'Liveness' as a Strategy employed in 'Ara Jeevithagalku Oru Swargam'

Eleven villages in Kasargod, Kerala had cashew plantations under the Plantation Corporation of Kerala, a state government undertaking.  Endosulfan pesticide was aerially sprayed on helicopters from the seventies over these plantations to fight the tea mosquito. Ideally, this pesticide had to be applied in a target specific manner. The indiscriminately sprayed pesticide, in a matter of no time seeped into the water bodies and affected the living and non-living forms living in the vicinity of the plantation. Endosulfan is a banned pesticide in at least 62 countries, including the European Union, several Asian and West African nations. But it is still used in countries like India and Brazil.

The neighboring villages of the cashew plantations in Kasaragod were mostly ordinary people who were either workers of the Plantation Corporation of Kerala or other daily wage workers who did not know much about the magnitude of the disaster awaiting them. Over time, hundreds of lives were lost after unimaginable suffering and generations affected by its toxic content, living for namesake. The pesticide had emerged as a controversial agrochemical due to its acute toxicity, potential for bioaccumulation and as an endocrine disruptor affecting hundreds of people, changing their lives forever. As a result of media reporting, the State Government appointed a panel to look into the reality of the accusation against the pesticide in 2001; the committee recommended a ban on the pesticide. In 2003, the issue was brought to the notice of the civil society at large, by a Documentary Film directed by MA Rahman titled Ara Jeevithangalku Oru Swargam(A Paradise for the Dying), a Social activist and documentary filmmaker from Kasaragod who had won a National award for his maiden documentary Basheer the Man, back in 1987. The screenings of the documentary on the disaster in educational institutions, churches and other people gatherings generated more than 80 lakhs for the victims of the disaster.

This study attempts to take clues from the HBO film Production of the Mathew Shepard incident  (1998) titled The Laramie Project, which problematized the brutal killing of Mathew who was a gay student at the University of Wyoming. The Laramie Project (2002), directed by Moises Kaufman uses the concept of Liveness to make the presentation more real and to effect immediacy. This study looks at the documentary A Paradise for the Dying and attempts to discover ways by which ‘liveness’ is used in the documentary to represent the magnitude of the Endosulfan tragedy.

Sources:

1.      A Paradise for the Dying(2003), a documentary by M A Rahman

The first documentary on the Endosulfan writ tragedy is ‘ara jeevithangalku oru swargam’ translated as A Paradise for the Dying, 2003 was directed by MA Rahman. In the background of a folk song, the documentary begins depicting the untouched beauty of the Kasaragodan villages, rivers, the beauty of wilderness along with a vivid description of the linguistic diversity (Kasaragod is called “saptha bhashakallude nadu” meaning ‘the land of seven languages’) and the quintessential art form of Kasaragod, Theyyam. Into this serene atmosphere, one hears a rather disturbing roar of the helicopter (the one to do the aerial spraying) followed by people underneath running here and there for life. The story begins to unfold here. The “Swargam” (meaning paradise) in the Malayalam title is a reference to the Swarga village of the district affected by the pesticide.

2.      HBO Film version: The Laramie Project

The HBO Film version The Laramie Project (2002) was inspired by the huge success of the play titled the same produced by the Tectonic Theatre Company in 2000. The film is an attempt to recreate the days followed by the infamous hate crime that took away the life of Mathew Shepard. The film is based on over 200 interview transcripts of the residents of Laramie. The responses of a cross section of the civil society of Laramie are presented to indicate the attitude of the town to the murder and homosexuality at large. The film follows the trial of McKinney and Henderson, the prime accused in the case. The film, like the play makes a strong case for the homosexual community, their basic human right to live in the society with dignity and security and not perceived as despicable deviants. On the background, the film also enquires into the religious basis governing the dominant attitudes towards same-sex couples in US.

3.      Chintha Ravindran’s article titled A Paradise for the Dying from his anthology of essays titled “cinema, society and ideology”

This write up on the documentary is from Chintha Ravindran’s (1946-2011) anthology of essays titled “cinema, society and ideology”. The article is titled ‘A Paradise for the Dying’. He compares the green politics of the ‘A Paradise for the Dying’ to the underground film tradition in the West, which is to counter the dominant narratives on the pesticide driven disaster. The essay discusses the success of the documentary in uncovering the attempts from the part of Governments, officials and pesticide companies to cover-up the whole thing from the eyes of the civil society, to mislead people and concerned parties from the real issue, how innocent people in Swarga, Cheemeni and other villages suffered for over decades without meaningful healing and rehabilitation intervention from the State.

4.      Introduction: An Orchid in the Land of Technology from Liveness by Philip Auslander

The concepts from the first chapter of liveness will be applied to the documentary A Paradise for the Dying. It includes the idea of ‘liveness’, the difference between live and mediatized events, the mutual give and take of the two in new media, how the live is increasing modeled on the mediatized, hyper-mediation etc. All these processes in short aim to make the performance more immediate (immediacy).

5.      The Documentary Film, A Very Short Introduction by Patricia Aufderheide

In this very concise book on the history of the documentary film, Patricia Aufderheide traces the history of this genre of films. She carefully distinguishes documentary under appropriate subgenres to best understand and classify the genre in its short history. She defines documentary as an analytical argument with a voice- of- god narration.