Green cinema, anyone?

The melancholia of The Day After Tomorrow (2004), the volatile exuberance of Erin Brockovich (2000) and the grim foreboding of corporate disaster in The Insider (1999) – a conscious celebration of the environmental dangers lurking in the dark or a precocious attempt to portray ecology as a legitimate concern rather than a cinematic background for larger exigencies? Answers do not lie in a glum review of films churned out by the Hollywood film factory one weekend after the other. National Geographic and its panoramic programming notwithstanding, Western cinema has taken its first steps towards environmentally responsible filmmaking.

But has Hollywood done enough? Hardly so. The documentary film movement has gone far ahead of that in India. Rachel Carson’s revolutionary Silent Spring (1962) made strident waves across the North American continent, its impact traveling across the rest of the world that was just waking up to the clarion call of environmental conservation. Even though Hollywood commercials like The Day After Tomorrow sent shivers down the spine of audiences worldwide with its graphic portrayal of the advent of the mythic Ice Age if mindless destruction of the environment is not heeded and Erin Brockovich broke some stereotypes and piled up awards for Julia Roberts, a sustained effort to target the masses with starker issues has been found to be missing.

How do the celluloid barons of Mumbai fare? If the answer to this is an emphatic Kaal, well, too bad! While the Karan Johar-Shahrukh Khan co-production raised some eyebrows, it made little sense to brand it as an ‘environmental film’. “Filmmakers in Mumbai have rarely ever shown any understanding of the real environmental issues. It is not simply about protecting tigers and saving the forests. Issues such as people’s rights over natural resources and the politics of development are not been tackled by any filmmaker from the Hindi film industry,” laments Krishnendu Bose, maker of films like The Cry of the Forest, a film that looks at the lives of adivasis displaced and relocated by a tiger sanctuary in Kanha, Madhya Pradesh and Elephant- God or Destroyer, the portrayal of the life of an elephant in India.

Contextualization is the backbone of any thematic production, be it film, music videos or the rare documentary that stirs its audience out of slumber. The capacity of cinema to hold the audience depends on the way the theme is placed in the film, which needs to be constantly reviewed and reinstated so that people identify with it. The same remains true for environmental films. Films in India, unfortunately, have never come to terms with the problem of contextualization. Perhaps Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak were the only maestros to have dealt with the concept and succeeded.
Ashok Ahuja’s Vasundhara: Our Beautiful Earth (1988) was a cinematic milestone as far as environment on the silver screen is concerned. Krishnendu Bose opines that Amar Kanwar’s Many Faces of Madness was a masterpiece that emerged from the reality of destruction and the appropriation of commons in India. The film with its images of contemporary ecological destruction in the country brought people face to face with the intensity and impact of globalisation and industrialisation, of commerce and greed, as it traveled through images from different parts of India, revealing glimpses of traditional water harvesting systems, mining, chemical pollution, community forest protection, displacement, deforestation, biopiracy and coastal ecosystems.
A definite progress against the tide is being made in India by filmmakers such as Kanwar, Bose and the inimitable Shekar Dattatri who have gone ahead with their passion against all odds. “I was a struggling filmmaker when I started off some 20 years ago and am still struggling. The biggest problem is funding. I have spent so much of my life just trying to raise money for my films,” says Dattatri. Despite the shortages, the ace filmmaker has been able to win recognition especially after being hailed by Television Business International, a UK-based film trade journal as a ‘rising star’ in the world of environmental filmmaking in the year 1998.
Films like Buru Sengal (The Fire Within) – a poignant story of the Indian coal industry and the people and environment of Jharkhand spanning 150 years by Shriprakash and Surabhi Sharma’s Aamakaar (The Turtle People) about a community that has kept up its struggle against sandmining destroying their shores and their livelihoods while preserving the endangerd Olive Ridley turtles that come to nest on the beach have traveled across the world while sending out a clear signal that Indian environmentalism on celluloid is here to stay.
The cinematic form is a powerful medium most of which remains underutilized in terms of the responsible filmmaking. While Bollywood moghuls would not venture to risk millions on an environmental subject, the fact is that commercial Hindi cinema is a mammoth vehicle for environmental advocacy. Now that Mumbai filmdom has been accorded the status of an industry, environment as a theme could become a launch pad for the fulfillment of their corporate social responsibility. But does anyone care?