Category Archives: History & Heritage

History, heritage, public memory is the most recurring theme of my work. Here are some of the stories.

History & Heritage, Research

Dilip Kumar’s Jugnu & the moral panic in newly independent india.

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While the masses loved it, the elite were riled up by Jugnu’s provocative framing of sexuality and depiction of college as a space for free intermingling of sexes. Several provincial governments banned the film, forcing the distributors to chop it drastically to rid it of ‘vulgarity’.

The singing star Noor Jehan’s depature for Pakistan with her husband Shaukat Hussein Rizvi, who was the producer-director of Jugnu, may have contributed to lack of sympathy for the film among decision makers in India.

ATIKH RASHID

Jugnu (Firefly, 1947) was an important film in many respects. It was the first box office success for Dilip Kumar, then a newbie in the industry, and the last film of singing star Noor Jehan before she permanently left Bombay for Karachi. Jugnu was peculiar in another regard. It was among a few films that were conceptualised and made in pre-independence India but were released in theatres after the dawn of Independence and the pain of Partition.

The response to Jugnu – the love it received from the masses, the ‘moral panic’ it evoked among the elite, and the punitive action it invited from the young government – was an outcome of the time of transition that the country was going through. It also set the tone for the censorship project that Independent India would embark on –aiming to protect the ‘fragile morality’ of the ‘gullible masses’ – and continues to obsess itself with even today.

The present-day audience would likely judge Jugnu as a run-of-the-mill romantic comedy (which like many latter films of Dilip Kumar ends in a tragedy) that ticks some boxes and misses a few. The film produced and directed by Shaukat Husain Rizvi, then-husband of Noor Jehan, has a simple story. Dilip Kumar’s Suraj and Noor Jehan’s Jugnu study in separate colleges located on the same campus and fall in love. Jugnu is an orphan and Suraj is the only son of an ostensibly rich raisaheb who has accumulated debt. The family has planned to marry Suraj to a girl from a wealthy family hoping to receive dowry that will end their financial troubles. The circumstances mean that the lovers can’t marry each other and must feign unfaithfulness. The mutual heartbreak, ultimately, leads the couple to their tragic ends.

Those against the film objected to, among other sequences, this scene in which Jugnu and Suraj indulge in a flirtatious chit chat hiding behind a sofa in the latter’s home.

Although a mixed bag in terms of performances, the film is salvaged by the comedic episodes in the first half and a couple of good songs in the latter.

While the newspaper advertisements from the time tell us that the film, branded as ‘The Song of the Youth’, was celebrating ‘Silver Jubilees’ in multiple cities, it was also evoking an adverse response from the elite for depicting ‘college’ as a place of the intermingling of the sexes, and its provocative framing of youthful sexuality. It portrayed Indian youngsters as carefree romantics for whom the only thing that mattered was the success and failure in love.

Another topic of contention, repeatedly raised by its critics, was its depiction of a romance between the ladies’ hostel matron, played by Ruby Myers, and a professor from the boys’ college. There were still others who blamed it for slandering India’s higher education institutions by not focussing at all on learning activities that, ideally, should go on in a college.

The song ‘Loot Jawani Phir Nahin Aani’ performed by Latika in the film as part of the college drama was a major point of criticism. Many objected to the lyrics as well as “vulgar”, “nude”, “courtesan-like” performance by Latika.

A peek into the archive tells us that popular periodicals like Filmindia were routinely receiving letters from its English speaking readers complaining about Jugnu. While some wondered how such a ‘vulgar film’ was cleared by the Censor Board. Others demanded that it should be re-examined. Readers would reproduce the lyrics of an entire song (Loot Jawani…) to prove their point of Jugnu’s indecency and its portrayal of college girls as ‘courtesans’. Even Indians residing in Singapore and Colombo wrote with angst that the film was spreading the “wrong impression about college life in India”.

“Believe me, Mr Patel. The whole audience was exasperated – barring a few perhaps – when they saw a college girl dancing with the full garb of vulgarity in a drama staged in the college… Patrons of Indian films here like good stories with melodious songs and not historical distortions and semi-nude dances,” wrote M T Piyaseela from Colombo, in a letter published in the October 1948 issue.

Shiv Das Singh, a student from Jodhpur, feared that Jugnu might affect his educational prospects. “What would be the effect on our parents’ minds seeing the film…Will our parents then be ready to allow us to continue our studies further?” he wondered.

After a successful north India run, Jugnu was released at Bombay’s Capitol Cinema on October 1, 1948 but was pulled off the theatre within four weeks “in the midst of its triumphant run” after Filmindia editor Baburao Patel wrote a scathing review headlined ‘Jugnu: A dirty, disgusting, vulgar picture!’.

“Jugnu…tells us that college life in India is nothing more than a long sex hunt in which boys chase girls, explore their hand bags, rob their tiffin boxes and sing suggestive love ditties while making vulgar gestures; while girls sigh about heavily, seduce boys to tea, pimp for their friends, puncture their cycle tyres and sing songs of frustrated love,” Patel wrote in the review, adding, “no decent exhibitor with any pride for his profession or any self-respect should exhibit it in his theatre.”

Interestingly, Patel was Noor Jehan’s neighbour in Oomer Park, Warden Road, Bombay.

In fact, Patel informs us in the review, that he had sent an ‘advanced copy’ of the write up to the then Bombay Home Minister Morarji Desai who watched the film on October 26 and issued a ban three days later under Section 21 of General Clauses Act of 1897. This led to a lot of protests from the film producers and distributors for the ‘arbitrary action’ by the Home Minister on a film already cleared by a ‘full board’ of the censors, but to no avail.

The romance between hostel matron played by Ruby Myers and a professor from boy’s college was a major cause of the films popularity among the youth. It, on the other hand, also added to Jugnu‘s trouble with the government.

After Bombay, several other provincial governments banned the film. The distributor – Bharat Pictures, Akola – was forced to re-submit the film for certification where it was chopped off significantly. Records show that when the film obtained its first Censor certificate from the Bombay Board of Film Certification on July 7, 1947, its total length was 14,093 feet. After revisions made following the ban, it was reduced to 11,559 feet. In terms of the run time, the film lost 28 minutes of its original duration of 156 minutes. The film returned to the screens after a few months in truncated form.

In many ways, the extent of criticism that Jugnu received seems disproportionate to the provocation contained in the film. This response can be understood in two contexts. Firstly, the elite discourse in the newly-Independent India was focused on ‘nation building’, a project that would require the energies and services of the youth. Jugnu’s celebration of youngsters as carefree lads inclined to shrug off responsibility in favour of romantic pursuits did not go well with the government and others with a say.

Secondly, the decision by the film’s female lead Noor Jehan and producer-director Rizvi to choose Pakistan over India left little sympathy for them and their product among the Indian elite. For example, in its review of Jugnu, Patel made a misplaced and far-fetched connection between director Shaukat Rizvi and Qasim Rizvi, the head of extremist, separatist Razakar movement in Hyderabad.

In the pages of Filmindia, which was the most powerful film magazine at the time, Muslim filmmakers who were travelling between India and Pakistan in the fog of the Partition (some of which decided to stay back in India) are repeatedly referred to as ‘fifth columnists’ who need to be watched to ensure that “they do not use the powerful medium of the films” for nefarious purposes.

“The censors must watch carefully such anti-social and anti-religious activities of these fanatic producers who live with us to stab us from day to day,” warns an editorial in the November 1948 issue of Filmindia.

Notwithstanding the legal and circumstantial impediments, Jugnu went on to become one of the biggest films of the time and launched Dilip Kumar’s career in the true sense. In fact, it was a large poster of Jugnu put up in Bandra that broke the news to Ghulam Sarwar ‘Agha’, the fruit seller from Peshawar, that his son Yusuf had entered the film business and had become a star.

(This story appeared on indianexpress.com as ‘How Dilip Kumar’s Jugnu lost 28 minutes to confused morality of a young India’ on July 17 2021)

History & Heritage

Shyam Benegal’s Trikal and the ghosts of Portuguese occupation of Goa

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Stills from Feitiço do Império (1940), Saat Hindustani (1969) and Trikal (1985)

The story of the liberation of Goa, a former Portuguese colony, and its aftermath on the politics and culture of this coastal region occupies only a small corner of Indian history, almost difficult to spot, and is barely recognised in the collective Indian memory.

I recently watched the Portuguese film Feitiço do Império (1940), a propaganda feature made during the Salazar dictatorship to promote the Estado Novo regime’s imperial agenda. While watching the film, I kept anticipating the appearance of Goa as Luís Morais, the film’s protagonist, travels through Portugal’s colonies, crossing African landscapes, encountering big-game wildlife, and observing exoticised portrayals of native populations. Yet he never visits Goa, Damão, or Diu. It seems that, for the Portuguese state at the time, the larger African colonies were considered far more important than the smaller eastern enclaves, such as Goa, and therefore more worthy of inclusion in this propaganda film.

To find how the Portuguese state saw Goa and its forced severance by Indian state in 1961, I turned to Cinemateca Digital, the Portuguese cinematheque portal, but didn’t find much that would meet my interest. There were only cursory mentions to Goa in news bulletins on evolving military situation during late 1950s and early 1960s but of very little depth.

Finally, I turned eastwards and wondered: How has the prolific Indian cinema looked at this event?
I was surprised to find that Indian cinema, especially the dominant Mumbai-based Hindi commercial film industry, which is infamous for sidestepping political issues and staying far removed from contentious social and political developments—has engaged with the Goan story quite directly. Quantitatively, however, the attention it has received is minuscule.

Two feature films deal directly with the history of the former Portuguese colony, the anti-colonial struggle in this coastal enclave, and its final ‘liberation’ by the Indian army in 1961. The first is ‘Saat Hindustani‘ (Seven Indians) made by Khwaja Ahmed Abbas in 1969 and the other is Trikal (titled in English as ‘Past, Present and Future’) made by celebrated director of ‘Indian new wave’ Shyam Benegal in 1985.

The first, although produced independently, takes the form of a propaganda film and, curiously or coincidently, employs narrative techniques that are not very different than those used by Antonio Ribeiro: seven Indians coming from different regions, religions and political ideologies join hands to wage a covert war against Portuguese oppression in Goa in the midst of the anti-colonial movement in late 1950s. The characters and the regions from which they come represent struggles and tensions within the Indian union over religion, language, and ethnicities. The film tries to emphasise the cohesiveness of Indian union and the fight against Portuguese as a higher call against an outside enemy despite local differences. Like Ribeiro, Abbas also mixes documentary and fiction formats in the film.

The second film – Benegal’s Trikal – is breathtaking in the historic depth, empathy, and nuance with which it deals with the complex subject and the ideas of change, loss, trauma of the past, and the past’s ability to influence the present and the future.  The fiction film is set in the tumultuous year 1961, just a few months before the Indian takeover of Goa in December 1961.

Screengrabs from the film showing the change in fate for Sousa Suarez family home. From a well kept family mansion to an abandoned ghost house.

The film’s central plot revolves around a feudal Goan-Catholic family – Souza-Soares – and the family head, Dona Maria, who is in denial of her husband’s death as well as the imminent Indian takeover of Goa. The family is desperate to marry Maria’s granddaughter Anna to a young doctor who has settled in Lisbon, but the young girl is in awe of another relative, Leon, who has joined the Goan liberation movement against the family’s wishes. With Dona Maria attached to the past and unwilling to let go of the traditions, the younger generation seems eager to violate her wishes to find life away from the family house as they grapple with their loyalties—whether to Portugal, an independent Goa, or India.

In the film, the family home—the Souza-Soares mansion— and its deceased patriarch Ernesto Souza Soares, serve as metaphors for the Portuguese Colonial state in Goa. As the house and its occupants lose relevance for the local community – both Hindu and Catholic Goans – who are increasingly swept up in nationalist fervour, its residents grow anxious, even fractured, facing the impending takeover by the Indian army. The mansion also becomes a site where suppressed histories resurface, including Portuguese brutality against local revolutionaries during the native struggle, as well as those committed during the prolonged Catholic inquisition. The house’s eventual decay (shown when Pereira visits it 25 years later) seems to be telling the audience that Goa’s Portuguese past interests only historians and archaeologists.

Ernesto’s widow –  Dona Maria – seems unwilling to acknowledge the death of her husband even after going through all the rituals of the transference of the souls from this world to the hereafter. The husband’s death seems to have incapacitated her, and she suspends all her familiar affairs, announcing a moratorium.

Dona Maria Souza Suarez sits in her room listening to fado record by Amalia Rodrigues as the rest of thee family gathers around the mortal remains of her husband.

She takes the help of shaman practices – seances held through the help of Milagrenia (an illegitimate child of her husband employed as a housemaid in the mansion) as a medium – to contact her dead husband, which never succeeds. What’s important is that her efforts to contact the husband are mirrored with hope expressed by some of the characters in the film that the Portuguese government will intervene and will never allow the Indian state to ‘invade’ Goa. As it turns out, both of these expectations turn out to be futile.

Salazar orders the Goan government and citizens of Goa to fight until the last breath. The governor general Manuel António Vassalo e Silva, seeing the futility of resisting 40,000 Indian soldiers with 3,500 at his disposal, disregards the ‘orders’ and surrenders to the Indian army on December 19 1961.

The seances held by Dona Maria, however, have a result contrary to her expectations.

Director Benegal uses the séance episodes to deal with the problematics of memory and history and how different sides of a conflict remember and mythologise different and contradictory narratives.

The seances held by Dona Maria summon Vijay Singh Rane’s soul instead of Ernesto’s. Rane recalls his torture and murder at the hands of the Portuguese government.

The seances conjure the ghosts of Vijay Singh Rane and Kushtoba Rane (instead of her husband’s), the latter an anti-colonial bandit who was captured by the Portuguese authorities with the help of Dona Maria’s grandfather — a Portuguese loyalist –  forcing her to confront her family’s – and by association Portuguese state’s violent past. This unintended encounter reveals how suppressed histories resurface, disrupting colonial nostalgia.

Rane, painfully, recalls the cultural erasure caused by centuries of Catholic inquisition that snatched away his community’s traditions and ‘even names’. Dona Maria, perturbed by these uneasy accusations, shouts: Why are you telling me this? I know nothing about this.” – highlighting the history bubble that surrounds her. She eventually abandons the seances, perhaps, with her coming to terms with the complex history of her family’s legacy.

Dr Pereira (left) rubbishes the possibility of an ‘independent Goa’ like Switzerland.

After Ernesto’s funeral, the family doctor – Mr Pereira – who has been portrayed as someone who has resigned to the ‘new reality’ of Goa ( or is he an opportunist who has shifted his loyalties?) – raises a toast “not with Scotch, but with our native pheni”. He refers to Ernesto’s death as the departure of “the Goa that they knew until now” and that a new regime will soon take over. At a dinner later, he insists to others at the table that one’s culture is the culture where one is born and that Salazar doesn’t care about Goa because he sent all his army to rescue the African colonies.

Anna, the grand daughter, is engaged to Lisbon-based doctor Erasmo but she is in love with anti-colonial revolutionary Leon, who is hiding in the basement of the mansion. The engagement breaks after she is found pregnant. Leon and Anna then elope – ironically – to Portugal to start a new life after India annexes Goa.

By the end of the film, Dona Maria seems to have undergone some change in her attitude. In the beginning, she seems incapable of dealing with Ernesto’s loss (and hence by association the Portuguese Goa). “I feel that if I forget Ernesto’s face, I will forget mine. If he is gone, what will be left for me?” she wonders at his funeral. By the end, she seems to have – even if passively – accepted the change as she expresses her approval of her granddaughter’s decision to leave and make a life elsewhere.

Cinephilia, History & Heritage

Musings on ‘City symphony’ films

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Still from ‘Lisboa, Crónica Anedótica (1930), Dir: José Leitão de Barros

ATIKH RASHID

I like most city symphony films: Dziga Vertov’s eccentric, stylized, and self-aware The Man with the Movie Camera (1929), Walter Ruttman’s vibrant portrayal of the rhythm and energy of a single day in Berlin: Symphony of a Great City, and oris Ivens’s Rain (1929), a lyrical and atmospheric portrait of Amsterdam that transforms a passing rainstorm into a study of urban movement, texture, and light.


In this company, Leitão de Barros’s Lisbôa, Cronica Anedótica (1930), is a peculiar exception. It creates a poetic montage of the lives of various dwellers of Lisbon, like the other great city symphony films made elsewhere and before it. In addition, it incorporates staged visuals that set it apart from other symphony films.


I have often wondered what a city symphony film of an Indian city would look like. Each of the great cities of India in the second and third decades of the 20th century would have made great material for a symphony film: Bombay, Delhi, Calcutta, and Madras. Full of activity and brimming with political excitement, they were just a decade or two shy of freedom from colonial rule.

Screengrab from Panorama of Calcutta, India, from the River Ganges (1899) often credited to John “Mad Jack” Benett-Stanford.


India did have a filmmaking practice since the beginning of the 20th century, but it’s true that most of the films that were made during this period were made by westerners: British, French, or American filmmakers who headed to India with a camera to shoot it as an exotic land or as the “crown jewel of the British Empire.”


Numerous actualité and travel films were produced by companies such as Pathé and Gaumont which presented India less as a lived social reality and more as a spectacle to be consumed by audiences in Europe and North America. As film historians have noted, these early films often privileged scenes of religious ritual, bustling bazaars, royal processions, and picturesque landscapes, framing the subcontinent through a colonial gaze that emphasized difference, wonder, and imperial possession rather than everyday life.


Although there are no city symphony films for any of the Indian cities, if one looks through the archives, one may find that there’s some proto-city-symphony material that was shot in India by visiting filmmakers, and some of that material survives.

For instance, one of the earliest films shot in India, called Panorama of Calcutta (1899), does have the ethos, at least visually, of a symphony film. However, as has been pointed out by scholars, the visuals that one sees are not even from Calcutta but from a town (Benaras) almost 700 km to the west.

As Robin Baker wonders, “Maybe the cameraman got confused about his travels, or perhaps the company thought a more familiar name might be more tempting for audiences?”

The absence of an Indian symphony film is partially resolved when British-Indian filmmaker Sandhya Suri uses the ‘India on Film’ footage made available by the British Film Institute (BFI) in 2016 as part of the celebrations to mark the centenary of the Indian film industry to make Around India with a Movie Camera in 2018. She repurposes the visuals captured in India by British, French, and Indian cameramen to decolonise the gaze and create a symphony set to freshly composed Indian music of life in India before Independence.

Stills from Around India with a Movie Camera (2018) Dir: Sandhya Suri


A striking moments in Suri’s film is her use of footage from the Delhi Durbar of 1911, particularly the appearance of Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad III of Baroda. Historical accounts confirm that Gaekwad caused controversy by allegedly offering only a perfunctory bow to King George V and Queen Mary and turning away hastily, an act that was widely interpreted by colonial authorities and the British press as a breach of imperial protocol.


By incorporating this footage into her film, Suri invites viewers to look beyond the spectacle of imperial grandeur and attend instead to the tensions, ambiguities, and acts of dissent embedded within the colonial archive. In her hands, images originally produced to celebrate imperial rule are recontextualised to reveal the unseen tensions that prevailed at this historic moment and highlight the fragility of authority and the presence of Indian agency within spaces designed to display colonial dominance.

History & Heritage

National Film Archive of India seeks donations for digitisation, restoration of films

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Donors will get recognition in the form of credit in the opening slate of the restored and digitised film. 

ATIKH RASHID

National Film Archive of India, which is now a part of the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC), has sought funds in the form of sponsorships and donations for carrying out film digitisation and restoration projects.

Donors – who could be individuals, corporates, institutions or state governments – will be able to contribute towards digitisation of films which costs around Rs 2.55 lakh per film (120 minutes) as well as towards restoration which costs around Rs 27.40 lakh per film.

In return, donors will get recognition in the form of credit in the opening slate of the restored and digitised film. They will also get a memento for promoting the cause of film preservation and will also get their name in the ‘NFDC-NFAI platinum supporters’ list.

“The digitisation and restoration of films, that will happen through funds received through donations, will be in addition to the work being done under the National Film Heritage Mission (NFHM) which is currently under progress at the National Film Archive of India,” an NFDC official said.

Launched in January 2017, NFHM aims to carry out preventive conservation of 1.32 lakh film reels held by the film archive, undertake film condition assessment of the reels, digitisation of carefully prioritised 1,345 feature films and 2,768 short films as well as restoration of 1,145 feature and 1,108 short films.

Officials said that under the project, so far, 180 films are in the process of restoration while 3,700 films, including short films, are being digitised.

In March 2022, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (I&B) notified the merger of four media units — Films Division (FD), Directorate of Film Festivals (DFF), National Film Archives of India (NFAI) and Children’s Film Society, India (CFSI) with the NFDC.

The NFDC, a PSU working under the ministry, was given the mandate for the production of documentaries and short films, organisation of film festivals and preservation of celluloid heritage. The move, it was said, was undertaken to bring “convergence of activities and resources and better coordination, thereby ensuring synergy and efficiency in achieving the mandate of each media unit”.

History & Heritage

The forgotten art of Poonah Painting that kept women busy in Victorian England

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An example of ‘Poonah Painting’ also known as Theorem Painting. Credit: British Library

ATIKH RASHID

It’s unlikely that anyone in Pune today would have heard of an art form called ‘Poonah Painting’, although this art, which flourished in Victorian England, was named after the city. The craft was extremely popular in 19th-century England but later declined into oblivion.

Poonah Painting was a kind of stencilling that involved the imitation of Oriental artwork, particularly in the depiction of flowers, birds, and other natural subjects. The craft was popular among women and, for a considerable period, considered an essential part of a girl’s education in elite English society. The style was also called Theorem Painting or Oriental Tinting.

The popularity of Poonah Painting in England during the era could be attributed to its ability to mimic the aesthetics of Oriental art, which was highly sought after at the time. This artistic technique provided a way for artists to create visually striking and intricate designs on various surfaces, including paper, silk, velvet, crepe, and light-coloured wood.

A Meticulous Process

To create a Poonah Painting, one required what was called Poonah Paper, a kind of tracing paper, and a Poonah Brush, a stompy, round-headed brush. Many establishments trained young girls in the craft, and advertisements to this effect can be found in newspapers and magazines of that era.

An illustration from a 19th-century women’s magazine depicting a woman busy doing a Poonah work.

The process involved the meticulous tracing of objects, cutting, and layering to achieve a visually striking effect.

As per The Lady’s Book (1831), the process began with laying a piece of Poonah Paper over the original subject, such as flowers, fruit, or butterflies, and the outlines of each colour were marked using a steel point. These outlines were then cut out, either with a sharp-pointed penknife or specialised tools designed for this purpose.

Another piece of tracing paper was then used to mark and cut out the compartments for each colour. This process was repeated until a series of frames with openings through which a specific colour could be applied to the paper were created.

The main template was then placed on a drawing board, and the colour was applied using a flat Poonah Brush held perpendicularly. Then, one after the other, all the frames were placed, and colours were applied using separate brushes. Shading was achieved by gradually reducing the amount of colour on the brush and applying it from the edges as needed.

Women from rich households would often embellish the paintings by giving touches of gold or ruby bronze to the wings or bodies of insects. A mixture of gum water and the desired metallic powder was brushed onto the paper, followed by the application of dry gold or bronze powder, which was rubbed until smooth and polished.

A ‘Frivolous’ Art?

Since Poonah Painting was not drawing and painting in the truest sense, and it was exclusively seen as a women’s activity, it was often looked down upon. It was also linked to vanity among women. Evidence of this can be found in 19th-century literature.

A damask rose done in Poonah style.

William Makepeace Thackeray, the author of Vanity Fair, wrote to his would-be wife, Miss Isabella Shawe, in July 1836, justifying calling her “frivolous” in an earlier letter. He described a “frivolous lady” as one who “occupies herself all day with the house and servants” or “someone who does nothing but Poonah Painting and pianoforte”.

In a short story titled Madame Gerald, published in the magazine All the Year Round, edited by Charles Dickens, the author describes the Poonah works as “hideous daubs” of paint.

Edward Fitzgerald, the Victorian poet known for translating Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat, lists qualities of a girl in whom he takes a romantic interest in a poem titled Because:

“Because you don’t object to walk,
And are not given to fainting;
Because you have not learnt to talk
Of flowers and Poonah-painting.”

In the second half of the 19th century, the craft was in decline in England, and by the late 1860s, it was almost forgotten. Hints of this can be found in a short story published in Tinsley’s Magazine in 1868, in which the author, while describing the heroine, writes:

“…Also, she touched harp with grace, if not with accuracy; and she was adept at a fearful art of torturing flowers which has happily survived in our days only as a name, as a mystery, still darkly whispered of as ‘Poonah painting’.”

(The article was published on The Indian Express website on June 28, 2023, and can be accessed here)

History & Heritage

Migrant workers return home against all odds — only to be seen as carriers of the virus

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They braved a brutal journey home, only to find themselves unwelcome in the villages they once called home—a bitter fate now confronting millions of returning migrant workers.
Migrant families climb a truck in Pune before it leaves for Uttar Pradesh. (Express photo by Arul Horizon)

Atikh Rashid | May 20, 2020 8:02:18 pm

Riyaz Ali, a 25-year-old migrant labourer working in Pune, knew “two-days” was the distance between him and his family back in Uttar Pradesh’s Rampur district. That’s the time he would take by train. However, when he set out for home last week to escape the hardships triggered by the lockdown, he found out – for the first time – that Rampur was 1,460 km away and it could even turn out to be a journey of “full seven days”.

Riyaz had to camp on the highway on Pune outskirts for two days before he could board a bus running illegally to Lucknow and after paying three times the usual fare. When he reached Lucknow, he squeezed in with 20-odd passengers of an ‘essential supplies’ tempo carrying wheat-flour bags for another five hours before he could finally make it.

Once home, an exhausted Riyaz “ate like a horse” and then slept for “a day and a night” straight. He woke up to a ruckus outside his door.

A neighbour, who was also a distant relative, had come to know of Riyaz’s return from ‘Covid-19 hotspot’ Pune and was quarrelling with the family for letting Riyaz return and “put everyone in the village in harms’ way”.

Riyaz showed him a medical certificate he had obtained before leaving Pune that stated he had no COVID-19 symptoms and also offered to be quarantined for 14 days in the village school.

Nothing would, however, calm down the neighbour. “People go to the city when they want money and run to the village when in danger,” was his refrain.

The neighbour, said Riyaz, had previously requested him to look for work for his son in Pune. “Now this same person is treating me as if I have committed a crime by going away to earn,” said Riyaz over the phone from his village in Tanda tehsil of Rampur district.

Riyaz Ali before he left for Rampur. (Express Photo by Atikh Rashid)

Rushing home against all odds only to discover that you are no longer welcome is a predicament being faced by many among the millions of migrant workers who have returned, and are still in the process of returning, to their native places in the wake of the pandemic.

Owing to the highly contagious nature of the disease, there is a change in people’s attitude towards the migrants who traditionally spend eight to 10 months in the metro cities and return home for a few months every year.

Because of the nature of their engagement with the city, the migrant workers do not have any permanent accommodation in the city and are forced to return to their villages.

The locals and the administration are worried that the return of migrants, especially from cities like Mumbai, Pune and Delhi, which have seen the worst outbreaks of COVID-19 in the country, will result in a spike in cases in rural communities.

In Uttar Pradesh, according to the administration, the local health workers are surveying the returned migrants and testing those who show primary symptoms. On May 18, 44 workers who had returned from Pune to Basti district two days earlier in a truck, were found positive.

Migrant numbers

Most of the interstate migrants in India come from 64 districts of Middle Ganga Plains comprising eastern Uttar Pradesh and some of the poorest districts of Bihar. Apart from this, other source states for migrants are Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Orissa and West Bengal.

R B Bhagat, Professor and Head of the Department of the Migration and Urban Studies at International Institute of Population Sciences (IIPS), Mumbai, estimates that there are 15 million temporary and circulatory migrants in the country who work at urban areas away from their place of origin. They are mostly employed in the construction sector, manufacturing or work as street vendors and hawkers and in various informal sectors in the urban economy.

COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdown has badly affected this lot which is returning home or waiting to return. Altogether, the number of returnees will be close to 25 million, which includes about 15 million circulatory migrants and about 10 million semi-permanent migrants.

Professor Tahir Thachil of Vanderbilt University (USA) says the circular migrants – those who go to the metros for work but return to their homes for a few months every year – remain deeply rooted in their villages. They live and work in inhospitable conditions in the cities and also face harassment at the hands of police or local elites. When the only motive, namely work opportunity, of enduring these hardships is hampered, it’s only natural for them to want to return home.

According to Prof Bhagat, the “fear in the village communities” about the spread of the virus due to returning migrants is not widespread and that the situation could have been better had the return of the migrants was “better-planned”.

“The return has created some fear in the village communities. However, they are receiving immense support in many places where they are kept in schools or outskirts of the villages and the villagers are providing them with food during the quarantine period. A planned return and rehabilitation with the family will be more effective in containing the spread of COVID-19 than being left wandering helplessly in the urban areas,” Prof Bhagat told The Indian Express.

Quarantine: A cause for trouble in the village

With hordes of migrants, students and others returning to villages, the unwillingness shown by some of them to go into quarantine as a precautionary measure are causing frictions within village communities. This, locals and officials say, is leading to quarrels and, in some cases, even resurfacing of old caste-linked or political animosities.

Maharashtra governmetnt has asked the village panchayats to institutionally quaratnine all returning migrants from Pune, Mumbai, Nagpur, Nashik and Aurangabad.

Not only inter-state migration but even inter-district reverse-migration caused by the pandemic, is becoming a reason for discord in the rural areas, local officials and migrants who have returned home recently say.

For example, in Shirur Kasar village in Beed district of Maharashtra, a Dalit man was assaulted by a group of upper-caste residents after his son, being a member of the Vigilance Committee, decided to send two upper-caste families to an institutional quarantine facility upon their return from Aurangabad, about 125 km away from Beed.

Subhash Waghmare told the police that they threatened to kill his family before slapping him in the village market: “Why did your son send us to quarantine? There are only two houses of your community in the village. We will finish you off!”

On May 18, a First Information Report (FIR) was registered at Nila village in Parbhani District against several men who assaulted a lower-caste sarpanch for allegedly giving preferential treatment to a lower-caste family while quarantining them.

Rahul Gangarde, who works as a gram sevak (panchayat secretary) in Ahmednagar district’s Parner taluka, says caste tensions, political skirmishes and scuffles over quarantining the returning migrants have become common.

“It’s a big headache for us. It’s triggering old political rivalries and enmities over land disputes and we are left with resolving those than working on taking preventive measures. Similarly, public workers such as health department staffers, Asha Workers and Anganwadi Sevikas are being targeted by residents for informing the administration about a returning migrant,” said Gangarde.

‘Won’t’ return to the city any time soon

As migrant labourers return in overcrowded trucks, pedalling bicycles or on foot, they point out that the loss of wages due to lockdown did not affect them so much as the inconvenience and pain caused by having to depend on donated food packets for meals and the arduous journeys back home.

“Those returning now won’t be back for a long time. We are exasperated by the pain they had to endure this time,” said Ahmed, a migrant worker from Basti in Uttar Pradesh.

Many migrants were forced to walk for hundreds of kilometres owing to unavailability of transport. (Express Photo by Arul Horizon)

Many believe that this is an opportunity for the government to redesign India’s metro-centred economy into a more sustainable and balanced design, by boosting rural and agriculture-related sectors.

According to them, as the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on work conditions is expected to remain for a year or two, rural areas can emerge as ‘safer sectors’ for shifting of economic activity due to their better potential for observing social distancing than dense urban centres.

Work in this direction, they say, can be started by tweaking the policies governing agro-industries, livestock, fisheries and using these sectors to provide the much-needed impetus to the economy.Work in this direction, they say, can be started by tweaking the policies governing agro-industries, livestock, fisheries and using these sectors to provide the much-needed impetus to the economy.Work in this direction, they say, can be started by tweaking the policies governing agro-industries, livestock, fisheries and using these sectors to provide the much-needed impetus to the economy.

For this, focussed efforts need to be taken for setting up of cottage industries and service-based micro-enterprises.

“Although the recently announced MSME (Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises) package under which government is taking loan guarantees is one step, much more needs to be done including the establishment of new agro-based industry units, supporting self-help group driven economic activities and use of technology to empower the enterprising villagers,” said Pappu.

In absence of these efforts, the lack of opportunities in rural areas will force these migrants to take up the journeys again to the cities – however unwillingly, experts say.

“Migration, particularly of circulatory nature, is a survival strategy. In the absence of the infrastructure facilities in these areas, the MSMEs are not going to crop up. If the infrastructural needs aren’t met, the employment opportunities will not grow in these areas and the migrants will have no other option but to again return to the abject working conditions of the cities and engage in works that are dirty, dangerous, and difficult (3D). For them, it is like choosing between the devil and the deep sea,” said Prof Bhagat.

(This report was published on indianexpress.com on May 20 2020. It can be accessed here.)

History & Heritage

Know what’s National Film Heritage Misson: A project to save over 100 years of Indian cinema

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They claimed that after the Maoists died, the police personnel pumped a few bullets into the bodies of some cadres and threw them into Indravati river while saying that the toll could go up in post-operation searches.

Set up in the 1960s to preserve India’s cinematic heritage and promote film-related research, the NFAI has, for the last couple of years, been implementing the National Film Heritage Mission (NFHM), an ambitious programme to restore, digitise and store all Indian films and film-related material for future generations. Atikh Rashid explains why this mission was needed, its objectives, and the progress that has been made so far.

Barely six months after the very first show of motion picture was held by Louis and Auguste Lumière in December 1895 in Paris, the moving images arrived in India. In July 1896, a show dubbed “marvel of the century” was held at the Watson’s Hotel in Mumbai. Since the early times (feature films happened much later), the movies have documented India and the lives of its people. The audio-visual medium of cinema has a unique ability to document what it sees with immediacy and accuracy. which is unique to the craft of cinema. Over generations, cinema – fiction or non-fiction – has documented in direct or indirect manner the way Preservation of these moving images, hence, is preservation of historic documents.

The Mission

In February 1964, I&B Ministry established the National Film Archive of India in Pune with an aim to trace, acquire and preserve, for posterity, the heritage of national cinema and a representative collection of world cinema. By the turn of the century, the NFAI had collected as many as 1,32000 film reels or around 22,500 films.

However, there was a lack of adequate funding as well as want of sufficient facilities to preserve the films in an ideal manner. With NFHM, which was proposed in 2009, sanctioned in 2014 and finally launched in 2016, the government planned to take stock of the health of the surviving films, initiate conservation and repair of the damaged films, and fast track the digitisation and restoration of important selected films so that they could be made available to the public for viewing.

The Backlog

Between 1913 and 1931, an estimated 1,300 silent feature films were made in India, of which only seven full-length films and partial footage of 23 films could be found and procured by NFAI. A lot of this content was lost at the hands of producers who saw no point in preserving a film after it had finished its commercial role and sometimes even preferring to sell the reels to people who melted it to extract silver.

The Challenge

Film negatives and prints are perishable items as they have a tendency to destroy themselves. Nitrate prints — very few of them are left with NFAI after a fire incident in 2003 — are highly inflammable while acetate base films decompose if not kept in controlled conditions of temperature and humidity. Preserving films in a tropical country like India is much more challenging as maintaining the requisite temperature (10 to 12 degrees Celsius for colour films, and 2 degrees Celsius for B&W) and humidity levels (30 to 45 percent RH) inside the vaults is a very costly and cumbersome affair.

The Tasks

NFHM will work in phases to meet its objectives, which include preventive conservation of 1.32 lakh film reels, undertaking film condition assessment of the reels, digitisation of carefully prioritised 1,345 feature films and 2,768 short films as well as restoration of 1,145 feature and 1,108 short films. Among other objectives of NFHM is construction of more and better vaults as well as upgradation of existing vaults.

The first phase of the mission, for which contract has been granted to the Chennai-based Prasad Labs, is the film assessment project under which health of all the film reels held by NFAI will be checked on various parameters. Results of this will decide the future course of action. Since NFAI has very limited staff — about 25 people including those on deputation — it hired a private firm as the project management unit for NFHM.

The Progress

Prasad Labs started work in January 2017 and was supposed to finish by November 2017. As per information provided by NFAI, the project is far from over as the Archive is suffering from a shortage of material needed for assessment and repair processes.
Apart from this, I&B Ministry’s displeasure over the way funds are being spent and works being prioritised has also caused it to set up a review committee, which will conduct a financial and physical review of the project. Until the committee submits it report, the contract of award for future works can’t be carried out.

(This story appeared in The Indian Express on May 1 2018. It’s digital version can be accessed here.)

History & Heritage

A long journey

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Marathi biopic Anandi Gopal traces the life of India’s first female doctor Anandibai Joshee, her whimsical husband and their journey together

Andandee’s picture from Caroline Healy Dall book ‘The Life of D r. Anandabai Joshee: A Kinswoman of the Pundita Ramabai’

IN 1878, when Anandibai Joshee was 14, she gave birth to her first and only child. The baby lived for 10 days. This was five years before her departure for New York to study medicine, the first Indian woman to do so, at Woman’s Medical College in Pennsylvania. According to Caroline Healy Dall, who wrote her biography, the death of the infant sowed the seed for her wanting to become a doctor.

“A child’s death does its father no harm. But the mother doesn’t want it to die,” she wrote to a friend. Anandi had married Gopal Joshee when she was nine, left for USA when she was 18, and finished medical studies at 21. She died a year later in Pune at the age of 22.

Healing Touch A photograph of Anandibai Joshee
The story of this brief but extraordinary life, the story of Anandi and her “eccentric” husband who went against the family, society and financial pressures to take the banned journey to “Christian land” and achieve what the couple desperately wanted, has attracted the attention of storytellers. There are two biographies, including Healy Dall’s that was published two years after Anandi’s death in 1886, a novel and a play depicting fictionalised versions of her journey. Now, the story will make its silver screen debut with Sameer Vidwans’ directorial venture, Anandi Gopal.

The Marathi film, which stars child actor Bhagyashree Milind as Anandibai and Lalit Prabhakar as Gopalrao Joshee, covers the story from their marriage, the ups and downs in their journey in India and Anandi’s travel to the US and her studies at the medical college.

Vidwans says that the short life that Anandibai lived was full of events and drama even before she left for the US. Gopal worked in the postal department and was transferred often; hence the couple had to travel and shift towns several times. She was born in Pune, grew up in Kalyan and then shifted to Kolhapur after her marriage. The couple then lived in various cities including Alibaug, Kutch, Serampore and Calcutta. In each of these cities, they faced many troubles as Gopal insisted that his wife is educated.

“I was very interested in the way their relationship changed over the years. When they got married, he became her parent, looking after her and educating her. As she grew into a young woman, they became lovers, and with her education and growth as a person, they bonded as friends. I have tried to portray this delicate equation between them,” said Vidwans, who started his career as a theater director and later shifted to cinema after doing a course in screenwriting from Film and Television Institute of India. He’s known for romantic comedies such as Time Please (2013) and Double Seat (2015).

He says that finding locations that would suit the 19th century setting of the film required a lot of research and legwork. The team also had to research other aspects such as language as well as songs, clothing and especially, the lighting as the film is set in pre-electricity period when houses were lit with oil lamps.

“We shot the film at 10-12 different locations in India. The US scenes were taken in Georgia. Considering that the Marathi used at that time was very different to today’s, we decided to have a mix of the two so as to avoid a disconnect with the modern audiences,” said Vidwans.

While it’s quite imaginable the kind of struggle that Anandi and Gopal faced while taking the bold step, Vidwans said that he considered that conveying the “inner struggle” of the two while fighting the external wo

Healing Touch Director Sameer Vidwans
rld as an important challenge for the film.

“It’s true that she died at the cusp of starting her career for which she and her husband fought an obsessive battle. But despite her young death, she inspired many other woman to take up the profession such as Rukhmabai who became a doctor in 1894,” said Vidwans.

History & Heritage, Long Reads

Why has the oldest film festival in Asia failed to make a name for itself?

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Although it has been around for 67 years, the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) lacks an identity of its own. In the late 1970s, efforts were made to distinguish IFFI on the world map by establishing it as a forum for the cinema of the developing world, but the plan was soon abandoned.

ATIKH RASHID

Every year about 2000 film festivals are held across the globe. Also, every year, scores of new ones come onto the scene and same number, or more, disappear into oblivion. Considering this, marking 67 years of existence and celebrating 50 editions is not a mean feat for any film festival. Therefore, it is a cause of pride for India that the state-funded International Film Festival of India (IFFI) successfully held its golden jubilee edition in Goa which concluded on Thursday.

But this shouldn’t be a cause of contentment. Is it not bothersome that IFFI, born in 1952 when it was the first such event anywhere in the East, doesn’t hold a place of prestige on the global film festival map? In fact, within Asia it is not counted among the most important festivals, despite being the eldest in the room, and much younger festivals – such as Busan International Film Festival which started in 1996 – acquiring greater importance in the international circuit.

In recent decades, state patronage has not been an issue. The Union Government and State Government of Goa (since it was moved there in 2004) have been putting in big money into the annual event. For the last 4-5 years, as much as Rs 20 crore is being spent on each edition by the two governments. The prize money given to winners at IFFI is also big – much higher than those given at several most prestigious film festivals in the world. Despite all this, IFFI is failing to click globally.

The reason for this failing, it appears, could be that IFFI has failed to create an identity for itself which will help it stand apart from the rest. In the highly competitive world of film festivals, IFFI doesn’t hold a promise to provide to the foreign filmmakers, international press and cinephiles, something that they will find nowhere else.

Perhaps, this is the reason that apart from invited (and paid for) foreign guests, the international community has turned its back on the event. In recent years, there have been no efforts to work on this identity lacuna. The focus, instead, has been on pomp and show that has started to put-off even the local film lovers.

Efforts to give IFFI a third world identity

It’s not the case that the organisers of IFFI were always blissfully unaware of its ‘identity’ lacuna. In fact, in the late 1970s when IFFI was still holding its early editions, the then festival director took steps to help IFFI develop a distinct personality. IFFI walked on that path for a couple of years but strayed soon with changes in priorities of the parent ministry.

Raghunath Raina, a bureaucrat belonging to Indian Information Service (IIS), became the Director of Film Festivals (DFF) in August 1978 and took upon himself to create a place of prominence for IFFI on the global festival map. His belief was that IFFI will gain importance on the world stage only if it offered something unavailable elsewhere.

Former Director of Film Festivals (DFF) Raghunath Raina (third from the right) receives for foreign guests at Delhi airport during 7th IFFI held in January 1979. Credit: National Film Archive of India.

To achieve this goal, he planned to turn IFFI into a prominent forum for ‘third world’ cinema which would attract films and filmmakers from developing nations from across the world. As per him, if IFFI could hold such a promise, it would attract international delegates and the press by providing an opportunity to them to “keep abreast with trends in the cinemas of the people constituting 2/3rd of the world population”. He did make the efforts in that direction during 7th, 8th and 9th editions of the festivals held between 1979 and 1981 when he headed the DFF.

National Film Archive of India. Former Director of Film Festivals (DFF) Raghunath Raina (third from the right) receives for foreign guests at Delhi airport during 7th IFFI held in January 1979. Credit: National Film Archive of India.
“My concern was not only to organise a successful and interesting festival but also to imbue it with a distinctive character of its own,” Raina wrote in an essay ‘IFFI-An Introspective Study’ included in the book ’70 Years of Indian Cinema’ published in 1984. “There had often been talk of a third world bias (between 1979-81) but this was largely an expression of intent. I clearly saw that if the festival became a forum for the third world cinema, it would acquire a personality and importance of its own. As such, it would also fit in with the country’s role as a founder-member of the non-aligned movement and as a leading protagonist, of the aspirations of the developing nations,” he wrote.

As part of his plan, in 7th edition of IFFI held in 1979, he invited Senegalese director Ousmane Sembene to head the international jury – a first for an African filmmaker at IFFI and a deliberate attempt was made to include a record number of third world films in both competitive and documentary film sections. Also, a symposium on ‘Cinema of the Developing Countries’ was held during the festival where African filmmakers criticised India’s policy of exporting films to fellow developing countries without importing any from them. India, they alleged, thus was following a policy of cultural imperialism much like the USA.

Raina continued his attempt in this direction in the 1980 festival (Filmotsav) held in Bangalore and 1981 when it returned to Delhi as a competitive festival. In fact, he had proposed that the international competition at IFFI should be reserved only for films from developing countries. The government’s hesitance to do this shelved this plan. Soon after the government at the centre changed, and the responsibility of organising the next edition of IFFI was handed over to National Film Development Corporation (NFDC).

In the essay mentioned above, Raina laments that his aim of giving a special identity to the IFFI remained unrealised and the festival has suffered subsequently due to this.

“Many elements of the Nehru dream have withered away; others remain only in form. The Indian (film) festival is one of them. It will continue to be so unless it is given an identity and is organised by people with a commitment to the film promotion and a passion for cinema,” wrote Raina.

IFFI is losing its patrons

Data obtained by The Indian Express from Entertainment Society of Goa (ESG), which looks after the logistical part of the festival organisation, shows that IFFI hasn’t only failed to attract international crowd, but it has been losing even its local patrons in recent years.

As per the data pertaining to delegate registrations for IFFI between 2007 and 2018, the number of delegates coming for IFFI went up from 2007 to 2014 but has since seen a sharp decline until the recent edition where, perhaps due to the hype of 50th edition, the numbers have somewhat improved.

International Film Festival of India Golden jubilee edition of International Film Festival of India concluded in Goa on Thursday. Credit: International Film Festival of India.
IFFI’s 2007 edition had attracted 3,713 delegates -including those from Goa and outside – which increased with every passing year and reached 10,054 in 2014, highest in recent past. However, in 2015 only 6196 delegates attended the event and the number came further down in 2016 to 5261 and slid further to 5020 in 2017. In 2018, the number improved marginally to 5214. Although officials number for the 2019 edition – which concluded on Thursday – are not yet available, the organisers said that around 6300 paid delegate passes and 1000 free student passes were distributed. The number is considerably lower than the 2014 count of 10,054.

Officials with Entertainment Society of Goa (ESG), the Goa Government unit responsible for organising the festival along with DFF, are hoping that this number would go up with their efforts to add more venues and experiments with online ticketing. “With more convenience, the delegate count will increase in future editions,” said Subhash Phal Dessai, Vice Chairman, ESG.

Can appointing a ‘Creative Director’ help IFFI?

Raina, a bureaucrat himself, had blamed the lack of a ‘sustained vision’ and IFFI’s bureaucratic setup or the festival’s failure to develop a personality.

“…The absence of a sustained vision on the part of the authorities and the vagaries of a system that grants hegemony to transient, generalist bureaucrats over people with a commitment to and expertise in film promotion, never gave the IFFI a chance to develop a distinctive personality of its own,” he wrote.

Rain’s comment remains true even after 35 years. In its present organisational setup, the Festival Director is a bureaucrat who occupies the post of Director of Film Festivals (DFF) for a maximum period of three years. He/She may or may not have any background in cinema before he occupies this post. And more often than not, even if he gains some expertise on the subject– in case he’s genuinely invested in the festival’s future – he’s out of there. The steering committee of the festival, which has a mix of bureaucrats, filmmakers and politicians, is appointed afresh every year and hence can’t think beyond the upcoming edition. A look at the names of filmmakers on the committee makes it apparent that, in a majority of cases, their political views seem to have played a key role in the appointment process rather than their potential to contribute to the event and its future.

There has been a long-standing demand that IFFI should get a ‘Creative Director’, someone who would have real expertise in film festival organising, cinema and who could provide a sustained vision to the festival by holding the position for a longer duration. However, there has been no progress on that front. In fact, the issue was discussed this year too at the first meeting of the steering committee held by Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar. The minutes of the meeting, obtained by Express using Right To Information, show that the suggestion was turned down after a member pointed out that “DFF is competent enough to look into creative aspects and the idea of a Creative Director may not be necessary.”

It appears that the beneficiaries of the present setup do not want it to change although it is costing the festival dearly.

History & Heritage

Shape of silence

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Playing live music for silent films may not be new, but what marks UK-based pianist and film academician Jonny Best apart is his spontaneity.

ATIKH RASHID

It’s Friday night in Goa and the Kala Academy auditorium, where the 50th edition of International Film Festival of India (IFFI) is being held, is full to its 950-seat capacity. In the audience is one seated closest to the stage. That’s Jonny Best. He is there to make the Russian film Battleship Potemkin (1925) audible. Best, a pianist and scholar of silent films from the UK, will play live music as an accompaniment to the film. He insists that he’s not a film composer but a “improviser”.

The festival this year has a special section in which silent films are screened with live music. These include Georg Wilhelm Pabst’s Pandora’s Box (1929) and Alfred Hitchcock’s Blackmail (1929).

“In contrast to music composition, live music for silent film is all about spontaneity. A film composer can revise his work and reach for perfection but an improviser has to respond to the moment. The beauty of playing live is that it is always imperfect and non-repeatable. If you make a mistake, you have to forgive yourself and move on,” says Best.

Best began performing improvised piano accompaniments for silent films in 2014, taking part in the masterclasses at the silent film festival, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone, northern Italy, in 2015. A year later he founded the Yorkshire Silent Film Festival, where live-scored silent films were screened in cinemas, theatres and village halls across the historic county in northern England.

Armed with a PhD from University of Huddersfield Music Department, Best is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a member of the Royal Musical Association.

Jonny Best, Jonny Best musician, silent films, best silent films, entertainment news Jonny Best
He doesn’t necessarily research about the film or plan his music. His homework is restricted to preparing a mental image of the plot and the order of events. Sometimes, he watches the complicated scenes in the film and makes mental notes. “If I plan the music, then the performance becomes me trying to remember what I had planned. My best performances have come from being in the present, just like the audience,” he says.

Among the three films for which Best played at IFFI, each one was handled differently. For Battleship, his notes build up the angst as the ship workers are unfairly treated in the first half, while in the second half the piano strings evoke the spirit of a revolution as they rise in mutiny. In Blackmail, on the other hand, Best tried to build an air of suspicion to go with the milieu of the thriller.

Playing live music with silent films is not a trend or new. In fact, silent films were often accompanied by live orchestra in the early days. In fact, many films have live music written for them. In India too, cinema palaces screened short films and features accompanied by a string band in the first decade of 20th century. “It’s true that everything I do imposes a certain reading of the film upon the audience. I think there’s a responsibility that’s involved in the job and one has to play the music with tremendous respect for the film. I’m, in a way, the audiences’ representative, offering shape to the film,” he says.