CHENNAI: Passion knows no limit, it doesn’t understand boundaries or race. If passion is something that is diving one, then accomplishment is bound to happen. Born in a small village in the suburb of Bombay, Swarnavel Eswaran Pillai has come far, literally. Swarnavel, who sharpened his film aesthetic skills in our own FTII (Pune), is now associate professor for film studies and creative writing at Michigan State University. The veteran documentary and filmmaker, in an intense conversation with CE, talks about his early inspiration, relevance of social justice films today and the difference in writing in India and the west.
Swarnavel’s early inspiration included sensible mainstream cinema or middle-of-the-road films directed by Shridhar in Tamil or Bimal Roy or his protegees like Hrishikesh Mukherjee or Gulzar. “Before the DVD and VHS eras, the Film and Television Institute of India was a dream land; you could watch all the significant films of the masters like Ozu, Bresson, and Bunuel in 35 mm prints. We also had workshops with iconic figures like Satyajit Ray’s cinematographer Subrata Mitra, legendary filmmaker Mrinal Sen, and also Guru Dutt’s collaborator VK Murthy to mention a few. Even the immortal Akira Kurosawa had visited us after the film festival at New Delhi. What more do you need as a boost?” laughs Swarnavel.
The veteran filmmaker holds firm that theory and practice can inform each other. “For instance, my early documentaries like Thangam exemplifies my interest in ethnography but my significant recent works emblematize my preoccupation with minorities and people on the fringes; for instance, Unfinished Journey: A City in Transition focuses on race, civil rights, and equality,” he says.
Over the last 30 years, Swarnavel has successfully collaborated with scholars, practitioners, peers, and his students in most of his significant films. “Today, I am happy to see my past-students carve a niche as academic professors, straddling theory and practice, and also being invested in the history and theory of cinema,” smiles Swarnavel.
“I believe the best way to convey a social justice theme through a movie would be to balance politics with aesthetics. For instance, some of the significant works of Chris Marker, Anand Patwardhan, and Barbara Kopple have done this,” he points out.
How does he see the Censor Board of our country? “Indian Censor Board has lost its authenticity. It has become a tool to drive the agenda of the State and punish creative filmmakers and suppress the voices of the activists and the people,” he says. “That’s why it’s difficult to imagine a film like Errol Morris’ The Thin Blue Line (1988) in India. This film helped reopen the case of the wrongly convicted Randal Adams who was charged with the murder of a Texas cop.”
He also adds that such fine writing cannot happen in a vacuum; it must be dictated by the cultural milieu. “Indian writing draws more from mythology and archetypes, and is generally expansive and multi-layered. Perhaps the reason why Indian mainstream may be perceived as loud, but at the same time, it is true about the vast majority of films produced in the West as well.”
He has a clear take on indie films or the parallel Indian film industry and the importance of the acceptance of such films. “Yes, films like Kakkoos (directed by Divya Bharathi, 2017) has been a very successful film not only in Tamil Nadu but also in the UK and Canada. A discerning audience across demographics has seen the film. It is a topical film about social justice that needs to be seen by more people as it exposes our hypocrisy around caste exploitation by focusing on manual scavenging,” he adds
Dr Swarnavel Eswaran is talking today at the three-day Social Justice Film Festival at the Goethe Institut Chennai. The fest begins today.
For details, call 9840757959