Eminent Indian documentarian Nishtha Jain’s newest effort is an account of the epic, year-long farmers’ protest that occurred in India in 2020-21.
“Farming the Revolution,” which world premieres at Hot Docs, follows the hundreds of thousands of Indian farmers who gathered through the peak of COVID-19 lockdown on the borders of the nation’s capital, Delhi, to protest in opposition to newly enacted farm legal guidelines. The farmers believed that if carried out, these legal guidelines would negatively impression the government-protected farmers’ markets, leaving them to the vagaries of the free market.
Jain is understood for jute weaving documentary “The Golden Thread,” which received the highest prize at Bergamo this 12 months and a number of award-winning girl empowerment movie “Gulabi Gang” (2012).
“It was the COVID year. We had already witnessed heart-rending scenes when the sudden announcement of all-India lockdown saw millions of Indian migrant workers walk to their homes thousands of miles away from the cities. A few months prior to that were the Delhi ‘riots’ which brought the India-wide protests against the citizen amendment bill to an end leading to the arrests of many human rights activists,” Jain advised Variety.
“When spontaneous protests against the farm laws broke out all over India, the question foremost in my mind was, will the farmers rise to protest the farm bills and how would that pan out. If their movement was crushed like many before, it could mean that they would lose whatever little state protection they had and would gradually lose their farm lands, their sole source of livelihood. This would be catastrophic. We began filming two days after the farmers reached Delhi borders and were stopped from entering Delhi.”
However, Jain and her crew, which included co-director and DoP Akash Basumatari, persevered.
“The motion was huge. There had been hundreds of thousands of individuals at one level, a whole bunch of farm unions, large protest cities on the 4 to 5 entry factors to Delhi. There was a lot to unpack – from why the farmers are protesting, the challenges of farming in India, the character of the current protests. Even although the farm unions had been united, there have been variations of their method and politics. Plus many different organizations joined the farmers with their very own agenda.
“What story do I tell and through whom? It took me a while but I decided to focus on the largest and oldest farm union from Punjab because of their approach to resistance, which was both novel and revolutionary while being completely non-violent. And then the movement went on for very long and it was difficult to get funding until it ended,” Jain mentioned.
Funding ultimately arrived from quite a lot of sources. The movie is supported by Sundance Documentary Fund, IDFA Bertha Documentary Fund, Chicken & Egg Pictures, Alter Ciné Foundation, CNC, PROCIREP, ANGOA, Sørfond, Fritt Ord, NFI, NRK, RTS, Bergesenstiftelsen and Filmkraft Rogaland. The producers are Jain for Raintree Films and Valérie Montmartin for Little Big Story, with Torstein Grude serving as co-producer for Piraya Film, in co-production with ARTE France and Al Jazeera.
“The third and the most difficult part of it was editing 500 hours of rushes into a 100-minute film and translate the social-cultural-political context to the outside audience which knows very little about India, be it farming, Punjab’s history or Sikhism’s influence on the farmers protests,” Jain mentioned. “To give you a small example, very few people outside India have heard of India’s freedom movement martyr Bhagat Singh. But in the protests, we saw thousands of Bhagat Singhs, every young farmer drew courage from their hero who was hanged by the British colonizers.”
Cinephil is dealing with worldwide gross sales. “’Farming the Revolution’ is both a cinematic achievement and an urgent record of the farmers struggle in India which mirrors the difficulties of the agricultural fields across the globe. Nishtha and Akash were able to capture the resilience of people and to craft an ode to their power,” Cinephil managing director Suzanne Nodale advised Variety.
While Cinephil will make sure that “Farming the Revolution” is seen globally, it’s a somewhat tougher process in India. “Even festival screenings in India require a go-ahead from the Information and Broadcasting Ministry. And getting a censor certificate for political documentaries is always tough and next to impossible. Public screenings of films even though they have a censor certificate have been known to be disrupted if the subject doesn’t suit the ruling government. Streamers too don’t touch political content in India. So the only way is releasing it for free on YouTube. And of course releasing it in international film festivals and TV channels abroad,” Jain mentioned.
Jain is now taking a break from documentaries and collaborating on a story undertaking with a scriptwriter.