friends with male journalists. She is best friends with police officers, she knows politicians. She is someone in Khabar Lahariya who will not shy away from confronting patriarchy in the most obvious way.
We thought that the story that's playing out over here is essentially how Khabar Lahariya covers the news, and how the mainstream media, which is represented essentially by men, and men from dominant caste, cover the news. And by the end of it we did a quiet conversation with Suneeta outside of that house, and she was broken. These are things that you just can't plan for, can’t imagine you’d get but on the edit, it was quite a brutal exercise, I would say because you are having to let go of themes and moments that are special to you in more ways than one. Maybe sometimes, it has taken months to come to that one moment. Or maybe you truly believe in what that one scene is saying. But you need to be very, very surgically precise in storytelling. We knew that it had to be hard 90 minutes for us. This could have been a two-hour thing, but we knew that 90 minutes is where we wanted to hold it off, and the editing process in itself was really complex.
Going back to the beginning, we were talking about gender, caste, and technology and journalism, and populism. And essentially, also this larger question that struck us, this idea of the guilt that a woman carries. I saw it play out in our homes as well, like our mothers, grandmothers, having to make a choice between their own careers and taking care of the family. This burden is not borne by the man. The mother and the father will come back home after a hard day's work, but it's the mother who is expected to cook. It is the mother who has to settle everybody down. That was a layer throughout all three of their stories, and we knew that it was something truly universal. That's the point where you would connect with Meera, Suneeta, and Shyamkali, and we started exploring that. Things opened in their own lives — the choices Suneeta had to make, that Meera was making on a daily basis.
I think the one thing that really broke our heart was not being able to profile Suneeta’s father in a more extensive way. He is an absolute feminist, someone who dreamt that his daughter would go out and do what she had to do. An absolute supporter of what she was doing. He is a daily wage labourer, used to work in the mines but now works in the farms. And so there was this one day we were with Suneeta when she had just got her passport from the post office. She was absolutely over the moon because she was going to Sri Lanka to represent the newspaper in a conference. So she rushed to her father, and then there is this beautiful moment that played out when that man and his daughter were standing in the middle of mustard fields, and she basically explained to him about her passport, and he looked at the document very straight-faced, and then he flipped it around saying that it is blank. He was unimpressed. And Suneeta was asking him to express some happiness because getting passport was a big deal. There was a plastic sleeve that he had with him, and then he started covering the passport with it. It was a nice, little moment that played out in the middle of nowhere where the father was unconcerned about what a passport is but there was genuine love and affection for his daughter in that one gesture. It was beautiful but we couldn't have it in the film. There is so much material like that. Her father is like a philosopher stuck in the body of a 60-year-old man. Suneeta tips her hat to him. That she wouldn’t be where she is if he wasn't there.
Have the three ladies and Khabar Lahariya seen the documentary? What has been their response?
As a part of our process, what we always do is that the films need to be seen by the protagonists before they go out into the world. The dream was that we would do the screening in a theatre for the entire film crew and all the (Khabar Lehariya) journalists. This was early 2021. When we made it through at Sundance Film Festival, we were like we’ll to go to UP, and show it to them in person. We didn’t want to do this over a screener. We drove down to Banda in January of last year. Suneeta wasn’t there, she was in Delhi and so she watched the film with us at our place, but Meera, Shyamkali, and Kavita Bundelkhandi (co-founder and editor-in-chief of Khabar Lahariya); they saw the film. We were curious to see how they would respond to it. We were overwhelmed with the response. They reacting to the film, laughing and serious and sinking in and soaking in your life playing out from four years.
Kavita, who is the co-founder of Khabar Lahariya, said something very beautiful to the camera: Kal hum rahein ya na rahein, Khabar Lahariya bhi band ho jaaye [we may not be there tomorrow or Khabar Lahariya may shut down] but this film is a testimony to what we stood for all these years and is a document for everything that we are. That was a moment for us, the kind of thing that you always want. We, as filmmakers, have always been outside the stories, whether those be about farmers or refugees or in this case, journalism in UP. The one thing that was really important for us was that this needed to be and feel authentic. And, when Kavita said that we felt like ho gaya apna kaam (our work has been accomplished).
Suneeta was like yehi to hai apna kaam [this is what we do]. She was very proud. Through the course of last year, after Sundance, all of them joined us at different forums. Meera did a closed-door masterclass with us in the Columbia Journalism School. Then we were on panels at festivals. The film was selected at Human Rights Festival in Berlin, where KL co-produced an event with journalists in Berlin on the sidelines of the festival, which was spectacular. Women journalists in Berlin and women journalists in Bundelkhand doing a three-day conference on the future of journalism and storytelling. It’s been fantastic to see how the press has also rallied around them. Every time people have written about the film, they have covered Khabar Lahariya. That essentially was like the dream. One of the impact pieces we really wanted was the international profiling of the news institution that would become much stronger and robust. And that happened — from Time magazine to New York Times and Guardian wrote about Khabar Lahariya and their work. I think what essentially takes people aback is a film about journalism that essentially talks about the significance of having a robust fourth estate in a democracy.
At a time when media itself is getting polarised along ideological lines, I was struck by how Khabar Lahariya women conduct interviews, and chase stories from the space of objectivity and distance. There are lessons in journalism for all of us here.
As a filmmaker, I am interested in stories built around models of hope. So our stories have always been about people who have been outliers to the systems, who have created tectonic cultural shifts, and then created change. I started the film at a time when I myself was questioning this idea of hope.
There are moments in the film that demonstrate sophistication in journalism. Three different women and three different approaches to journalism. The thing that essentially comes out is this grace and dignity with which they carry themselves and their work. And this intrepid approach — we are journalists, we are tough, we are going into spaces where no one is going. We are doing the job of a cop, an IAS officer by reporting, and I think that kind of a value system of dogged persistence is phenomenal to see. They do it day and day out, six days a week, 365 days a year.
Oscars 2022 will take place on 28 March.
Namrata Joshi is a journalist, National Award-winning film critic, and a fledgling festival programmer.
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