Marupakkkam Online Film Screening # 24 : Reality TV and Loving Jehad

Marupakkam Online Film Screening # 24

From tomorrow (Friday) 6 pm; for 72 hours only!

Film : MORALITY TV AUR LOVING JEHAD: EK MANOHAR KAHANI

(MORALITY TV AND THE LOVING JEHAD: A THRILLING TALE)

Directed by Paromita Vohra; 31 min; Hindi with English subtitles; 2007

Synopsis : In the winter of 2005 Indians switched on their TV sets to watch yet another “breaking news” story, but one which shocked them. In the town of Meerut, police officers, mostly women, swooped down on lovers in a park and began to beat them up. Along with them they took photographers and news cameramen with the promise of an exclusive sting operation.

What is the story of this news story? The film looks outside the frames that weave the frenetic tapestry of Breaking News on India’s news channels to uncover a town’s complex dynamics – the fear of love, the constant scrutiny and control of women’s mobility and sexuality, a history of communal violence, caste brutalization and feudal equations. Assuming the tone of pulp fiction and tabloid features it examines the legacy of this kind of story telling, from the relishing accounts of true crime magazines like Manohar Kahaniyan to the double morality of pulp detective fiction to the tabloid news on Indian TV, to unfold a thrilling but disturbing tale of it’s own.

As the salacious media frenzy around violent events takes on ever more unscrupulous forms, the story of the film becomes all the more relevant today.

CREDITS

Producer: PSBT

Director and Writer: Paromita Vohra

Camera: Avijit Mukul Kishore

Editing: Sankalp Meshram

Sound: Samina Mishra

Music: Chirantan Bhatt

Narrator: Lovleen Mishra

AWARDS AND FESTIVALS

Best Short Documentary at the International Video Festival of Kerala, 2008.

Screened in Competition at MIFF 2008, Asian Hot Shots, Berlin, 2008, Bollywood and Beyond, Stuttgart, 2008, Bangalore International Film Festival,2008, Breakthrough Tri-Continental Film Festival, 2008.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

Ever since I began making documentary films, I have had a troubled relationship with the idea of the expose, the investigation that will reveal and fix the culprits quite finally. It seemed to me that although the self aggrandizement and easy understanding inherent in that position was problematic, it also was a potentially violent idea, one that needed to be enacted with considered seriousness, with some complexity and with an acceptance that we do not in reality inhabit a space of pure justice and democracy. And that in speaking this language one would also speak a language heavy with morality, rather than ethics.

From Tehelka’s uncovering of defence ministry bribe scams to India TV’s Shakti Kapoor “casting couch expose”, the sting operation has become the accepted language of television news. When I saw the Operation Majnoo story I felt as if this language had come to a culminative moment – one that justifies violence in the name of righteous indignation. I also wondered how, in this atmosphere of heavy moralizing – whether political or personal – a young person was to find a true, meaningful, relevant articulation of personal relationships and their intimate journey in the world.

Morality TV aur Loving Jehad: Ek Manohar Kahani (A Thrilling Tale) therefore became a film that responded not just to the practice of television around me, but to my ongoing concerns about the language of the political film. The film excavates the language of pulp investigative/detective, fiction and non-fiction to make a comment about how thin the line between the two is, because in the end language and aesthetics are what creates the final, visceral impact from which conclusions also emerge- to look at the world of implication, not information. For me it was an effort to make a film that suggested these things associatively, rather than instructively, winding in and out of different windows onto the commonly understood version – and to take a different turn half way through the narrative to propose a different sort of speech, a different sort of feeling, a different sort of story, in which one could sincerely sing, that love is fleeting, love is fleeting, love is fleeting.

About the filmmaker :

Paromita Vohra is a filmmaker and writer. Her films as director are Morality TV and the Loving Jehad: A Thrilling Tale (2008),(Best Short Doc, IVFK,2008), Q2P(2006) (Best documentary IFFLA 2007; Stuttgart 2007), Where’s Sandra(2005), Work In Progress (2004) , Cosmopolis: Two Tales of A City (2004),  Unlimited Girls (2001 (Women’s News Award, Seoul Film Festival; Best Film, Aaina Film Festival, Best Documentary, Bollywood and Beyond, 2004), A Woman’s Place (1998, Annapurna: Goddess of Food (1995) , and A Short Film About Time(1999).

Her films as a writer includes the feature films Khamosh Pani, (dir: Sabiha Sumar), (Best Screenplay Award, Kara Film Festival, Best Film, Locarno Film Festival) and Khamoshi:The Musical (Additional Scriptwriting) (dir: Sanjay Leela Bhansali); the documentaries Skin Deep, A Few Things I Know About Her (Silver Conch, MIFF 2002, National Award for Best Documentary, 2002) and If You Pause: In a Museum of Craft.

She writes extensively for print, and has published fiction and non-fiction besides being a regular contributor to the Mumbai Mirror and Time Out Mumbai. She has done considerable work with young people with a focus on creativity and politics and teaches scriptwriting around the world. She is currently writing a feature film script and working on a non-fiction book about love in contemporary India.

Interaction with the filmmaker via Zoom on Sunday @ 11 am; message to 9940642044 for ID and password to attend the interaction. 

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE INTERACTION WITH THE FILMMAKER