Warm Greetings.

Sengadal the Dead Sea happens to be the only Tamil film chosen for Indian Panorama , 2011.

This people participatory film dealing Tamil fishermen issue will be presented at IFFI, Goa (Nov 23 to Dec 3) and will be travelling to all prestigious film festivals across the world as Indian Panorama Package.And certainly, it is a moment to celebrate freedom of expression as the film had suffered the worst censorship struggles for several months, for its political critique until the Appellate Tribunal’s intervention in July 2011. After winning its months-long legal battle with the Regional Central Board of Film Certification and the Appellate Tribunal Authorities over the ban on public exhibition, Sengadal the Dead Sea emerged with an “A” certification, without any cuts, on July 20, 2011. The film was then officially selected in the competition sections of 32nd Durban International Film Festival,  35th World Montreal Film festival, and in 13th International Mumbai Film Festival respectively. And it has won NAWFF Award at Tokyo as the best Asian Woman film of the year 2011. Ms. Navi Pillai, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, who watched the film at Durban appreciated the uncompromising voice of the film and took it as a witness of the human rights violations committed by the Sri Lankan Navy on the Indian Fishermen at the international maritime border off the shores of Rameswaram and Dhanushkodi. She has committed necessary intervention along with her UN Investigations on the genocide committed on Lankan Tamils by Sri Lankan Government.Sengadal the Dead Sea is enacted by the real fishermen and refugees from Dhanushkodi and Rameshwaram Mandapam camp. All the supporting artistes are from Kidathirukai Therukoothu team and the film captures the fragments of their simple lives beaten by three decade long ethnic war in Sri Lanka. Produced by Tholpaavai Theatres, Sengadal the Dead Sea was one of the recipients of Production Grant by Global Film Initiative (GFI) for the year 2010.

Warmly

Sengadal team

வணக்கம்.

2011 ம் ஆண்டிற்கான இந்தியன் பனோரமாவிற்கு, செங்கடல் திரைப்படம் ஒரே தகுதி பெற்ற தமிழ்ப்படமாகத் தேர்வாகியுள்ளது. கோவா சர்வதேச திரைப்பட விழாவில்(ந்வம்பர் 23 – டிசம்பர் 3) பெருமையுடன் பங்குபெறும் செங்கடல் தமிழ் மீனவர்களின் வாழ்க்கையை மக்களின் பங்களிப்பைக் கொண்டே உருவாக்கப்பட்ட திரைப்படம். 2011 ஆண்டு முழுவதும் உலகமெங்கிலும் நடைபெறும் முக்கியமான சர்வதேச திரைப்பட விழாக்களுக்கு இந்தியன் பனோரமாவின் சார்பாக பங்குபெறும் வாய்ப்பையும் செங்கடல் இதன் மூலம் பெறுகிறது.

பல மாத சட்டப் போராட்டத்திற்குப் பிறகு சென்ஸார் தடையிலிருந்து மீண்ட செங்கடலின் இந்த வெற்றி கருத்துச் சுதந்திரத்தில் அக்கறையுள்ளவர்களுக்கு பெரும் நம்பிக்கையை அளித்துள்ளது.  மத்திய தணிக்கைக் குழு செங்கடலை,  அதன் அரசியல் விமர்சனுங்களுக்காக பொது இடங்களில் திரையிட தடை விதித்திருந்தது. பலமாதகால சட்டப் போராட்டத்திற்குப் பின் எந்த வெட்டும் இல்லாமல்  மேல்முறையீட்டு ஆணையத்தின் தலையீட்டால் ‘A ‘ சான்றிதழை ஜூலை 20-ல் பெற்றது. அதன் பிறகு, 32ஆவது டர்பன் (தென் ஆஃபிரிக்கா) சர்வதேச திரைப் பட விழாவிலும்,  35ஆவது மாண்ட்ரியல் (கனடா)  உலகத் திரைப்பட விழாவிலும்,  13 வது சர்வதேச மும்பை திரைப்பட விழாவிலும்  சர்வதேசப் போட்டிப் பிரிவில் தேர்வு பெற்று பங்கேற்றது. இந்த மாதம் டோக்கியோவில், சிறந்த ஆசியப் பெண் திரைப்படமாக  NAWFF விருது பெற்றுள்ளது .

டர்பன் திரைப்படவிழாவில் செங்கடல் படத்தை பார்த்த ஐ. நா சபையின்  மனித உரிமை ஆணையாளர் திருமிகு. நவி பிள்ளை ”ராமேஸ்வரம் , தனுஷ்கோடி ஆகிய கடலோர எல்லைப் பகுதியில் இந்திய மீனவர்கள் மீது இலங்கை கடற்படையின் மனித உரிமை மீறலுக்கான ஒரு சாட்சியமாக ,சமரசமற்ற குரலாக செங்கடல் ஒலிக்கிறது” எனக் குறிப்பிட்டுள்ளார்.இலங்கை அரசின் தமிழினப்  படுகொலைகள் மீதான ஐ. நா சபையின் மனித உரிமை ஆணையத்தின்  விசாரணையோடு இந்திய மீனவர்களின் படுகொலை மீதான  தலையீட்டிற்கும் ஆவன செய்வதாகவும் உறுதியளித்தார்.

தனுஷ்கோடி மீனவர்களையும், மண்டபம்   அகதிகளையும் நடிகர்களாக கொண்டே செங்கடல் படமாக்கப்பட்டுள்ளது.  இந்திய இலங்கை எல்லைக்  கிராமமான, எப்போதும் வாழ்வும் மரணமும் கண்கட்டி விளையாடும்  தனுஷ்கோடியை, இலங்கையின்  முப்பதாண்டுகால இனப்போரால்  சிதறடிக்கப்பட்ட அதன் எளிய மக்களின் வாழ்வுக் கூறுகளை, மிக நுணுக்கமாக  கையாளுகிறது  இத்திரைப்படம் . தோல்பாவை தியேட்டர்ஸ்  தயாரிப்பான செங்கடல்,அமெரிக்காவின் க்ளோபல் பிலிம் இனிஷியேடிவின் (GFI) 2010 – ஆம் ஆண்டிற்கான தயாரிப்பு ஊக்குவிப்பு வெகுமதியையும் பெற்றுள்ளது.

—

நன்றி

செங்கடல் திரைப்படக் குழு

http://www.timeoutmumbai.net/film/film_details.asp?code=442&source=5

Hi. The first, rather obvious, question: Why the fictional format? And what did fiction allow you to do with the narrative, locations and characters you were dealing with that may not have been possible on a documentary form?  

There is always a fiction in reality and a reality in fiction. I wanted to try something and not to be trapped in some syntax.Rather than cutting and pasting the reality and getting lost in revisionism, I thought, I will trial this and trust me I am aware of situations where I may fail.Our three dimensional world is not as real as we think and to deal reality and still handling fictional elements is not a treachery and Art allows it.

Sengadal is a participatory work. I just facilitated everything and I will not claim authorship for that. Everything in the film is the memory of a Dhanushkodi fishermen or of a fisherwoman or a thought of a child or a  confession of a refugee or an incident a social worker had shared or an experience of a filmmaker herself or an interview of one of those Rameshwaram Public. I just beaded them or scattered them to a shape to what my mind responded in the whole process. In a sense, the film was a departure of memories, thoughts and confessions.Again, reducing life to a story line for better control is a No – No for me. I maybe tried to unfold the film as a space of inter relations and inter-stories.

As an artiste, I was limited in many ways like no money, no professional production support, no professional actors, constant intimidation by vigilance forces, harsh weather conditions and an impossibly difficult location. There was something which is driving me and I guess that is the fisherfolk’s amazing ability to live a midst so much of violence.

The script evolved from series of my workshops with Dhanushkodi fishermen and Mandapam refugees. And I colloborated with my writers Jerrold and Shobasakthi to evolve something discreet with all my raw materials like monologues, interviews and my scrap books. It became something but nothing worked as written in the paper. What I learnt is in this kind of cinema, Mise en Cinema is not what the authors try and evolve but it is the community who dictate it. And the authorship becomes three dimensional with the artistes who facilitate the the community, the community itself and the viewers who convert memory as an experience. Sengadal is an unfinished cinema and it is always as parts and not as a whole anytime in its existence.

Sengadal enfolds a film within a film. Why did you choose the self-reflexive approach? 

I am always a sucker of this idea of artiste being an organic part of her piece of work. I am criticised to be self indulgent for this very aspect of my belief. And I also believed that the whole journey is as much a failure to the filmmaker as it is to the community he or she deals with. I was constantly interrogated by all kinds of forces like Q branch, Police, CB CID, Navymen, Railway Police, Coastal Guards and I was doing nothing but trying to document fishermen’s life with a camera. The documentary filmmakers in this country are always seen as some terrorists with a bomb in their waist belt. I think I identified my travails with the travails of fishermen community though not on the level playing fields and I tried to somehow knot it up.

I am this Witness – Confidante – Listener who is a trophy failure. And I guess, it is also a reflection of my constant shuttling across thresholds of insideness and outsideness.

I remember an artist in Bombay saying that art was, in a sense, dead after the Godhra riots. Is there a sense, after the Sri Lankan massacre that filmmakers need a new language, perhaps, a new way of approaching the issue?  

I really have to confess to you that this question has made me think of two many things and go blank or get lost. But one has to always live with hope. Otherwise how can one carry on any kind of struggle?

Whenever I am left to deal with different kinds of experiences and different kinds of humiliations in terms of degrees, marginalized people are going through,  I am always left with the feeling that I am doing no justice in terms of depicting it in cinema. When I think I should do a ‘No Story’ but still have fictional elements against reality principle or when I try and document lives without representation or when I use repetition as a technique for re inscription, I only fail at the end of process.

Mutilation of people’s dignity takes many forms and however It seems to me that I were heading nowhere in my struggle as an artiste if we as a human race cant really cross the partition lines like geographical, cultural, racial, gender, generational and other such to create new alliances in reality.One is taken away from one’s own land and reduced to slavery , One remains homeless in one’s own land, one is dispossessed of one’s very means of survival and all our notions of survival seems to be notion of everyday. We rise up to everyday and if and only we fight, we might have new Jerusalem.

Social and Political conflicts, I wonder are easier to consume than aesthetics. So,Creative space for me depends on what we do “creatively” and there is no meaning in creative space without being ”social”. I try and approach from the notion of in between ness. Though I am not sure, my language makes any sense to anybody. Poetry or Cinema, language is my first enemy and that is the one which demoralizes me but still gives strength to fight with. I think, that is also part of our feminist struggles has for decades.

Do fisherfolk and refugees play themselves? Did you mix up professionals and amateurs? I’d like to talk to you about the process used.

Casting was an outcome of my many visits in a duration of one year and workshops. But there were situations when whom you choose in workshops, give them a character and even practice dialogues never turn up at the day of shoot. I had to randomly pick and again train them from the scratch on the locations. Almost everyone in the Unit including the boys who helped us in tea were made to act and towards the end we ran out of people to cast for supporting roles.It was a night mare thinking about the shocks you get everyday you venture into shooting. Managing with refugees was the most challenging task for me as whom you find the first day disappear the next day and reasons can be, they have found a better wage job, or they were just visiting and did not want to lose that day’s wage but had to return to their original camps or they just got an agent and left to Australia or they are just absconding.I had to forget my lessons about continuity in Cinema and it was always a crisis management or a paranoia or madness coming to terms with reality. Fishermen would leave us if it is low seas and they see a catch worth than acting in this stupid cinema where they were made to walk some ten times as retakes.And the rural public who did supporting characters would refuse to wear the same shirt out of boredom or disgrace.

I can go on and you will have a book written at the end.

Published Version

PROTEST INC ‘My protagonists are like shamans’ Leena Manimekalai’s latest film, based on the ethnic war in Sri Lanka, has been refused a clearance by the CBFC. The documentary filmmaker tells Aastha Atray Banan why she will remain a non- conformist when it comes to her art.

http://tehelka.com/story_main50.asp?filename=hu100911protagonists.asp

My Written Version

How did your background of being born in a little village to a household of men who leaned towards communism affect your world view?

I am still a tropical Kurinji(Mountain and mountain surrounded landscape) woman with a pagan spirit and who loves mangoes, toddy, lake fish, cattle, summer springs and kabadi. I have also done few years of schooling at a Corporation School in that little mountain village Maharajapuram at the slopes of Western ghats when my Late Father Prof. Raghupathy who was indeed a first graduate in my family history went to university for M.Phil research. My nostalgia is equally romantic and inquisitive about the whole social and geographical setup. Yes, all my family men for three generations held state level, national level position in Communist Parties. interestingly family feud is mostly setup with our men’s ideological beliefs. My grandfathers were with the Communist Party of India and my uncles are even now with Marxist and Maoist Parties. As children, we suffered our friendships with our cousins because of our head men’s ideological leanings and activities. We have faced elections with our own uncles contesting against each other and our voluntary work in the election propaganda always shadowed on each other. My mother, grandmothers and aunts ran families and farms while all men are out for some party work. I always get inspired from them and wondered they are born leaders. They would have been Rosa Luxembergs and Clara Zetkins if they were allowed to be active politically, I supposed. Their bedtime stories about how they protected the men and families during ban on communist parties in India, against the frequent Police raids and arrests never made me sleep. I owe them all my initial feminist quests on equality and self respect.

Geographically, my village is divulged on caste dwellings and the wage worker Dalits live in ghettos and the oppressor land lordly caste live in better streets.Though my family had a left leaning and is always seen as traitors among the community, we still lived in the caste streets and owned lands and married within and I felt ashamed even in my youth to be born culturally in the oppressor caste family. I was angry by the practice of untouchability and beliefs on pollution and purity when my mobility with my peer group friends was limited because of that. My sense of compassion and equality which I acquired through my early exposure to Russian literature and Periyar E.V Ramasamy’s little books, and pamphlets of Ambedkar’s speeches from my Grand Dad and Dad’s library was constantly battered by my question on why I have been given a caste tag by birth which puts me superior to some and inferior to some. I detested the tags and my whole idea of atheism was born out of my hatred to religion particularly Hindusim. I still cant forget my childhood rebellion of entering my village temples when am menstruating and then announcing to my family if i will die because of that, I rather die and befriending and staying in my dalit friends homes and refuse to go back home. I believe, my commitment to larger battle against social injustices in my youth was largely shaped up by my village which is still doomed by caste and class inequalities and women suppression.

You were raised by your mother a single mom? What did that teach you about Indian women?

My mom was married to my father who is her maternal uncle when she was fourteen and she got widowed when she was just thirty nine. It was terrible to witness my mother’s trials through my growing up days. She used to say that I was born to her when she dint even know how a baby comes out of a woman’s body. I have heard her cursing my grand parents for dooming her to be a woman by marriage when she was playing kittipuli(village game) as a naughty child with village boys and jumping compounds of village touring talkies to watch Bharathiraja’s films stealthily bunking classes. But she was mother of mother to her sisters and brothers and their children and her children  and made us graduate and stand on our own.She wanted me to learn everything what she missed in her life. She will devotedly take me to bharathanatiyam classes, karnatic music classes, sanskrit classes, playground, regular school classes all though the day and she would abuse me if I fail to be good at any of these curriculum, i would be a failure like her. It was hard for me a child but I understood her anxiety as I grew up. Being her mirror image of what she could not be was such a task to me but I guess i acquired my fighting ability from her and her bringing up. I did ask her to re marry when we lost our father but she refused to that and said she would be our father too from then on. All my existence today is because of her and her passion for life.

You also worked as a relief worker after the tsunami hit india. What were some of your realizations during that period?

I would correct that I was not a relief worker but managed to so some work around that.Catastrophes will lead one to become something else and yes it did affect me and made me a spiritual being. As an offspring of Self Justice movement, I always thought everything can be understood and very well within explanations.But my experience with natural disaster did make me feel there can be something which cant be understood. My fear of loss and suffering which I had when I lost my father extended to whole humanity and lives.

I also felt, my cameras and pens lose their power before certain situations and I should use my hands to help rather. I also realized that I am not that brave and courageous, which I think am and I really have to grow up to handle larger than life situations and there are situations which can shake you up and leave in despair.

I did gather myself and did art therapy for children at the tsunami hit coastal belts and documented the workshops which really made the children deal with their fear,gain their confidence and go back to schools. My film on those workshops was screened across 58 coastal villages and helped relief workers involved in rehabilitation..

The censor board wanted some of your movies to have massive cuts. But you went ahead and released films independently, without those cuts. What is your take on censorship and why do you think absolute freedom of expression is needed?

Censor Board is a shame to our ‘democracy’. Even after legally been transformed to a Certification Board in 80’s it is impossible for the board to remove the scissors from their hands and spirits. Institutionally controlling a content and deciding what their “subjects” should see or think or hear or act is a colonial hangup and a fascist attitude.Our sixty years of democracy has not still done with Queen Victoria and our Babus still want to clean her graves with their loyalty. I cant take this humiliations at any cost as a free thinking artiste. In a way for me, practicing art is a form of detesting censorship of my ‘being’ by agencies like family, religion, caste, culture and identities, market and state. I have gone to people directly with my films and there was no single incident creating a law and order situation as the CBFC had always feared. Infact the films demanded intervention of the concerned.It was only with my direct dialogues with my films with the community, my social understanding evolved and I leant and unlearnt a lot. This whole participatory process and the dialoge involved has only strengthened me and I cant allow agencies like CBFC to limit me the possibilities of reaching films across.

Anybody who believes in free thinking will subscribe to absolute freedom of expression. And with my little experience, people are wiser enough to chose, reject, appreciate  and criticise what they want and if State thinks it has a role in controlling it, we need to remind it that it cannot and should not.

Your movie Goddess dealt with different dalit women taking on typical male roles in society – of gravedigger, fisherman, and in turn questioning them? Do you think you do that every day in your life – as a filmmaker who dares to question authority?

Lakshmi amma(Mourner and beef seller), Sethurakamma(fisherwomen) and krishna veni amma(grave digger) are shamans to me and I learnt from them how not to complain and fight our ways and live our choices so passionately. To continue to do what I believe in is so hard at our times and the extraordinary lust these women have for their lives made me feel so good about my own trials and challenges. I get very demoralised and disillussioned sometimes when I feel marginalised and socailly outcaste in my own terms and life, the lives I come across with my own films give me hope and courage. I think, I question and I live and I owe this quality of mine to people like these three goddesses.

You have said that an artist’s responsibility is to make society reflect on its own actions or issues.But don’t you think sometimes artists may use that argument to incite. Or that such noble plans may backfire and incite sensitive parties?

Yes, i agree, everything has its own repercussions.But is it not a natural justice that way? Everyone has a right to practice what they believe in and express themselves and artist with his or her own capability will deal it in their own terms.We we are born in a chronic unequal society and everything is so complex out here. I dont know about noble plans but even for simple plans, trial and error is the only way out for anyone to be different and still survive.

You talk about the fishermen’s ability to survive through violence and getting inspired by that. What did that teach you about life and how have you tried to bring that across in your movie. What are some of the main points you want to raise through Sengadal?

Basically fisher community are very compassionate. They are so humane to levels that they help refugees or rebels or any x , y or z who come to them and thus they invite problems every now and then with the State authorities. It was not difficult for them to love me like one among them. I was one listening ear to all of them but in the process, I felt powerless and helpless when I came across their horror stricken lives.I felt like one awful rat living so sophisticated in the plains. But their ability to live and the courage to set off their boats everyday though there is a ‘Do or Die’ situation overwhelmed me.I lived with them, and every fisher family at Dhanushkodi is my extended family. Their interviews, personal confessions and memories dug a deep hole in my heart and got etched in my sub conscious.I had no other go than sharing my experience somehow with the rest of the world. And that is how Sengadal the Dead Sea happened.

Almost every household in Dhanushkodi, the border coast has a story of their men shot randomly by the Sri Lankan Navy in the sliver of water between India and Sri Lanka. Fishermen fishing in fear in ignorance of friendly and enemy waters get dumped as rebels, spies and smugglers and unceremoniously beaten to death or shot or maimed.One can see a widow or orphaned children or parents who have lost their son or siblings who have lost their brother in every other family. Unnoticed, the Palk Strait has become the scene of inhuman torture, humiliation and savage murder over the past 30 years since the ethnic crisis had become severe in Srilanka. And in the past six months, the violence has been accelerating — hundreds of  men have been killed. Nearly 600 have lost their lives till now, more than thousands are injured and  have gone missing. And everyday, these figures are raising. And this is not even war.

There were instances where fishermen have been stripped off their clothes and their legs have been heated up with hot rods.They have  been beaten  up using plastic pipes and clubs and they have scars to show us.Horrible physical abuses like making them to sit on ice and looting their fishes have taken place as well.Besides there has been numerous situations where they have been taken into custody and tortured,physically and verbally abused.Tearing their nets and damaging their boats have often been done by the navy. Fishermen in general are socially oppressed and economically downtrodden people and hence these acts are nothing less than strangulating them.Questions do raise in one’s mind about the racist nature of these attacks.

To fishermen, maritime boundaries are man made creations.  Throughout centuries, they have been fishing in all areas, where there is fish.  It is a universal phenomenon.   The Sri Lankan fishermen enter Indian and Maldivian waters. Indian fishermen enter Pakistani waters and Bangladeshis enter Myanmar and the Japanese and Taiwanese trawlers roam around the whole of Asian waters.  The restrictions imposed by the States on cross border movements of the fisher folk have led to loss of human lives and destruction of fishing crafts.

States are interested in borders, boundaries, bilateral relations and Fishermen are interested in their means of livelihood and thus the issue is conflict of interests and loss and suffering of the powerless.

Dead Sea, for sure will voice their concerns expose how abysmally small their lives are and how every other institutions of Power oppress them. All they ask is their basic rights to live and it is not too much at all. As a fellow being, let us all intervene in our own way to keep the discourse alive until there is some collective action.

You have alleged that the Indian government helped in the Ealam Tamil genocide. How do you explain that?

India is been always a big brother to its neighboring countries. India is the one that nurtured Tamil weapon movements in Srilanka and also made them lose the war and their cause at the end of three gruesome decades of loss and suffering. Srilankan War Crimes are now exposed in the international media and there is an outcry for a trial on the excesses committed by the government in the International Court of Justice and Law. Recent UN reports clearly states that the SL government has conducted genocide. As Indians we should be ashamed of our governments who given alms, arms and every other support to Rajapakshe and be a kingpin to perform this genocide. Rajapakshe has himself given an open statement that he had conducted India’s war.

Srilankan Tamils are the community in their fight for their right to self determination who have lost thousands of lives so brutally to the hands of State and Revolution. Srilankan Tamils had to constantly negotiate with the dominant Sinhala State of Srilanka and the rigid control of community exercised by Tamil militant organization Liberation of Tigers of Tamil Ealam (Ealam is the imagined Tamil State fought for by the militants)whose extremist and militarist stances have created a culture of fear and anxiety among the Tamil Polity. This has led to migration of hundreds and thousands of people fleeing across the coasts as refugees to India and other countries.

The misery spells over the Indian shores and the fishermen in the coastal borders suffer their very right to profess their traditional fishing rights. They speak the same language as the ethnic minorities in Srilanka and the racist Srilankan Navy kill them in the name of “Border Crossing”.

It is the Nations and States and Constitutions and Boundaries and Border Forces which are violating fisher community’s very basic right to live. What both Indian and Srilankan States do to fishermen is State Terrorism. Nearly 600 have have lost their lives till now, and more than thousands are injured and have gone missing leaving their family in the lurch. Who is responsible for that? Is it the racist Srilankan Governments? or the impotent Indian and Tamilnadu governments? Sengadal is the vent for the fishermen’s anger and I join them hands.

Brief Version of the Interview given to Post Newspaper at Durban, July 2011

What are some of the human rights violation the fishermen you filmed endured and why were they victims of this abuse?

Almost every household in Dhanushkodi, the border coast has a story of their men shot randomly by the Sri Lankan Navy in the sliver of water between India and Sri Lanka. Fishermen fishing in fear in ignorance of friendly and enemy waters get dumped as rebels, spies and smugglers and unceremoniously beaten to death or shot or maimed.One can see a widow or orphaned children or parents who have lost their son or siblings who have lost their brother in every other family. Unnoticed, the Palk Strait has become the scene of inhuman torture, humiliation and savage murder over the past 30 years since the ethnic crisis had become severe in Srilanka. And in the past six months, the violence has been accelerating — hundreds of  men have been killed. Nearly 600 have lost their lives till now, more than thousands are injured and  have gone missing. And everyday, these figures are raising. And this is not even war.

There were instances where fishermen have been stripped off their clothes and their legs have been heated up with hot rods.They have  been beaten  up using plastic pipes and clubs and they have scars to show us.Horrible physical abuses like making them to sit on ice and looting their fishes have taken place as well.Besides there has been numerous situations where they have been taken into custody and tortured,physically and verbally abused.Tearing their nets and damaging their boats have often been done by the navy. Fishermen in general are socially oppressed and economically downtrodden people and hence these acts are nothing less than strangulating them.Questions do raise in one’s mind about the racist nature of these attacks.

To fishermen, maritime boundaries are man made creations.  Throughout centuries, they have been fishing in all areas, where there is fish.  It is a universal phenomenon.   The Sri Lankan fishermen enter Indian and Maldivian waters. Indian fishermen enter Pakistani waters and Bangladeshis enter Myanmar and the Japanese and Taiwanese trawlers roam around the whole of Asian waters.  The restrictions imposed by the States on cross border movements of the fisher folk have led to loss of human lives and destruction of fishing crafts.

States are interested in borders, boundaries, bilateral relations and Fishermen are interested in their means of livelihood and thus the issue is conflict of interests and loss and suffering of the powerless.

Was it easy for these fishermen to relate their stories to you to document and how did you feel hearing of their plight? 

Basically fisher community are very compassionate. They are so humane to levels that they help refugees or rebels or any x , y or z who come to them and thus they invite problems every now and then with the State authorities. It was not difficult for them to love me like one among them. I was one listening ear to all of them but in the process, I felt powerless and helpless when I came across their horror stricken lives.I felt like one awful rat living so sophisticated in the plains. But their ability to live and the courage to set off their boats everyday though there is a ‘Do or Die’ situation overwhelmed me.I lived with them, and every fisher family at Dhanushkodi is my extended family. Their interviews, personal confessions and memories dug a deep hole in my heart and got etched in my sub conscious. Basis oI had no other go than sharing my experience somehow with the rest of the world. And that is how Dead Sea happened.

You reportedly use your stories for social activism. Has Sengadal led to a change/closure for this specific communities

I will stand with my people whatsoever in their fight for Justice. My documentaries were more a video participatory movement than a piece of video. Dead Sea, for sure will voice their concerns expose how abysmally small their lives are and how every other institutions of Power oppress them. All they ask is their basic rights to live and it is not too much at all. As a fellow being, let us all intervene in our own way to keep the discourse alive until there is some collective action.

What has been the response to the film

Durban will be the world premiere and still there is a long way to go. I thank everyone who stood by me in the fight for freedom of expression. When the film was initially banned in my country, I appealed the appellate authorities and I owe a lot to Indian Media, Film Societies, Writers and Human rights activists who had extended their support by petitions, articles and solidarity screenings. Now the film has legally won the case and been certified a clearance for public exhibition. It is extremely difficult to negotiate with the Market and it seems to have become more brutal than the State in the post global scenario. But I have not stopped trying to release the film and reach the wider audience so that cause sees the light.

Are there any projects you are currently working on 

My next feature will be “Passport” . I am colloborating with the best artistes like Shobasakthi for Screenplay, Sunny Joseph for Cinematography and Sreekar Prasad for Editing.

Passport will  document the arduous and tortuous passage of illegal refugees which force them to travel in material and ideological conditions similar to those of times of slavery. It will be a story of an individual, thrown into the this large world of inequalities and miseries for no fault of his, whose attempts at survival come to a naught having to overcome such insurmountable barriers of countries, armies, nations, gangs, officialdom, and people, yes people who are out on the road like him and who are also in the trials of life. I am pitching the project right now for funding and once things are set, I shall hit the floors.

Is this your first trip to South Africa

I had been on a transit at Johannesburg on my way to Venezuala in 2005. Infact I shopped a lot in the Johannesburg airport than Venezuala. And earlier, my film Goddesses was in the 2008 edition of Tri Continental Film Festival. It was sad that I could not travel that time. Hence this is my first official trip to Durban and am enthusiastically looking forward to it.

Leena Manimekalai, Durban, July 27, 2011

http://sundaytribune.newspaperdirect.com/epaper/viewer.aspx

Sunday Herald Tribune  – Durban , SA, 17 July 2011

Veruschka Mungaroo

When did you start making movies and what was your first project? 

I started making documentaries in my early twenties. I extended my student activist days in street theatre to cinema. Digital cinema was my refuge. I fixed a digital camera and a micro phone in my body and travelled through my villages, filming people and their lives whose voices are never heard or concerned. I used the videos as a tool for a participatory dialogue within the communities addressing the core issues like Caste Inequalities, Culture and Practices, Gender, Human rights, Globalisation, Water Politics etc. My first video was “Mathamma” which kindled a wide discourse and intervention in the cultural practice of a community which offers their children as brides to their deity called Mathamma and how eventually they become sex workers.

Your Dead Sea will be featured at Durban International Film Festival in the International Competition. In a nut shell, what is the movie about?

Sengadal, the Dead Sea is my debut feature fiction which captures the fragments of simple lives beaten by three decade long ethnic war in Srilanka. It unfolds in a border village at Dhanushkodi,the southernmost tip of India which is a ruin in State ledgers but  breathes life through the fishermen families who refuse to leave this ravaged land once hit by sand storm . Fishermen fishing in fear in ignorance of friendly and enemy waters in the borders get dumped as rebels, spies and smugglers and unceremoniously beaten to death or shot or maimed. But still everyday we say their boats get launched and the life gets going. Srilankan Tamil refugees who are dispossessed of their land and gods arrive in this crucible dead or alive.

This is again a community cinema in which Dhanushkodi fishermen, Rameswaram refugees and general public have acted and helped in production and all the incidents portrayed in the film are facts as told by them.

Is the film considered to be a mainstream Bollywood movie? If so, why and what is, in your opinion, a mainstream Bollywood movie. How would you classify or genre your movie?

Bollywood is a clean trade. Mafias gamble their money in Bollywood and their ethics is based on the business of winning it. Ignorance of masses is their investment and it is foolish for anyone to think bollywood’s motive is Art other than profits.

I have short circuited myself from the mainstream from my student days as I had different principles in Life. I have been always be part of alternative art and literary movements and rebelled against feudalism which is otherwise the character of mainstream. As an art practitioner I identify with the small communities who refuse to be by standers but try and do some intervention on the sight of oppression. Sengadal the Dead Sea is still considered an impossible attempt of making a people’s film dealing direct politics that too from the land I come from, where populist cinema is considered to be a supply chain of chief ministers, where virtual heroes are worshiped as Gods and ultimately the saviors of masses.

Dead Sea is a factual fiction feature and it is a community film made and executed by them voicing out their life and concerns.

What is the difference between mainstream Bollywood films and independent films? Are independent films arty ones and what is your definition and what is considered to be an Indian independent film?

Right now, in Bollywood, it is the time of celebration of mediocrity. It is amusing to see how it is pushed to some representation of excellence. In Post globalization scenario, Market is more powerful than State. And Market pretending to be socially concerned is a high voltage drama and its seduction is irresistible to masses. But Art is something else. Art is always independent of market, state or any other power structures. Infact it challenges.

Indian Independent film is an untouchable indeed and it is going through the toughest times. Corporate Governments and Open Market have shrunk the space for any independent expression and it looks like almost a null. Censorship operates in many ways institutionally and non institutionally to curb the independent makers and their voices. We are looked at by the establishment as some terrorists and independent videos as some bombs.When an independent art practitioner rises to reach wider audience, State and Market has all ways to see the maker dies before he ever attempts.

I should also say, with all these factors, independent cinema in India and world over still thrives. Digital Technology has made the medium more democratic and now more people afford to make cinema . It is no more the medium of some filthy rich people. There is hope but still so much to do and fight.

The storyline is very unusual.  What made you delve into this topic and how have audiences reacted to it so far?

India is been always a big brother to its neighboring countries. India is the one that nurtured Tamil weapon movements in Srilanka and also made them lose the war and their cause at the end of three gruesome decades of loss and suffering. Srilankan War Crimes are now exposed in the international media and there is an outcry for a trial on the excesses committed by the government in the International Court of Justice and Law. Recent UN reports clearly states that the SL government has conducted genocide. As an Indian, I am ashamed because my government has supported the war and has been a kingpin.

Srilankan Tamils are the community in their fight for their right to self determination who have lost thousands of lives so brutally to the hands of State and Revolution. Srilankan Tamils had to constantly negotiate with the dominant Sinhala State of Srilanka and the rigid control of community exercised by Tamil militant organization Liberation of Tigers of Tamil Ealam (Ealam is the imagined Tamil State fought for by the militants)whose extremist and militarist stances have created a culture of fear and anxiety among the Tamil Polity. This has led to migration of hundreds and thousands of people fleeing across the coasts as refugees to India and other countries.

The misery spells over the Indian shores and the fishermen in the coastal borders suffer their very right to profess their traditional fishing rights. They speak the same language as the ethnic minorities in Srilanka and the racist Srilankan Navy kill them in the name of “Border Crossing”.

As one of the voices of Dissent against Indian government aiding the Srilankan government’s genocide, being a silent witness was slowly making me numb. It is still awfully painful to helplessly watch what is going on to my fraternity in Srilanka. I wanted to cry aloud and that is Sengadal the Dead Sea.

What was the inspiration behind the movie and are you personally attached to the storyline of the movie?

I initially went to Dhanushkodi to know more about Rose Mary (the war widow, who lost her husband in Srilankan Navy Shooting) and her services to refugees’ community. Through her I came to know about the fishermen community at large and their abysmal lives. Their plights and their ability to live expanded me emotionally. I was inspired by the charecters like Kangesu, Munusamy, Aandy, Kaaliyamma, Muthuraasu and many other fisherfolk who shared their food and shelter along with their life stories. Those stories have jolted me and made my spirit linger in Dhanuskodi’s shores and sands.I was like a wandering crow sometimes, a mourning dog sometimes, a digging turtle sometimes and I was smelling fish and salt during those days.

Then I decided to tell this experience of mine to the world. I still remember that night when stars were hanging like ripe fruits of my ancestors twinkling to my wishes.

Do you think that Indian independent films are sidelined or is not given as much attention compared to mainstream Bollywood movies? If so, why?

I bet Independent films will do better with the audience if they are promoted well with the same PR budget a mainstream movie has. No media reports or even recognizes avant-garde attempts. I am sure, it is the same scene in South Africa or anywhere else in the world. Cinema is still a bloody capitalistic tool and it involves money in its every aspect, say making, disseminating etc., Everybody wants to earn 200 when they are willing to invest 2.That is how the whole world thinks and operates.

Independent art is a voice of conscience and it will always be sidelined for its very character of what it does to its readers/viewers. Bollywood stops you think and it will always be celebrated exactly for that and it is common sense.

In your opinion, why has the Indian film industry not touched on relevant issues like the Dead Sea but mostly stick to love triangles?

What other stories other than love triangles and gangster fights make my people more regressive and dumb? Film as an industry will be interested only in those narratives and characters and a certain way of telling them within the formula, as it only requires consumers for its produce.

Is there a strong message that you are trying to portray in The Dead Sea? If so, what is it and why specifically this message?

Dead Sea is a documentation of  what I found as Truth. I am not a messiah and I do not believe in giving any message. I come across something which disturbs me and feels me that this experience has to be shared to the fellow human beings.I witness, become a witness but at least proactively express when I am not able to change lives and situations.  Fortunately I write and had learnt cinema and when I am convinced that I can express through that medium, I try and do that.

We wage wars and lose wars but we continue to welcome tomorrows with another war. When we acknowledge it, it is Art and when we do not acknowledge it, it is History. We resist, revolt, die or live partly and I see my art as an extension of those. I cannot be part of Power but can be a voice of dissent and Dead sea is such a voice if dissent.

Name some of your other films and works?

My collections of poems are ‘Ottrailaiyena’ (solo, as a lone leaf), ‘Ulakin Azhakiya Muthal Penn’ (The first beautiful woman in the world)and Parathaiyarul Raani(Queen of Sluts). I have currently taken up a visual art fellowship with PSBT on Tamil Women Poetry and Desire through the ages of Sangam, Medieval and Modern periods. My specialisation is on Media and Conflict resolution and I had been an EU Scholar in art practice, secured a commonwealth fellowship in 2009 and currently been awarded Charles Wallace Art Fellowship. My films include Mathamma, Parai, Break the Shackles, Love Lost, Altar, Waves after Waves, Connecting Lines, A Hole in the Bucket, Goddesses.

 Tell us a bit about your personal background.

I was born into a farmer’s family, south of Tamilnadu. I should be farming but unfortunately not for not very valuable reasons. My late father was a Tamil professor and the first to earn a degree in our family. My mother is a country goddess in her soul. I have a younger brother who is also into media practice. My father was a left progressive writer and my grandfathers and uncles are communist leaders holding state and national positions. I owe my understanding of my society to my Marxist background and bringing up and as a social being I am committed to fight injustice since my youth. There was a crucial time in my youth to decide to continue as a full time activist or artist. I stand somewhere as Artivist I guess. Inequalities in my society unsettle me and for me art is a way of communicating to my own people and I continue to learn and unlearn through the process. Though qualified as an Engineer, I chose art and that is the way to freedom and being for me. I have convictions to live my choice whatsoever.

Have you experienced any controversy about The Dead Sea?

Dead Sea was banned by Central Board of Film Certification for its political content and the way the film criticizes Indian and Srilankan governments. I fought the case with the Appellate Tribunal authorities and the grievances court subsequently quashed the order and guide lined for re examination. And now, the film is cleared with an Adult Certification without any cuts and I think this is the victorious moment for artists who believe in freedom of expression. How difficult is to prove the artist can challenge an establishment in this so called democracy and how fat a lie is this freedom.

I can never compromise in my artistic freedom and I strongly believe that no STATE has any business in dictating ART. Truth can be un comfortable but it is our responsibility to deal with it and not turning away from it. Dead Sea blatantly reveals how this Nations, Borders, Boundaries are all against the humanity and test the very basic right to live in this world. Dead Sea speaks about the constant negotiation of ordinary lives in between gun of revolution and gun of state.