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"After an incredulously feel-good film such as \u201CThe Menstrual Man,\u201D \u201CGulabi Gang\u201D is certainly a reality check. On day one of the Dharamshala International Film Festival (DIFF), the two films followed each other. While \u201CThe Menstrual Man\u201D documented social entrepreneur Arunachalam Muruganatham\u2019s attempts at inventing low-cost yet efficient sanitary napkin-making machines that have the potential to transform the lives of rural Indian women, \u201CGulabi Gang\u201D is a more hard hitting film that explores the grit and determination of a bunch of women clad in pink saris, led by Sampat Patel, who identify as a women\u2019s rights organization, but are in fact, a vigilante group evoking change, one case at a time, in the feudalistic society of Banda, Uttar Pradesh. The 2012 documentary, directed by Nishtha Jain, won the Amnesty International Award at 10. Planete+ Doc Film Festival in May 2013, and also was awarded Best Documentary at the 2012 Kortfilmfestivalen in Norway.We caught the screening at DIFF and documented the Q&amp;amp;A session that took place between the audience and the director later. We present transcripts from the conversation where the first question was posed by us and the second-last was by fellow filmmaker Anand Patwardhan. But before we proceed, here's a look at an excerpt from the film.You mentioned yesterday (October 24), over dinner, that one of the biggest challenges with making this documentary was that you weren\u2019t exactly in love with your protagonist. Could you tell us more about this conflict?For a documentarian, you have to spend several years on a film. The problem was my lack of chemistry with Sampat. I admired her, but I wasn\u2019t in love with her. I had a lot of doubt about her, and I wondered how I was going to make a film about this woman. At the outset it was a very big question, how am I going to do this. I learned a lot from her, but I still had some concerns. It\u2019s very interesting because before this, with all the films I\u2019d done earlier, I was totally in love with my protagonists. In a way I suppose it was good to have that distance as well.Towards the end, when you speak to the group at the railway platform about the title of the film, someone was pointing towards the camera. Were they pointing to you or was it someone else? I was behind the camera. I was very interested because throughout the film, there\u2019s a lot of sympathy for the Gang from the women, but a lot of antipathy from the men. They were always scoffing. There was this man, who you see in the last shot, who was always going for their rallies, waking up at 4am, often in order to go, but he never had a good thing to say. Also, people tend to join a group when they want immediate results. But it\u2019s often a long-drawn battle, because the attitudes are so deep rooted. So many people leave because they think they\u2019re not getting any results. So they speak in a derogatory tone. The guy knew I was not a part of the Gang, hence he looked at me. A lot of the villagers don\u2019t take the Gang seriously. In some villages they do, but largely, the men just scoff at the whole thing.Did you have doubts about including the scene with Husna, where she talks about protecting her brother, who so clearly killed her sister? Also, how have the police reacted to the portrayals of the uneven enforcement of justice?That scene was basically Husna talking in favor of her brother. It was funny because Husna was one of my favorite characters. She was going to be made a commander. She was the most hardworking one I\u2019d come across. We were planning to spend time with her and in her villages. However, for various reasons it would get postponed. Then we heard this incident had happened where her brother had killed her sister for choosing her husband, and doing a court marriage and we rushed there for two days. I was shocked that after all the rhetoric, there is still a deep-rooted attitude these women have towards themselves. She didn\u2019t show any sympathy for her sister despite all her heated talk about how her brother, and she came from the same womb and why she would defend him to her dying breath. Why did I include it? I think it was because this was equally the real aspect of what is happening and not a one-off case. There are many members of the Gang like Husna, who would fall off because when there were issues related to their own family members, there would be a question mark. Also, I didn\u2019t want to romanticize the movement and I wanted to start a dialogue about these problems. This was part of my attempt to look at it more realistically. There\u2019s a lot we see. I could have done a hagiography, could have built it up in a certain way, but I decided from the beginning that I\u2019m not going to do that, the reality is much more complex.In the whole film, the case about the burnt dead woman takes up a lot of time, and the commanders of the Gulabi Gang are actually often acting as investigators and doing the legwork that the police is supposed to do. In every case they\u2019re doing work that a law enforcement agency is supposed to do. So there\u2019s no sympathy from the police. They become like detectives and take the investigation from one stage to the other, but they\u2019re forced to do this to bring justice to the woman, and because it\u2019s not their job, they can go about it in a slipshod way.What was shocking was also how everyone had a story about the number of women who had died in their village, and I was aghast about how common it was. It\u2019s not like the women were being killed just for dowry, sometimes the husband just didn\u2019t want her around anymore. I knew the situation was bad, but that it was this bad was an eye-opener.The film is rather beautifully shot, and that can be a constant struggle when it comes to budgeting. Did you choose a cinematographer or do it yourself? And was your choice made in terms of a larger public, like a film festival audience? Or is it generally becoming more important to have a certain kind of cinematographic effect?This is the same team I\u2019ve been working with for my last four films. We\u2019ve developed an understanding. We can\u2019t sit and discuss things while the filming is happening because it\u2019s all so spontaneous, all the understanding between the camera person and the director in such a film has to happen before.I consider the cinematography good not because it\u2019s making beautiful images, but it\u2019s there where it\u2019s supposed to be at the right time. He\u2019s able to see and he\u2019s able to respond. That kind of response from a cameraman is amazing. He\u2019s able to think about what I want. And this relationship has lasted almost eight years. I\u2019m not so good with cameras, I prefer to work with a camera person. Some other films I\u2019ve shot myself, but when it\u2019s a much more intimate situation.There are a lot of shots with landscape and animals. When we were there, and we were there for a long time, there\u2019s a feeling of desolation when you\u2019re just following death all the time\u2014and that\u2019s often what the Gulabi Gang was doing, dealing with cases like that. We spent a lot of time shooting the beautiful landscape and we thought it was so interesting that there are so many places that are so beautiful and that yet have so much violence going on. And also the idea of animals as observers of human nature. I\u2019m not into making beautiful images, but we had some kind of license here with the cinematography as we had a good budget when we found a Norwegian producer, which meant we could get some lenses that could help us with our footage.Anand Patwardhan: The violence of everyday life that women face is something I didn\u2019t know about so graphically. In the \u201CPink Saris\u201D&amp;nbsp;film, Kim has the same ambivalence as about Sampat. Both the films don\u2019t explore this ambivalence in their content. The darker side that might be in Sampat is something that both films don\u2019t want to get into, maybe because it will take away from the main story. I, as a member of the audience, sensed a desire on Sampat\u2019s part to hang in front of the camera. I found that more in \u201CPink Saris\u201D than in this. That happens often, it\u2019s not a major flaw. But I think that the fact that at some point the cameras become invisible to the people around; they get into their everyday life without worrying about the camera. The camera being there is not part of the story. That is something that I\u2019m not sure how it works. Then there\u2019s the danger that they\u2019re playing to the camera, because they\u2019re rarely looking into the camera, except during the interviews\u2026I was amazed. People just didn\u2019t look at the camera, didn\u2019t notice it. And I didn\u2019t want to try to make them notice it. They were more fascinated with the boom than with the camera. We could just be there and shoot and nobody gave a damn. I think the attention was also taken by Sampat. All the attention goes to her, so nobody cares who we are and what we\u2019re doing. There\u2019s no self-consciousness with it at all. In the end, when I\u2019m talking to the man, he refers to me, that\u2019s the only place where we establish that.I want to say, about ambivalence\u2026 it\u2019s not just about Gulabi Gang, power corrupts anyone. Sampat is acquiring a lot of power and has political ambitions, and that\u2019s the kind of ambivalence I feel towards her; like when she talks about compromise when she talks to the family of the burnt woman.For me, I like a very direct approach. If there\u2019s something I need to know or am uncomfortable with, I\u2019ll ask then and there and in front of the camera, and not by snooping around. How do you show that ambivalence is a question I had. I felt I needed to share with the audience as much as I could. She likes to hear her own voice and doesn\u2019t like to let other people speak.Anand Patwardhan: And she wasn\u2019t Dalit, right?She\u2019s not a Dalit. She\u2019s an OBC [Other Backward Classes]; comes from a poor family, self-made, hasn\u2019t been to school. For me, what was inspiring about her is that, even much more than urban feminists, she has individual agency. She takes her own decisions. That is amazing. If you look at village communities, one thing I learnt is that there is no individuality. Everything you decide is as a family or a community, they cannot make a decision about their own lives. Coming from that context, it\u2019s amazing that commanders can emerge who assert their own individuality. These are women who\u2019ve never stepped out of her own home. They can travel, hang around with women, and just that aspect of being able to hang out and not be bogged down by household work is liberating. But then there is confusion, because there has to be a vision for a big change.This is a spontaneous movement, which means that women want change, so let\u2019s look at it like that. All movements have gone through these confusions. I\u2019d like to look at the universal questions it throws up for any movement anywhere, and in that sense, this movement should be looked at sympathetically.Indian women are fighting for different issues in India. Why did you specifically make a documentary film on the Gulabi Gang. Why did you choose them and what kind of message do you want to send through this movie?Maybe it\u2019s because I\u2019m from Bundelkhand. For every film there has to be a personal connection. Because I\u2019m from that area, I was born there, so there was a connection. I got interested in her because my kind of filmmaking is about showing complexity. Of course there are lot of women doing work, but this had a complexity to it. Not to say this is more important, this just happened to be my point of interest when I began.When I started the film I wanted to make a feel-good film, but I could not. In a way I feel bad about it, but I felt like it would be good to share a real story. When you take the story to the people there can be discussion. Importantly, I want to talk about something. I wanted to do this film also because it challenged my own notions as a feminist from an urban area. It presented a dialogue. I had a lot of differences with Sampat. She would send a woman back to the husband or family even though he was beating her. She would say, \u201CWhat would you do, what option can you create at this point of time?\u201D They\u2019re illiterate and you have to create an employment situation before anything else. A lot of feminists would look at her film and maybe look down upon these things. I really started feeling that there is an arm-chair feminism that can happen from the comfort zone we come from, which is not present here. That was why I wasn\u2019t in love with her, and there were all sorts of questions going on in my mind and I wanted to do this film to resolve those questions.&amp;nbsp;Follow @ARTINFOIndia"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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