“Sun in the Belly”: Film Practice at Films Division of India 1965–1975

Films for a “Purpose”: Film Practice and Functionality

In the study of film in India, in its first twenty years the state-funded documentary and short film has been understood to be a fixed form developing from a Griersonian model of filmmaking. ⁵ Other modes like the independent documentary movement of the 1980s have been seen as forming an oppositional practice to this dominant mode of documentary (Deprez, 2013; Paul, 2012). Srirupa Roy theorized that FD in “consolidating the gaze” of the nation state was confronted with postcolonial anxieties, inscribing the films with “visible evidence of the representative commitments of Indian independence” (Roy, 2007, p. 39). Anuja Jain has questioned FD’s position as a “statist tool” and configured FD as a site of “dynamic interplay of colonial, postcolonial, nationalist developments …” ⁶ Thus, from various points of view, the state institution of film needs to be seen in a constantly changing and at times ambiguous relationship with the state. I find Michel Foucault’s concept of governmentality helpful here: as “arranging things in such a way that through a certain number of means, such and such ends may be achieved” (Foucault, 1991, p. 95). Foucault posits:

… with government it is a question not of imposing law on men, but of disposing [emphasis added] things: that is to say, of employing tactics [emphasis added] rather than laws, and even of using laws themselves as tactics. (1991, p. 95)

Tracking governmentality at a state institution such as FD involves analyzing the maneuvers of bureaucrats, filmmakers, and policy makers as a “profusion of entangled events” (1984, p. 89): on the one hand, the institution was mobilized tactically to promote experimentation involving bureaucrats in “unbureaucratic” methods; on the other hand, there was a countervailing tendency in which everything became mired in the workings of a deeply inflexible bureaucratic institution, and the filmmaker was consigned to being just another detail in the film’s production file at FD.

The title of the pamphlet “Four Times Five” comprises a mathematical formula that refers to the twenty years of FD’s history and the beginning of the 4th Five Year Plan initiated by India’s Planning Commission. The pamphlet had a cover design by the renowned painter M.F. Hussain and contains an array of cartoons, prose work, and opinion pieces from cinema stalwarts all over the world as well as people from within FD (see Figures 2, 3, and 4). The reference to India’s formal planning system of governance in an artistically produced souvenir highlights the relation between film production and bureaucratically organized planning at FD. FD made films as required by the government for “public information, education, motivation and for instructional as well as cultural purposes.” ⁷ Its role was to use film to “weld” the vast multitudes of people of the country into a “nation” (Mohan, 1990, p. 22). The central government and state governments issued their own agenda for film publicity. Different ministries got together once a year to decide upon the topics that would order FD’s Production Program. Once the topics were decided, FD would begin the production of films. It assigned the films to directors and producers, either internally or through the tender system to outside producers (called OPs). The directors would work within deadlines and under the given budgets in tandem with producers. Even after this, the film was subject to censorship and approval by the Film Advisory Board (FAB), where it might undergo changes.

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Figure 2.

Cover Illustration of Four Times Five by M.F. Hussain

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Figure 3.

Section Illustration in Four Times Five

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Figure 4.

Cartoon by Films Division’s Filmmaker Kantilal Rathod, Four Times Five pg 21

Overtly, government film objectives were strictly functional: FD’s efficiency, its achievements and failures had to be measured in terms of how effectively it communicated government plans and activities to the people of the country. As I will show, in the late 1960s, the Chanda Committee was set up precisely to look into the functionality of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and its institutions like FD. But, if “use” determined the aims of film policy and debates surrounding the role of documentary and short film in the country, what change had taken place in mandates and policy briefs during the late 1960s such that the same institution could also act as a site of experimentation in film form?

This period was followed by the Emergency era (1975–1977) where policies changed again and FD was mandated to produce films on the “gains” of the Emergency and “boost public morale.” ⁸ This involved government in exercising more centralized control, with individual industry experts overseeing production and strict censorship being enforced (Kaushik, 2016). Filmmakers making experimental films from the earlier period too had to produce films under the new diktat, giving rise to an arguably ambiguous body of work. The question of how the same institution that facilitated experimentation also produced emergency is an important one, but will have to be treated separately.

In relation to the National Film Board of Canada, Zoë Druick identifies the National Film Board’s “nation building mandate” (Druick, 2007, p. 183) as the root both of its longevity and for aspects of its creative success. Druick argues that it has been the “site of innovation in film making not in spite of [Ritika’s emphasis] but precisely because [Ritika’s emphasis] of the nation building mandate… Much of its innovation has come in the form of creative rejection of its official mandate or in response to public ambivalence about its products.” ⁹ Adapting Druick’s formulation, I would suggest that in the case of FD too the objective of nation building would continue to justify policies, but within this there would emerge a changing institutional practice, which determined the circumstances of filmmaking. FD’s documentary and short film production was governed by sometimes rigid, sometimes ambiguous, and sometimes pro-actively innovative mandates. After a particular mandate for film use was worked out, it went through a bureaucratic process that assigned a project to a filmmaker; he in turn could engage with the mandate by exploring what was institutionally possible. In a default sense, any film produced by FD was subject to an inertia of bureaucratic processes/delays/stoppages, but also subversion and contingent developments. Thus, I conceptualize film practice at FD as a synthesis of bureaucratic state mechanisms and the technical, intellectual, and artistic forces of filmmaking involved in the making of the government film. My contention therefore is that this film practice needs to be seen not “in spite of” the government mandate or bureaucratic way of functioning but because of it.

Film “Experimentation” and Documentary

Films Division specially commissioned M.F. Hussain to make a film on its twentieth anniversary. The film credited Jehangir Bhownagary for “Experimentation,” a credit category not common at the time. The opening of the film features Hussain’s interview where he talks about the film form. ¹⁰ This, being his first film, was a radical move on the part of the institution to support independent artists like painters and give them a chance to explore the film medium. It can also be seen as FD giving experimentation with film form a green signal to encourage independent filmmakers and its own staff. However, in spite of Husain’s film winning the prestigious Golden Bear award at Berlin film festival, 1967, and being hailed by some, the first experimental film of India at FD was also severely criticized. People could not make “‘head or tail’ of it, quite like Hussain’s abstract paintings,” as a newspaper report put it. ¹¹

This moment marks changes at FD where, for the first time, “multiplication of formal approaches” (Rajagopal & Vohra, 2012, p. 17) was in evidence. Bhownagary reflected on how it became possible to undertake practice differently from before:

The Films Division now worked out its annual programme with the help of Planning Commission, thanks to the help of Secretary Asok Mitra, on a much more rational priority-conscious basis. We were now permitted to let the people freely speak their minds on screen in such films as Report on Drought (which the Prime Minister agreed to be sent abroad in spite of some ministries’ objection), Face to Face (which criticized some of the official tenets) and I am 20 (in which youngsters born in 1947 spoke their minds about the India they were living in 20 years after independence). (Mohan, 1990, p. 77)

Even though some filmmakers had been making films or were involved in film production at FD earlier, a sharp change in their approach in this period can be noted. Among the directors and films which illustrate the changing trend include Pramod Pati’s Explorer (1968), Claxplosion (1968), Trip (1970), Abid (1972), Six Five Four Three Two; Sastry’s I am 20 (1967), And I Make Short Films (1968), and This Bit of That India (1970); S. Sukhdev’s India’67 (1967); and K.S. Chari and T.A. Abraham’s Face to Face (1967). In certain films, ambiguous montages replaced didacticism, people speaking out openly about contemporary problems replaced voice-of-god narration and the talking-down to the audience.

In fact, in the National Film Awards of 1967, several new awards were introduced in the short film/documentary section. Instead of the two categories earlier used, Best Documentary Film and Best Educational Film, there were six new award categories: Best Information Film (Documentary), Best Education/Instructional Film, Best Social Documentation Film, Best Promotional film, Best Experimental Film, and Best Animation Film. While, the Experimental film award was given to Hussain’s Through the Eyes of a Painter (1967), Sukhdev’s India’67 was awarded the Best Information Film award, and Sastry’s I am 20 received the Best Social Documentation film award in the same year. In 1970, And I Make Short Films received the Best Experimental film award. As a pamphlet on the National Awards notes, the reorganization of the award scheme aimed to make it more representative of the growth and development of different trends in documentary work:

The most significant evidence of this trend is to be seen in the regeneration of the documentary movement as the base for film experimentation. Documentary film has a very inexhaustible potential not only in themes but also in terms of cultural needs. The advent of television and the prospect of an early nationwide network sustained by satellite communications have thrown up a new challenge and an opportunity for the short film maker in the country. One can clearly see the future development in Indian cinema as being the birth of T.V. film. Taking this aspect in view, the short film awards this year have been so modified as to reflect this trend as also to encourage it. ¹²

It appears that award categories were meant to speak to the potential of documentary as it was to be actualized through television. The category of the Best Experimental Film, however, had no precursor and could be said to be a little out of the mix. However, the trend in the selection of films at FD for various categories suggest that the distinctions among these remained blurry and that experimentation at FD was epistemically fluid and not fixed in relation to a particular category of production. Short films, documentary films, social documentation, information film, and experimental film as categories tended to overlap at FD.

“Files Division”: The Problem of Government Film

FD’s main office, at 24 Pedder Road, has accommodated documentary and short film production since 1952, when its staff moved into the Gulshan Mansion. While this building has the size and scale to represent the filmmaking and communication ambitions vested in FD by the nation state, the condition of FD’s premises in Mumbai elicits skepticism about the possibility of any film production at all. FD seems assailed by an atmosphere of stifling bureaucracy to even the most uninformed bystander.

Report of the Committee of Broadcasting and Information Media on Documentary Films and Newsreels, also known as the “Chanda Committee Report,” identified major problems and recommended various changes in the organization (Chanda Committee Report, 1966). The Chanda Committee found that FD was connected with too many activities “extraneous to its responsibility for producing and distributing documentaries and newsreels,” ¹³ with repercussions on FD’s own functioning and efficiency. K.L. Khandpur, who had just been appointed as Controller, elaborated the various objectives FD was expected to accomplish in a 1967 seminar (Seminar on the “Role of Documentary Films in National Development,” 1967). Khandpur said these included, for example, serving the Ministry of External Affairs by recording visits of dignitaries, making films to boost trade on behalf of the Ministry of Commerce, and responding to requests from Indian Missions abroad to counteract adverse criticism about India in international fora. Apart from these there were demands for education, training, and instructional films. In fact, Khandpur admitted that they could not meet the demands of the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Defence and suggested that while all such demands were “legitimate,” no one organization could be “burdened” with them (Seminar on “Role of Documentary Films in National Development,” 1967, p. 59). Therefore, in spite of being the largest documentary film producing organization in the country, FD was able to meet only a fraction of its expected uses and came to be seen by various actors as a dysfunctional institution.

The Chanda Committee highlighted that one of the main problems with FD was the poor quality of films produced and cited various reasons for this: appalling working conditions, non-maintenance and improper storage of film equipment and films, paucity of raw stock and cameras, multi-level bureaucratic interference, lack of interest and commitment of filmmakers. FD films used “superficial treatment,” stereotyped and predictable situations, too many “spoken words,” lacked humor, satire, suspense, and drama (Chanda Committee Report, 1966, p. 10). Such failures were attributed to the filmmaker’s lack of interest as an artist, deriving perhaps from his inability to function in a bureaucratic environment. The filmmaker, sandwiched between the governmental consultant asserting his ministry’s concerns and the producer managing the logistics of production, was inevitably compromised in his creative engagement with the film.

The consultants appointed by the ministries started assuming the role of producers and interfering in the filmmaking process. The Chanda Committee therefore recommended they stick to their position as subject experts overseeing the accuracy of content and leave the treatment of the film to the director. Also, the report highlighted the financial deficiency of resources at FD. It also observed that there was a need to “economize” use of film stock in terms of the ratio of consumption of film in the final cut. ¹⁴ Film circulation also faced serious problems. Sometimes films would take 52 weeks to circulate throughout the country, and by the time the films reached rural audiences, they would no longer be topical. ¹⁵

Apart from problems of bureaucracy and lack of resources, FD was also vulnerable to regulation by specially constituted oversight bodies. Since FD had monopoly over exhibition of approved films in theatres, the FAB, a separate organization, was set up to decide on the approval of films. FAB formulated categories for films deemed eligible for exhibition, and films that did not conform to these were rejected. In the case of each approved release, the FAB would attach a note on the quality of the film. FAB made comments on shots and scenes and recommended cuts and alterations in the final versions. While FAB’s role was to recommend the film’s release, the Chanda Committee asserted that this role did not make it eligible to be “arbiter of film’s quality and presentation” (Chanda Committee Report, 1966, p. 26). FAB’s assumption of the role of acting as a judge of film quality shows that FD as an institution lacked autonomy, its film production a complicated negotiation or resultant of the interventions of various institutions and agents involved in sponsoring and regulating documentary and short film practice. Such intermeshed trajectories of control alert us to the fact that the state mechanism of film in India was not in fact an integrated mechanism.

“New Horizons” and the “Unbureaucratic” Bureaucrat

When a contemporary practitioner such as B.D. Garga (1966) observed “winds of change” in the mid-1960s at FD, he was referring to changes in film policy, and how this impacted the internal constitution of FD as I have described it; above all he was referring to a marked change in FD films. ¹⁶ It is not possible to pinpoint the exact moment at which attitudes, ideas, and ways of working began to change. However, Indira Gandhi’s arrival at the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in 1964, the mobilization of Jehangir aka “Jean” Bhownagary as Chief Adviser (Films) in 1965, and the twentieth anniversary of FD (1969) all serve as important markers of this transformation.

The period witnessed major shifts involving issues of political succession, war, and economic distress. The death of Jawaharlal Nehru, the drought in Bihar, the wars with China (1962) and Pakistan (1965), the liberation of Goa, the devaluation of the Indian rupee, and the fourth general elections that made Mrs Gandhi the Prime Minister of India in the face of opposition from within the Congress party, all signaled new challenges to political representation and governance. Changes in FD’s film practice has to be placed within the topography of this political churning, and coincided with the first phase of the Indira Gandhi era, when she was prime minister from 1966 to the state of Emergency from 1975 to 1977. ¹⁷ After the death of Nehru, the national political consensus represented by the Congress party in India was seriously threatened by rising political upheaval. This led to what Madhava Prasad has called a “moment of disaggregation,” in which government film policy responded to the crisis by highlighting new “developmental realist” objectives and the film industry generated new genres to address the register of popular unrest. ¹⁸ In turn, shifts in the temper of the times were reflected in Films Division’s changing documentary and short film practice.

In 1964, when Indira Gandhi talked about “new horizons” in the field of information and broadcasting, she sparked hopes of substantial change in the field of broadcasting and films (Times of India, July 8, 1964, p. 8). Critiquing the “narrow propaganda” and “routine bureaucratic approach” of institutions like All India Radio and Films Division, Indira Gandhi also spoke about freeing Films Division from narrow departmental control (Times of India, July 8, 1964, p. 8). She declared the “need to experiment” with the freedom to make “honest mistakes” (Times of India, July 8, 1964, p. 8). Later in August, in her address to the second convocation of the Film Institute of India’s students, Indira Gandhi asked them to commit toward “making new and original films.” ¹⁹ Thus, she presented herself as a minister who promoted experimentation. Also, at the behest of Indira Gandhi, the government borrowed Jean Bhownagry from UNESCO for a two-year period (1965–1967) and gave him the “freest hand … most unbureaucratically” to act as Chief Advisor (Films) to the Ministry. Quite in accordance with Indira Gandhi’s new direction, Bhownagary was told to “revitalize” the Films Division and the Film Institute in Pune and to oversee the work of the Film Finance Corporation, Children’s Film Society, other government-sponsored film organizations, and the growth of Television (Mohan, 1990, p. 76).

Sudipta Kaviraj argues that the political initiatives of Indira Gandhi “systematically shifted functions, initiatives, and decisions from party to government bureaucracy … the slogan of a ‘committed bureaucracy’ was explicable in these terms, since the unavailability of party men forced her to demand increasingly explicit political work from high officials” (Kaviraj, 2010, p. 193). Bhownagary’s appointment in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting needs to be placed within this ambit of “committed bureaucracy.” The period at FD under his leadership is generally seen to be the essential breath of fresh air that brought FD out of its stupor into its most creative phases (Garga, 2007; Jhaveri & Heredia, 2012). Jean Bhownagary was born in Bombay in 1921, educated in Bombay and Paris and involved in the arts in varied ways. Bhownagary was seen to be equipped with a “world perspective” about mass communication due to his time with UNESCO. ²⁰ Perhaps, this is why he was seen as the right candidate to be roped in to handle a “medium of mass communication” in India. As a statement declaring a new direction for film and broadcasting in India, Bhownagary’s appointment drew upon his unique position as someone who belonged to the intellectual elite and who also had the administrative experience to balance creative and official demands.

Bhownagary was crucial in bringing a constellation of filmmakers, editors, music composers, and cinematographers together to develop new idioms and new content, encouraging them to “probe deeper into their subjects, to make structured films, instead of enumerations of our treasures and achievements as is so often required by non-filmmakers in the ministries” (Jain, 2013, p. 18). One of his major initiatives was to improve the status of OPs and their productions. In the competitive tendering system for film commissioning to OPs, the producer who quoted the lowest would get the film. ²¹ This often led to OPs quoting unrealistic budgets, and films suffering in terms of quality due to the lack of resources. Independent documentary producers had complained that cinema houses were compelled to show documentary films by the Films Division and therefore they had to “seek its patronage and be subject to its vagaries” in order to get their films exhibited (Chanda Committee Report, 1966, p. 12). Also, it was ascertained that some OPs worked with FD due to their own “idealistic involvement with this medium and some because of the prestige value of a release which could bring them other assignments” (Chanda Committee Report, 1966, p. 13). On the one hand, these independent producers were sometimes enthusiastic, and wanted to work for FD, on the other, FD’s own filmmakers did not feel fully involved in the “ideology and purpose of films” and needed motivation (Chanda Committee Report, 1966, p. 9). Bhownagary, in his earlier tenure from 1954 to 1957 as Chief Producer at FD, had tried to improve the condition of OPs and their productions as unlike other people at FD, they did not have secured jobs and benefits of being government employees (Seminar Report on the “Role of Documentary Film as a Medium of Communication and Education in India,” 1972). But, he could bring about a substantial change only in his next appointment in 1965. Alongside improving the film commissioning process, the lack of motivation and dedication on the part of filmmakers was another task that Bhownagary had tackled head on. As the mandates were redefined to suit the needs of the hour, the filmmaker was also seen as an artist with creative imagination instead of just a salaried employee like in any other government office.

As I have outlined, the Chanda Committee to review broadcasting and communications, including institutions such as FD, was set up at the same time, and Bhownagary was a consultant to this important government review. The committee’s recommendations, published in 1966, led to the initiation of many changes at FD (Chanda Committee Report, 1967). It was recommended that commentary in films be reduced and “humor” be introduced. ²² The ministry consultants, who could be done away with, were now termed “subject specialists.” ²³ Only specialists on the subjects of the films were to be nominated for these posts, and their function was to check accuracy of information in the film. Cinematic treatment of the subject, the techniques of presentation, and so on were to be left entirely to FD.

In his first tenure, Bhownagary had defined the FD mandate as one of nation-building and placed it in a larger trajectory of pre-independence films:

Those goals had, indeed, already been set during Ezra Mir’s time with the pre-independence Information Films of India (IFI) and again when Mohan Bhavnani built FD from scratch … We started to make films that would help build the nation, build a sense of citizenship and community. In this process, the first step was to inform our people about our own country … This was necessary before and after the First Five Year Plan. But, distribution was limited to urban cinemas. After the “Know Our Country” phase, the people had to be informed of the mobile social and economic structure of the country and its progress … The Second Five year Plan extended distribution beyond the cinemas … most importantly, to the rural circuits through the mobile vans of the Integrated Publicity Programme. (Mohan, 1990, p. 75)

However, during the 1960s, he used different terms: “new ideas, new approaches had to be found, encouraged and put to work,” and he encouraged directors to create their “individual style” (Mohan, 1990, p. 76). He described his work during the period in terms of efforts at probing into the problems faced by people as well as presenting the solutions offered by them. He illustrated the changing mandate and the role of ministers as follows:

We now concentrated not only on achievements but also pinpointed problems and showed what the people most concerned felt about them and took into account the solutions suggested. Luckily, Minister Indira Gandhi and Secretary for I&B, Asok Mitra, backed us up and gave us the freest hand we ever had—most unbureaucratically. (Mohan, 1990, p. 76)

Bhownagary’s changing position shows how such mandates were influenced by individuals like himself who were able to insulate filmmaking from the constraints exercised by bureaucracy, in ways, as he terms them, “most unbureaucratically.”

The changed mandate, to probe problems rather than avoid them or to offer anodyne solutions, was to now dictate the form of the films. With the coming of sync-sound cameras, it was now possible to record people’s interviews. As the filmmakers from FD with their ARRI cameras and Nagra recorders went around capturing what people had to say, films like I am 20 (Sastry, 1967) and Face to Face (Chari & Abraham, 1967) were made and these became the first interview format films in India. In an obituary on the occasion of Sastry’s untimely death in November 28, 1978, P.B. Pendharkar illustrated his later style of filmmaking:

Sastry will introduce dissonance, pretty images mixed with harsh sounds, softly focused men asking bitterly, “What is democracy? Is it freedom to starve, to go naked, to die of starvation?” … “Well I don’t love my country—And even if I love it, to whom should I go and speak of my love.” (Indian Cinema, 1978)

This introduction of “dissonance” in films marks even those films that may not have been categorized as experimental. With people voicing their dissonant views about the nation in the films, film practice at FD registered a shift, accommodating skepticism and sharp critique of state practices in contrast to earlier models of focusing on “achievements.” ²⁴ The filmmakers were encouraged to probe deeper into problems faced by the people. Moving away from the earlier trend of writing only at desks, scripts were written on location after talking to people, sometimes based on interviews that brought fresh material to the scripting process from the people themselves. Thus, the ball was set rolling for FD to change its prevailing image as a “Files Division” and to gain credibility in the eyes of the public. However, along with such tactical maneuvers a host of other contingent and chance happenings, negotiations, and agencies involving filmmakers and bureaucrats were to alter the documentary and short film scene in the country.

“Permissiveness/Permissibility,” Political Patronage, and “Government Responsibility”

As a bureaucrat, Bhownagary saw himself in the tradition of creatively working with films within the confines of government institutions. Quoting John Grierson, Bhownagary illuminates his own stance regarding film practice at FD, “One of the problems—perhaps, the greatest problem—is to fit imaginative film purposes into the normal frameworks of government responsibility and government procedure” (Mohan, 1990, p. 78). Grierson had asserted that much depended upon the personal imaginative support or “permissiveness” afforded by great political figures who as ministers of government made it possible for “dramatic and poetic” things to be done within the framework of government sponsorship and responsibility (Datt, 1969, p. 8).

Film historian Sanjit Narwekar, distinguishing “permissibility” from “permissiveness,” argues in a personal interview conducted in 2014 that it was a question of “permissibility” which governed the atmosphere during that time. Narwekar coins the term very precisely: it was a question of doing things that some disapproved of but were tolerated by most. In an interview (2014), V.S. Kundu, then Director General of FD said, “As head of an institution and as a conduit between the institution’s needs and those of individual Ministries and the government, one could create a space for creativity to flourish—it was more a matter of allowing it to happen.” Therefore, the objective to “fit imaginative film purposes into the normal framework of government responsibility,” addressed by Grierson and followed by Bhownagary, has some resonance with the practice of enlightened bureaucrats who continue to create the space for innovation, experimentation, and radical practices at FD. Here, we should not ignore the elements of bureaucratic intelligence in play, of “allowing things to happen,” and using an overall opinion of tolerance and accommodation to neutralize elements of opposition.

However, Grierson’s own position about FD films was sharply critical. Jain alerts us to Grierson’s position when he visited India and saw FD films in 1971, “His own remarks are very telling of not only how he saw his own legacy, historically, but its relationship to developing nations like India: ‘they win obscure prizes at festival, and then talk about mass communication. They are using public money for self indulgence’” (Jain, 2013, p. 23). This discourse on FD’s venture into experimentation at the expense of public money was reiterated by mainstream filmmakers from the industry like V. Shantaram who said,

… art is a luxury which the Films Division cannot afford at the expense of its main task of enlightening and educating the masses. It is only when our country has achieved the same educational and economic standard of living as the West that the Films Division could afford the luxury of art. (Datt, 1969, p. 81)

Even K.A. Abbas while defending experimentation in cinema would add a clause, “the filmmaker must do so at his own expense … But not at Public expense” (Datt, 1969, p. 76).

In this light, despite the “creative imagination” or “permissiveness” which Grierson apparently aimed for, he reacted strongly against its manifestation in Indian government documentary. There is much debate about Grierson’s changing perspectives, including the claim that by the time of his stint at UNESCO in the late 1940s, he had come around to the idea that a simpler, more functional documentary form that clearly communicated messages was more appropriate, especially in the context of the developing world (Rosalyn Smyth, 2013). If so, and the case still has to be made that Grierson had embraced such a simplistic communication model at the expense of creativity, then the Grierson that Bhownagary quoted was a figure of the past who no longer held these views. ²⁵ In these maneuvers, the role of FD as an institution of cinema, and bids to redefine its agenda to accommodate innovation and experiment emerges through a layered and sometimes contradictory reference to past perspectives and practices, refracted by ambiguous and disjointed interlocutions by critics, bureaucrats, and industry stalwarts.

A film like India’67 (1967, Dir. S. Sukhdev) illustrates these instances of institutional permissibility and the networks of power in the central lines of governance. Filmmaker S. Sukhdev had friendly relations with Indira Gandhi, and it appears this relationship helped to advance this film project. It was Bhownagary who decided that Sukhdev produce this film for the upcoming Montreal Expo’67 (1967). Made in Eastman color, Sukhdev was allowed to make the film from about 20,000 feet of shot material into a 5,000-feet cut. Being a specially commissioned film, the film’s production cost was unusually high compared to the prevalent costs of an average film at FD. Sukhdev described the mandate given to him:

The Films Division was making a documentary for the Montreal Film Festival. They asked me to make it. My own discovery of India. I gave them a one-page script. How can you give script for what is essentially going to be your own discovery of India? This was going to be an experiment. I was going to present India to the world, and wanted to discover it with a fresh point of view, with an open mind, reacting to images as I went along. (Mohan, 1984, p. 42)

With a one-page script and such high costs of production, Sukhdev’s privileged status in the FD bureaucracy is quite apparent. But, once the film was made, it had to navigate its own share of critics. The Deputy Prime Minister then, Morarji Desai, dismissed the film saying he could not understand it and the film was also not passed by the Censor Board. It is possible that it was Desai’s opinion that caused the Censor Board to stop its release. Sukhdev appealed to the prime minister. After watching it, she sent a personal letter to Sukhdev appreciating the film and congratulating him on it. In the letter Mrs Gandhi remarked, “It is sensitive and made a well rounded and thoughtful statement in contemporary language” (Mohan, 1984, p. 6). ²⁶ It was thus that the film was approved for the Exposition. India’67 was possible not just because of a mandate that allowed a substantial budget for making a film about projecting India, but also because the filmmaker had access to patronage from the prime minister and the networks of permissibility cultivated by bureaucrats like Bhownagary.

This instance needs to be seen in marked contrast to another, relating to Mani Kaul’s Indian Woman: A Historical Assessment (1975). At the time, Kaul had no access to the network of patronage, permissibility, insulation or any “unbureaucratic” practice and struggled with getting his film approved from the Film Advisory Board. In a Films Division production file, a disgruntled Kaul wrote a letter dated November 26, 1975 to Chief Producer Mushir Ahmed that the additional shots and the cuts imposed by the FAB were not acceptable to him. He stated that if these changes were indeed to be imposed, his name should be stricken from the credits of the film. Indeed, the film was edited in accordance with FAB’s suggestions and featured no credit for the director. A section of commentary from the end was removed and a series of shots were added: pan from a board that says Manager to a woman sitting on the desk, lady (sic) scientist at the microscope, (Flight Lieutenant) Geeta Chanda in glider, she is jumping and Parashoot [sic.] dropping among others. FAB’s instructions were that the film “deserved to end on a more positive note” unlike the ending provided by Kaul which maintained a critical view. ²⁷ Occurring at the time of the state of Emergency in the country, a film depicting the progress of Indian women through the ages was mandated, but the director’s own cut of the film had to be modified so that it conformed to the guidelines sanctioned by the state institution.

However, India’67 also faced certain contingent problems when its print did not arrive in time for its scheduled screening in Montreal. Also, although it featured in festivals abroad, the film was not shown in India for the next few years due to the government regulation that limited film length to 2,000 feet for the compulsory theatrical screening of approved films. It was only in 1972, edited into a 20-minute version, that the film received theatrical exhibition. While Sukhdev was given the privilege of editing it, it is ironic that a film about India in 1967 was released as India Today in 1972. Thus, the international audience of film festivals abroad and the Indian audience actually saw different versions of India’67.

The case of India’67 was not a solitary one, and reveals how bureaucratic processes and the relationships between bureaucrats, ministers, and filmmakers affected film practice at large. Although FD was not responsible for approving the films or censoring them, as the authorized institutions were the Film Advisory Board and the Censor Board, the ministerial offices in Delhi had a lot of clout. The prevailing perception at the time was that a filmmaker only had to say he had “just came back from Delhi” for all the obstacles to having his film approved to magically vanish (R.S., 1972, p. 6).

While this unpredictable institutional matrix must remain a key framework to understand the FD process, a regime of permissibility to work innovatively, indeed to play with the cinematic medium was, for a period, also part of the mix. Pramod Pati’s Explorer illustrates the radical mode of experimentation at FD, completely indifferent to the prevalent style of filmmaking at the institution. But even in other films, where the state mandates were much more pronounced, Pati managed to imprint his own individualistic style. His films on family planning, Claxplosion and Six Five Four Three Two show complex negotiations between official mandate and the film text and form. Claxplosion uses the pixilation technique and electronic music, to show an artist struggling to make a sculpture. Finally, he makes a sculpture of a couple, with two children. The camera then moves to the image the sculptor works from, a couple with five kids, with a mark striking off the inconvenient extra children. The film makes an ironic comment on the state’s promotion of family planning with a limit of two kids per couple. Six Five Four Three Two chooses a construction building as its site and artists miming a couple planning their family. The mime artist Irshad Panjratan’s dexterity, the starkness of the location of the set, the simplicity of the topic make the film an interesting experiment rendering state imperatives in an ambiguous register, as with the use of sculpture, artist and a painting in Claxplosion. Thus, these films with clear mandates on very specific policies became cinematic negotiations both with the medium and the mandate/use assigned to the film.

Just like Pati’s films on family planning, Sastry’s And I Make Short films should be understood as being viable not in spite of the mandate, but because of the regime of permissibility I have outlined. While the trajectories of filmmakers like Pati, Sastry, and Sukhdev are more complex and need a separate engagement, and are beyond the scope of this paper, ²⁸ the governmentality tracked through the article provides the context for FD’s film practice at that time. Prem Vaidya, film maker at FD, mentions in a piece called “FD at 42,” “be it a film director or a cameraman, an editor or a recordist, a painter or a narrator, a writer or an animator, Jean Bhownagary knew the stuff they had in them—like ‘the sun in the belly’” (of Picasso) (Jag Mohan, 1990, p. 59). Vaidya was here reiterating the phrase from Sastry’s And I Make Short Films and applying it to a wide swathe of film professionals at FD. It emerges as an institutional referential code to capture the peculiar condition of the filmmaker’s artistic engagement with film while negotiating the maze of the bureaucratic mechanism.

The Palimpsestic Visage of the Government Film

Mandate does not trickle down from top to bottom in a linear trajectory. It involves a complex and even rhizomatic route as the state institution is a complex set of mechanisms, which works sometimes in an orchestrated but more often in an arbitrary and indeterminate way to meet the mandate. This (un)coordinated effort comes across as a peculiarly dysfunctional mechanism. FD was assailed by a lack of resources, and interference by ministers, ministerial consultants, and institutions like FAB. The study of documentary and short film needs to expand from its established framework to include the bureaucratic mechanisms, institutional dysfunctionalities and incapacities, and also to the periodic emergence of innovative strategies within this matrix.

However, the objective of film as a useful medium, to follow Acland and Wasson’s formulation in Useful Cinema (2011), needs to be retained even when we move to the particular decade that came to be defined by an experimentation with form and content (Acland & Wasson, 2011). The uses assigned to documentary films need to be understood as multifaceted in the years following the mid-1960s in India. These include making “honest mistakes” and experimentation to learn the art of cinema; harnessing the creative imagination of filmmakers within the ambit of government responsibility; and in the important dimension of the changing mandate, from telling people about the nation to probing into their problems and eliciting their viewpoint through films. The task of “informing and educating people” needs to be analyzed in terms of different viewpoints, such as the perspective of bureaucratic and enlightened administrators as well as both the imaginative and more matter-of-fact filmmakers, as these people were actually following the model, modifying it, or engaging with it in creative ways.

Government film emerges as a complicated site to explore film practice. In the particular practice focused on in this article, I have suggested that it is possible to study certain experiments and formal practices of a particular time and space not as mere aberrations, but as something that emerges from complex shifts in institutional practice. I locate it in a layered body of film uses, a palimpsest, in which new forms arising from a regime of the permissible and the filmmaker’s creative engagement need to be situated in the bureaucratic catacombs of older lineage. They also need to be located amidst the shifts in the clout of different government departments, networks of power and access, and political patronage enjoyed by administrators and filmmakers.