Art & Entertainment

A Marquee In Gorakhpur

The eastern UP town is an unlikely site for cinema of resistance

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A Marquee In Gorakhpur
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The prelude to Gorakhpur’s Cinema of Resistance festival is set on Platform no. 8 of the New Delhi railway station itself. It is teeming with farmers eager to board the Vaishali Exp­ress home after protesting the land acq­uisition bill in the capital. The inaugural film at the three-day event in Gorakhpur is a journey called Shramjeevi Express, a documentary on a similar defiance, of the silent, cheap workforce living on the fri­nges of Delhi, in a dreary hellhole called Kapashera. Tarun Bhartiya’s ­view of the workers’ bleak lives in the urban jungle is a mirror to the cruel oppression and disparities hidden in all the talk of ‘Make in India’ and ‘achhe din’.

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Organised by The Group, the film wing of the Jan Sanskriti Manch (the cultural arm of the CPI-ML), in association with the Gorakhpur Film Society, the festival hopes not just to make good, non-Bollywood cinema accessible to a place and people deprived of it but also provide a platform for “constructive, creative dissent” via cinema. It’s evident in the cho­ice of films and issues addressed: caste, communalism, capitalism and censorship, not just governmental but also societal. In its 10th edition, the festival was in the memory of three radicals: Leftist artiste Chittoprasad who took on colonialism, feudalism as well as the classicism of the Bengal School; Marathi reformer and activist Govind Pansare, recently shot down by unkn­own assailants; and Avijit Roy, the Bangladeshi activist who lost his life for the cause of freedom of expression. The first year of the festival was the 75th year of Bhagat Singh’s death, its 10th too coincides with his martyrdom day.

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Any dissent has to have its roots in freedom, creative and commercial. And an independent spirit is the hallmark of this unheralded festival: it is run without any governmental, institutional, corporate or NGO sponsorship. “It’s run with the active support and cooperation of the common man,” says national convenor Sanjay Joshi. Donations are collected through boxes kept outside the venue and thro­ugh sale of books and films. No red carpet, no fancy venue or high-tech screening facilities. No ACs, not even noisy fans. You watch films on a makeshift screen in the grubby Gokul Atithi Bhawan marriage hall,  swatting mosquitoes and cursing the many interruptions brought about by power cuts. Discussions with the audience, however, are ISI mark—informed, incisive and indepth.

The festival’s independent spirit ref­lects in the films too. Like the Shaheed Hospital of the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha in Ajay TG’s documentary Pehli Aawaaz (The First Cry). Run independently, it is by, of and for the tribals, accepting no grants, either from the government or from NGOs and offering a viable alternative to the capitalistic health sector.

Gorakhpur city itself is plastered with posters of the new Bhojpuri blockbuster starring superstar Dinesh Lal Yadav, better known as Nirahua. It’s running to a “shaandaar teesra hafta” (third terrific week). The “bhavya pradarshan” (grand presentation) of the sequel to Ravi Kishan’s mega­hit Panditji Batayi Biyah Kab Hoi is round the corner. At COR, it’s another Bhojpuri voice that speaks. Pawan Shrivastava’s crowd-funded Naya Pata, capturing the pain and dilemmas of immigrants, strikes a huge Poorvanchali chord. As does Bik­ramjit Singh’s Bengali film Achal on the dreary lives of entertainers living on urban margins, as evinced by a guy who plays statue on Calcutta’s busy streets.

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Gorakhpur has many claims to fame. It was the site of the Chauri Chaura hatya­kand, a turning point in India’s freedom struggle; the home of Gita Press, largest publishers of Hindu religious texts; and simultaneously infamous for the blatant smuggling along the neighbouring Indo-Nepal border. It is also the home of Yogi Adityanath, mahant of the Gorakhnath temple, founder of the Hindu Yuva Vah­ini, BJP MP from Gorakhpur since 1998, the man behind ghar wapasi and also the one alleged to have incited the 2007 Gorakhpur riots. COR, therefore, has been a significant left-wing cultural isl­and in this right-wing communal cauldron. “That too for 10 long years,” adds filmmaker Sanjay Kak. Has there never been political pressure? “Never direct,” says Manoj Singh, founder-member of the Gorakhpur Film Society. Indirectly,  of course, it has meant the denial of the university hall (the original venue) for screenings. “We screened Garam Hawa just a month after the 2007 riots in Gorakhpur, got the liberals together and made a progressive point without taking recourse to any speeches,” says Joshi. In 2009, Arundhati Roy spoke on American imperialism. this year, she called Gandhi India’s first “corporate NGO”.

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The festival also showed Nakul Singh Sahni’s politically volatile Muzaffarnagar Baaki Hai that probes the unholy nexus between politics, economy and communalism in the Muzaffarnagar riots of 2013. For the closing, former IBN associate editor Pankaj Srivastava (reportedly fired from the channel for questioning the lack of coverage for AAP in the run-up to the Delhi elections) sang his own compositions on Varanasi and on Gujarat Ka Lala, bringing the house down with energetic lines like “Daanav saare roop dhar rahe devon ka, buddhu hai bhagwan hamari Kashi mein...” and “Kya kya na gul khilaye hai Gujarat ka lala, Obama ko pataye hai Gujarat ka lala...”

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Kya kya na gul khilaye...

Daanav saare roop dhar..

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Meanwhile, with its roots still in Gor­akhpur, COR has spr­ead its wings to other cities. There have been 44 chapters in the last 10 years, in Bareilly, Lucknow, Nai­n­ital, Bhilai, Patna, Indore, Ballia, Alla­h­a­bad, Banaras, Azamgarh, Udaipur, with imp­ortant names in cinema partici­pating: M.S. Sathyu, Shaji N. Karun, Gir­ish Kasa­ravalli, Saeed Mirza, Kundan Shah, Saba Dewan, Anand Pat­wardhan et al. And it’s only growing from strength to strength with each passing year.

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The Statement Makers

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Achal
Directed by Bikramjeet Gupta A Bengali film on people living on urban margins. A moving, warm and satirical tale of a man who earns his living by playing a statue in the various busy streets of Calcutta.

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Naya Pata
Directed by Pawan Shrivastava Contrary to the kitschy, garish and loud mainstream Bhojpuri cinema, Naya Pata is a parallel film of sorts, documenting the unfathomable pain and alienation of immigration

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Shramjeevi Express
Directed by Tarun Bharatiya A Hindi documentary on the flip side of “Make In India”. A stark revelation of the tenuous, embattled life of “cheap labour” in village Kapashera on Delhi border.

Pehli Aawaaz
Directed by Ajay T.G. A Hindi documentary by Shaheed Hospital of the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha. A viable alternative to the corporate health sector, it’s a hospital by, of and for the people.

Muzaffarnagar Baaki Hai
Directed by Nakul Singh Sahni A 360-degree view of the pogrom that was unleashed against the Muslims in Muzaffarnagar and Shamli districts in September 2013

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By Namrata Joshi in Gorakhpur

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