Narrow lanes lead to jute mills in Bengal. The roads are dimly lit. Children play in labour lines. Men listen to the radio as they rest after their shift. These are some of the recurring visuals in the documentary, The Golden Thread, made by Nishtha Jain, a passout of FTTI’s film school. She also studied in Jamia Millia’s Mass Communication Centre. More than 30 jute mills have shut down in Bengal in a course of five years, from 2017 to 2022. This also includes the old Wellington Mill, which was established in Rishra in 1857, one of the sites where the film—made after eight years of research—was shot. The camera wanders around close packed streets, recording sweat-trickling foreheads, dispirited eyes, and weary faces. This story, however, began years ago, and can be traced to Partition. After Partition, the jute industry of divided Bengal faced an existential crisis. While East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) had the finest stock of jute fibre and the best jute growing areas, the jute mills were in India. Outdated machinery, emergence of synthetic substitutes, and competition from Bangladesh and Brazil added to the problems. Jain’s film follows low-paid workers, weighed down by daily struggle. In one scene, a dejected labourer appears bluntly speaking about the poor wages in mills. “A mason gets `300 a day. At the mill we get `200 a day. Besides, there’s no guarantee of work,” he says. For the women, the day starts as early as 2 or 3 am — to cook, get ready, and leave for work. A young girl in the film, who once wanted to become a police officer, now dreams of becoming an actor, visiting Goa, and resting by a beach. She speaks with a mix of laughter and sadness.
Beyond statistics
Jain’s interest in the jute mills arose when she was in Kolkata to screen her earlier film Gulabi Gang (2012). That day, news of a clash between workers and a jute mill CEO which led to his death, reached Jain. She decided to visit a mill. “When I saw the working conditions there, it felt like stepping back 100 years,” she says. Jain has been making films for over two decades. She initially worked on television documentaries. “I didn’t want to join the commercial industry. I wanted to be an independent filmmaker and share the stories through my own vision,” she tells TMS. Her first documentary, City of Photos (2004), explores how people express and “reinvent” themselves in photo studios across Kolkata and Gujarat.
Focus on working-class lives
Over the years, her work has continued to centre around working-class lives. Lakshmi and Me, Jain’s 2007 documentary, is the story of a domestic worker in Mumbai. The next, At My Doorstep, is a film about those who provide essential services in urban buildings; the watchmen, sweepers, and many others. For The Golden Thread, Jain says the challenge was figuring out how to tell the story without reducing it to facts or statistics. “I didn’t want to make a typical documentary,” she explains. “There is very little talking in the film. You’re invited to walk through the factories and see for yourself.” And although the film feels quiet, it is far from silent. The sound design tracks every creak, thud, and rumble of the old machines. Funding the project took time. But she feels it was important to document this world before it vanished. Many of the machines in the film are over a century old. “They may not exist a few years from now,” she remarks. “So, this film is like an archive of sounds, of machines, of people.”