If you thought Idocumentary film in India is going beyond its earlier 'sarkari' (governmetn) dominated days and growing in a significant way, then your views would only be reinforced by this small 100-page catalogue.
Brought out by the Under Construction Team from the Chittaranjan Park-Delhi based Magic Lantern Foundation, this unusually-shaped book lists "approximately 90" documentary films from India. It also includes an explanation about Under Construction and the Magic Lantern Foundation, a price list and an index of the films included. Under Construction -- "a new initiative with old roots" -- is termed "a distribution initiative for independent films". But it's more than that, by its own account: Through the decades of the '70s and the '80s, a number of independent filmmakers were involved in the distribution of their own films. And somewhere these roots have merged and mingled. It is difficult to tell them apart because distribution is the common problem of all independent filmmakers. Today, many more filmmakers are working with distribution, whether individually or in groups. Collectives and organisations are seriously looking into archiving, disseminating and screening films. And they explain it well: The logistics of distribution are compelling and complex. There are issues of copyrights and intellectual property; of a series of legal issues; of our discomfort with an activity that has primarily to do with commerce and finally, of the complexity of the myriad of languages that people use and live with while most films tend to have one or two language versions only. And yet we have taken this step because there is an urgent need to see and show these films -- for more people to engage with the stories that these films tell, to facilitate a culture of 'active' viewing. If one can let one's voice intrude for a moment here... there is reason to believe that alternative channels of distribution would work. As a firm believer in the Free Software ideal (today, the 'alternative' in computing software is undeniably better than the "real thing", even if the number of users at the desktop level suggest something else), moving away for corporate-suited copyright ideas holds the key. Distribution and viewership needs to be mentally separated from the idea of earnings. Because if nobody is aware of how interesting or relevant your work is, there's no way they would be buying it! This works for me in writing and in photography; there is reason to suspect that the same would work for film too, even if that's a different, more time-consuming product, and the "stakes" are higher. Documentary film-makers in India surely have a lot to gain by thinking CreativeCommons [http://www.creativecommons.org] or on look more closely at any of the sharable licenses. Using sharable licenses, or writing Free Software, doesn't mean that the person sharing the work (with a "some rights reserved" approach) would starve! Strange but true, it works! One good thing though is that the prices of these VCDs/DVDs seem very reasonable in India; around Rs 250-300 per VCD (for individuals) in India, and Rs 240-600 per DVD (again, prices for individuals). Institutions pay marginally higher rates, and foreign individuals and institutions pay much more. There are some films from abroad too. But what's the range? As Under Construction ("this initiative will always be under construction") explains it: consists ... of films from all over the world, covering a range of themes and ideas that is truly very wide. From US foreign policy, to Mariammal, the Dalit woman who spends her days cleaning shit from the streets fo Madurai; from an exploration of the artist's workshop where the line between the filmmaker and the artist is blurred, to a journey through Gujarat in 2002 where this precise delineation is very sharp indeed. Our list comprises many such extraordinary films, and we will continue to add to this collection. Magic Lantern Foundation describes itself thus: a trust registered in 1989 ... a media action group that aims to use communication and media to give voice to the unheard; as a tool for human rights and justice; to establish a collective culture, to build citizenship and democratise society. 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