‘Nocturnes is as much about sound as it is about images’
In its citation for the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Craft to Nocturnes, the jury at the Sundance Film Festival stated: “The images and sound in this film immediately invoke in the audience a meditative state as they enter the film’s world, at the same time bringing a laser focus to the film’s main subject. The confidence of the cinematography and sound design in building this story is part of its power and allure”.
Nocturnes is indeed immersive, experiential cinema at its most hypnotic. Breathtaking, vivid visuals (DOP Satya Rai Nagpaul) and stunning sound design plant the viewer right in the middle of the universe of moths in this rare Indian entomological documentary. Filmmakers Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan follow ecologist Mansi Mungee and her assistant Bicki in their quest into the dense forests of Arunachal Pradesh in Northeast India to shine a light on the secret lives of moths. The intimate peep into the world of insects is juxtaposed against the overwhelming expanse of nature.
There is the tireless, laborious work and extraordinary commitment of the researchers—the grind of putting up the huge screens, illuminating them to draw the moths, staying up nights, becoming nishachar (nocturnal) like the insects themselves, battling inclement weather, spending long stretches of time alone, away from home and family, and then the nitty gritty of measuring the moths, examining and recording them for shapes and sizes, forms and colours. The film acknowledges science and the scientists but eventually makes them a conduit for the viewer to experience the many mysteries of nature and value and appreciate it for the gift that it is for humanity.
Nocturnes also plays with the idea of temporality and permanence. It captures small triumphant moments, long waits and idle pauses in the scientific pursuit as well as the microcosm at large to give a feel of the span of time in that space.
In a conversation with Cinema Express after the film’s premiere at Sundance, Dutta and Srinivasan dwelt on what went into its making.
Excerpts:
Nocturnes is about a unique subject—the inner lives of moths. What took you to it?
Anirban: We have lived for a long time in Delhi. The sheer noise level that we experience there is cacophonic. There is a constant hum even when you listen to music at home. We’ve both felt that there is something very basic that has been taken away from us. We were thinking of making a film which would help us reconnect with nature and to some simple sounds like that of the water droplets or of the wind. We were missing that “thehraav” (repose) because we were always running around in Delhi. We had a chance encounter with Mansi [Mungee] in Uttarkashi, when we were doing another project also on nature, on the snow leopard habitat of Uttarakhand. She told us about this incredible landscape, how she puts up these moth screens and thousands of moths slowly come down on it.
I have been working in the Northeast from 2005, and Anu [Anupama Srinivasan] and I have also made another film in Manipur, in the Naga Hills, called Flickering Lights. The Northeast is our favourite place. So, when Mansi said, it is in Arunachal Pradesh, in West Kameng district, we decided to check it out. When we went there, we were blown. I grew up in Andaman and Nicobar where we used to have these outdoor cinemas. They’d bring film reels and project them on makeshift screens. We would run out of our homes to watch them, like those moths getting attracted to the lights. The moth work brought back all those memories.
It’s a subject we don’t associate Indian documentaries with…
Anupama: There has been a tendency to feel that film festivals, especially in the West, will accept Indian documentaries only if they are about a very serious social issue, or about trauma or like a hero story, with somebody fighting against all odds in the corrupt system. The expectations of films from South Asia are of a certain kind. This was also at the back of our minds—why should we, as filmmakers, as intellectuals, artistic people living in today’s world, feel ghettoized and feel compelled only to talk about certain issues and only in certain forms? So, in this film we haven’t followed any template, plot point kind of thing at all. It’s just our expression. This film allowed that possibility of cinematic expression. The story is very basic and simple, and the whole film, in a way, is a cinematic expansion of that. So, we could really get into the sound and the visual exploration in a very wonderful and detailed way.
How much did you have to travel, and how long did it take you to shoot the film?
Anirban: The moth work is seasonal. It doesn’t happen in winters, and it was very difficult for us to film during heavy rain. So, it was over a few trips between 2019 and 2023.
Anupama: But the primary, principal photography started end of 2021 because in the middle we lost a little bit of time to Covid. 2021, 2022 were our two main schedules. We followed them [Mansi, Bicki and team] wherever they went but it was all in a relatively small area of the Eaglenest Sanctuary, and the surrounding forests, in West Kameng district of Arunachal Pradesh. A lot of it is in the community forest and some of it is in the sanctuary.
Anirban: It’s called Singchung Bugun Community Reserve. It’s a special place in India where the community has lent its own land to create a buffer zone and a few years ago Ramana Athreya [birdwatcher and astronomer at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune], who is part of our film, discovered and described a bird species called the Bugun liocichla. It’s such a special jungle where new species are still being discovered. The biodiversity is mind blowing, the moth is only one small part of it. It also has a very special cat population. There can be several films made on just this forest.
Anupama: And I think only about 10 per cent of the species have been described till now, so there is that much scope for finding new things here. But it’s a challenging physical environment to work in. So, there are just a few scientists working here. A lot of people are quite daunted by just having to live like this and work in very difficult circumstances.
Anirban: As you saw in the film, it is so remote and so difficult to get to. But if you have the patience, or if you have the calmness, to wait for things to happen, then it can be rewarding, both for scientists as well as filmmakers.
The film makes for an incredibly immersive experience. What went into its visual language and sound design?
Anirban: In 2019, we went to the forest with the kind of equipment we usually take for documentary shoots—shotgun, boom microphones, lapels, etc. When we came back and heard and saw the footage, we felt what we had been hearing there was not coming across in the footage. It felt like a big loss. At that point we started researching on how to record the sound. We had a wonderful sound recordist called Sukanta Majumdar, who teaches at SRFTI (Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute).
When we went there next, we went with multiple microphones, a few mono microphones, we had microphones which we clipped onto the screen to get the ‘tuck tuck’ of the moths, the walking of the insects. We went with stereo microphones and added an immersive microphone, which was a 5.1 microphone and we had 360-degree microphones which recorded the soundscape.
We did hours and hours of recording. For example, in the film, when you see a transition from day to twilight to night, it is the recording of how the soundscape changes. We wanted to be true to that, and not use any stock, what we call the library sound effects. So, the thunder that you hear, the raindrop that you hear, they’re all from that place.
That is the way we felt [when there]. We also felt that this kind of sound motivates the gaze. You will see more if you hear more. and if you see more, then you will hear more. It’s both the things that happen together. This film is as much about sound as it is about images.