"Wagah questions the future of borders," says Supriyo Sen article
A journalist turned filmmaker, Supriyo Sen’s last film Wagah won him the prestigious Berlin Today award at the Berlin Film Festival 2009. It was part of a competition called Berlin Talent Hunt where over 200 documentary filmmakers from around the world participated. This film is based on the Indo-Pak border at Wagah where he tried to capture the sentiments of the people, who live on either side of the border as they come to observe a ritual everyday at the Indo-Pak gate.
Supriyo Sen started his career as an independent documentary filmmaker in 1996. He says that it had always been his dream of making a film on the place from where his father hails – Borishal, a town in Bangladesh. He had always identified Borishal as his motherland but never had the opportunity to go there till 1996. This desire saw the light of day when he made a documentary film titled Way Back Home in 1999. In the film, he tried to trace back to Borishal through the journey of his parents. The film won several awards.
Following this, he made another film on the soldiers of the Indo-Pak war who had been separated from their motherland and forced to live in exile in India and Pakistan. This was called Hope Dies last in War. This film incidentally won a National Award in 2009 for being the best documentary film. In between these films, he has made several other documentary films.
Sumit Dasgupta got down on the trail of Supriyo Sen before his visit to the Sundance Film Festival 2010 where his film Wagah is being screened…
Since Wagah is a film about the border, I would like to know how do you define a boundary between two countries – is it a physical entity that creates a strange alienation among people of the same soil or is it a psychological entity which exists in the mind of the people? And is this psychological entity more overpowering than the physicality of the border?
For me, a border has deep connotations as I come from a family which had been separated from its motherland due to the partition of Bengal. The urge to see one’s motherland was very deep within me right from my childhood days. In my mind, there was no such divide between India and Bangladesh. Whenever people used to ask me where I was from, I used to say I was from Borishal. I had gone on the Ichchamati river and used to see the shore of Bangladesh. I used to have a deep desire to go to that land. When I visited Dhaka during a film festival in the mid 90s, I felt that that I had come to my own place of birth. I couldn’t find any difference between Kolkata and Dhaka – the people, their food habits, their lifestyle are so very similar to us. They treated us with great warmth and love. I found that for them, the border did not exist in their minds. A border is nothing but a space which has been geographically defined by the governments of two neighbouring nations in order to demarcate one nation from the other. But for people on either side of the border, this demarcation does not exist. Life flows on like a river irrespective of the embankments it faces.
Wagah is part of a trilogy on partition which started with Way Back Home. Can you tell something about this trilogy?
Way Back was about revisiting a past. After that, I made Hope Dies last in War which was about prisoners of war (POW) who had to stay back in India. Hope explored the desires, sentiments and longing for a motherland in the minds of the Pakistani soldiers who had to stay back in India. Wagah puts a question about the future. It deals with the daily ritual that takes place at the Indo-Pak border. Looking at this daily event, one would be left wondering whether there is any need for a border between India and Pakistan. When one looks at the people living on either sides of the border, one will hardly find any dissimilarity. Wagah puts forward the question - should the border exist in future? In these three films, I have tried to explore the life of people who have been separated by partition between two countries. I have tried to look into their sentiments, desires and thoughts about their motherland.
Any particular experiences?
One thing I realized while working with the people living on either sides of the border that the divide between two countries is not so much prevalent among them as it is among the people living in the mainland. Because for them, there is no mental divide. They live the same way on either side, speak the same language, eat the same food. For them, the border does not have any physical significance. They don’t have a warlike feeling in their hearts. In fact, they want to live peacefully. For them, a war is more of a physical entity. For us, it is a surreal entity – we do not know what it actually feels to be in a war.
Your documentaries deal with an uncertainty….
Yes, I usually start off with a concept and try to explore the possibilities. While shooting, the script gets made. I have been fortunate enough to work with some of the best technicians such as Ranjan Palit, who is a very renowned cinematographer. I improvise a lot on the spot. Many of the scenes in these films were shot impromptu. What I try to do is to see what reality has to offer me and then I probe deeply into these realities. And then what comes out would seem to you and me as not to have existed in reality but is actually very much a part of the reality that we inhabit.
Here, I would like to bring in an important question – how much role does objectivity and subjectivity play in your part? For example, Way Back seems to have a distinctive subjectivity to it…
Way Back was definitely subjective but I had also distanced myself from the topic. In my other films, I have done the same thing. What I believe in is a type of spontaneity. When I shoot a documentary, I don’t interfere with the actors or the cameraman. Before the shooting, we sit down and discuss the scenes but once the camera starts rolling, I believe in capturing the moments in situ. Even during the shooting of Way Back, I did not interfere with the acting of my parents. I just let them be. In the case of Wagah too, I used to gel with the little kids very freely and in that, we could capture their best acts. I feel every work of art is subjective but the issue is how well you can distance yourself from the topic and let it grow itself. And another aspect is that one should be able to come out of an event and see it in the larger perspective.
I have seen that your films are not merely about facts but have a certain fictional tendency in them. There is a definite narrative in your films.
Yes, I have always believed that there should be a narrative in every film. Way Back was about a grand narrative – the narrative of Partition. I have great faith in my audience. I believe they will be able to capture the essence of this narrative of which they are a part. For me, the audience is very important. When I am shooting a film, I always think of the audience which is a set of very intelligent people. I believe in a form of story-telling which does not tarnish reality. I use different tools of story-telling to build my narrative but I never try to dramatize reality.
What next? Any new projects in the offering?
I will be traveling to the Sundance Film Festival 2010 where my film has got selected. And currently, I am working on a script for a feature film. For once, I am trying to move away from documentary filmmaking and try my hand at making feature films.
