📽 A Historian's Cinema of Memory

(Some of these thoughts were first expressed on letterboxd)

Uma Chakravarti is best known for her contribution to the field of history, specifically, the history of Buddhism, caste, and women in India. In the 2010s, Chakravarti made her first films, which appear as extensions of her work as a historian. Each of the five films she has made thus far are documentary works exploring memory, living memory, following their subjects through their everyday lives, gathering remembrances from friends and relatives, interweaving the past and present. Recollections are annotated by historical events, excerpts from diaries, archival images, and interspersed with re-enactments from the lives of their subjects. Central to her films is the question of women, women who write, an efflorescence of the work of history, where the subject who leaves behind no written records is often lost to time.

1. Fragments of a Past (2015)

Fragments of a Past follows Mythili Sivaraman's life as a trade unionist and revolutionary writer, told by Sivaraman herself, through the translucent curtain of her fading memory. Sivaraman's memory is aided by her own meticulous diaries, published works, and the reminiscences of her daughter, her husband, and her many comrades. Sivaraman was notable for her reports on the Kilvenmani Massacre of 1968, as well as her extensive documentation of the Vachati Mass Rape of 1992, however, the former is only mentioned briefly, and the latter is all but left out altogether, possibly owing to Sivaraman's difficulty remembering the historical episodes, but more likely because the film is about Sivaraman's life rather than those cases.

2. A Quiet Little Entry (2016)

Following loose threads from Fragments of a Past, A Quiet Little Entry excavates the life of Mythili Sivaraman's great grandmother, Subbalakshmi, using the research carried out by Sivaraman herself, in her book, Fragments of a Life: A Family Archive. Subbalakshmi was born into a Brahmin family at the turn of the 20th Century, and married at the age of 11. Despite this, Subbalakshmi separated herself from her husband, pursued literacy and literature, kept a detailed diary, ensured her daughter's education, and participated in the Indian freedom movement. Alongside her diaries, Subbalaxmi's archive includes photographs from many instances of her life, precipitated by the relative affluence of individuals of her caste and class status, which have been used to illustrate her life alongside re-enactments of moments from it.

3. एक इंक़िलाब और आया: Lucknow 1920-1949 (2018)

Ek Inquilab Aur Aaya is documentary that begins at the Firangi Mahal, a center for Islamic and rational scholarship in Lucknow, and follows the life of the poet Sugra Fatima, one of the first Muslim women to publish a book of poetry in modern India. The film weaves readings of Fatima's poetry and diaries with meditations on the stifling atmosphere of life behind the purdah which eventually led to her untimely demise. Next, the viewer is introduced to Khadija Ansari, Fatima's niece who chose to step out from behind the purdah, following the strides her aunt had made, and pursued a life in the communist movement. This section features interviews with the octogenarian Ansari, as she walks through the streets where she participated in protests, was beaten by the police, and through the spaces where the jail she was imprisoned in once stood, listening closely to the details of her life as she relates them.

4. Prison Diaries (2019)

Prison Diaries is a recollection of Snehalata Reddy's life in prison during the Indian Emergency of 1975. Once again, the viewer is stewarded through the grueling experience of life in prison through the diaries Reddy kept while she was incarcerated. Reddy's entries relate the inhuman circumstances that were piled upon her pre-existing health conditions, and pushed her to the very edge of her sanity. We see a very different side of Reddy who was far better known for her acting, and her life as a feminist activist. Reddy's testimony is supplemented by those of her son and daughter who have survived her, and the words of documentary film maker Deepa Dhanraj. A case study in the argument for prison abolition.

5. यह लो बयान हमारे (2021)

(i have not yet managed to source and watch this film)