“Documentaries are art forms of political memory making and a nation devoid of documentaries is like a family without any photo albums,” says Priya Thuvassery, a Delhi-based independent documentary maker and producer of widely discussed films like ‘Coral Woman.’ She was delivering a lecture on “Why do I Make Films on Climate Change, Displacement, & Gender?” in the ongoing Web-Based Lecture Series on “Engagements with Ecologies” organised by the Inter University Centre for Social Science Research and Extension (IUCSSRE), Mahatma Gandhi University in collaboration with Kochi Collective.
Showing an array of clippings from her different documentaries, Priya reminded that “we don’t have to wait for the government to step in and do something about climate change; but change can transpire if we resolve to make it within ourselves.” She said “we have the equal share for what’s happening to our surroundings, our environment.” Offering a glimpse into her work ‘Coral Woman’ that discerns the interconnections between environment, displacement and gender, Priya tried to show how she could weave a personal tale of an artist, Uma Mani, who painted Corals and her passion for the art that led her to explore further and discover the dwindling of coral reefs. She said that the film that has been widely screened led to many impact driven initiatives and dialogues across age groups. It throws light on the environmental implications of our political decisions and the impact it has on coastal communities and their livelihood.
Priya said that documentaries can be an important tool to bring to context in-depth research done within academic circles to a wider audience. She screened portions of her collaborative documentary ‘Gidiku Vapathu’ with Helina Jolly, an environmental researcher in the University of British Columbia whose doctoral research is on the relationship between forest ecosystems and Kattunayakans, a hunter-gatherer Indigenous People of South India. In Kattunayakan language, ‘Gidiku Vapathu’ means “going to the forest”, a term commonly used by the community members to invite their friends and family as they start their daily walk into the forest. Priya reminded how the community has important lessons for us in sustainability which we erroneously think of as a relatively new phenomenon. Priya also shared experiences from her upcoming documentary “Bawra Tera Pani” where she is collaborating with Khabar Lahariya which is India’s only women-run brand of digital first rural news network of 18 women reporters who train marginalized women to be journalists as well as bring to notice news from rural areas. Priya is sensitive to her being the urban outsider and believes in the local reporters take charge in this new collaborative work. The work brings out the fraught relations based on water distribution in the Chambal region, where the water scarcity has acutely exacerbated caste and gender disparities. However, the documentary is a tribute to the resourcefulness, resilience and grit determination of women in the region.
K.M. Seethi, Director, IUCSSRE, welcomed the session and Mathew Varghese (Adjunct Faculty, IUCSSRE) coordinated the programme. Aparna Eswaran (ICSSR Post-doctoral fellow, JNU), Hameeda C.K (Assistant Professor, University of Calicut), Shereen Sherif (researcher, JNU), V. Mathew Kurian (KN Raj Centre, MG University), Gokul S. (IIT Chennai) and others interacted with the speaker.
Priya’s talk was the first collaboration between Kochi Collective and IUSSCRE. Kochi Collective is a new research group that was formed by like-minded researchers working in inter-disciplinary areas of research.
