Fictional newsrooms in movies don’t have half the tension and excitement of the one shown in Indian director Vinay Shukla’s feature documentary While We Watched (a UK premier in Sheffield Doc Fest’s Rebellions strand). The film follows charismatic Hindi TV news journalist Ravish Kumar, a figure with a gravitas and authority reminiscent of US journalist Ed Murrow. Kumar works for NDTV (New Delhi Television Ltd).
Kumar takes his job very seriously but the media environment around him is fast changing. He is competing against nationalist broadcasters who like working their viewers up into a frenzy while completely ignoring the principles of press freedom and fair, unbiased reporting.
Passing through London en route to Sheffield, director Shukla explained to Business Doc Europe why his film (due to be released in the UK by MetFilm Distribution next month) has struck such a chord with festival audiences since its premiere in Toronto last autumn. Some are tipping it to follow titles like Writing With Fire and All That Breathes and become an awards contender.
The new film touches on a very sensitive subject, namely the rise of populism and the decline in freedom of speech in Modi’s India.
Kumar is “a very famous face” in India. By chance, Shukla watched his show one day when he was in Bombay and was startled to see the veteran journalist scolding his audience and telling them not to watch TV. “It was completely contrary to everybody else. I thought it was a very delicious irony. Here was a television anchor who was telling everybody to stop watching the news.”
Shukla couldn’t help but notice how world-weary Kumar looked. “He seemed to have seen a better time in life and was now beginning to wonder if his audiences cared for his art form.”
And, yes, the director does regard Kumar’s style of journalism as an art. “It’s not pure reportage. It is mixed with sarcasm, wit, bias. It is mixed with critique. It’s 40 minutes of what Ravish thinks, mixed with solid research. His gift is his language and his medium is journalism.”
Kumar’s colleagues are fast resigning. The broadcaster is downsizing. Morale is falling along with audience numbers. He, though, won’t compromise on his meticulous approach. Unlike the crazed figures on the other channels, he is a proper journalist, not a demagogue.
“I really began to wonder…I am feeling all this anxiety when I am watching the news. I am sure all these people who are creating the news are also feeling this anxiety. There is no way you can make me feel it without you feeling it,” Shuklar reflects on the fraught nature of contemporary news reporting in India. “I wanted to go behind the scenes and see how these people are working.”
While We Watched is old-fashioned verité filmmaking. The director somehow renders himself near invisible as he films events at NDTV. “We shot for two years. For two years, we were always turning up every day and waiting for a moment when your protagonist doesn’t care how close you get [with the camera],” the director remembers. “You push your boundary continually…you are constantly figuring out how you can do this better. It is an exercise in patience, that’s the trick. You are always trying to shoot in a manner which captures what you are feeling and conveys it to the audience.”
As Shukla points out, Kumar and his colleagues were far more knowing than most subjects in a documentary. “You are working in a newsroom where everybody understands the power of the camera. There is not one person there who doesn’t know what the wrong image can do.” It was up to the director and his small crew to “read the room” and work out when it was appropriate to shoot. He tended to be cautious and tactful. If the journalists were working on a tight deadline or discussing something sensitive or confidential, he would keep at a distance.
Kumar has seen the film – and gave a typically terse response after viewing it. He didn’t praise it and he didn’t criticise it either. “He was very nonchalant. He has life going on. He doesn’t care too much about what I do with this film and how I make it. He was like ‘this is cool’ and then he moved on…he is very serious about his own work, not mine.”
The veteran journalist has now left NDTV and is attracting mass audiences (“he has 6 million followers”) on his YouTube channel.
“You have to remember, he comes from the people. Ravish started as a mailbox at NDTV. He would go around giving people their mail. He started from the bottom of the ranks and he climbed his way to the top purely on merit,” the director says of him. Perhaps because of his roots, Kumar has a thick skin. He is ready to engage with everybody, even his fiercest critics. He takes threats and insults entirely in his stride.
“We have a huge film industry but we absolutely hate documentaries,” the director explains why it has been a struggle get While We Watched onto cinema screens across India. It will be released later this summer. Shukla deliberately approached it as if it was a Broadcast News or Network-like drama so that it will be accessible to everybody. “When I am making docs, I make it a point that my films are speaking in a language that is understandable to the filmgoing audiences. They don’t have sit-down interviews,” the director confides. As in his previous doc, the non-fiction political thriller, An Insignificant Man, he is trying to entertain and excite viewers, not to preach at them.
This may be an Indian-made film but it is made with substantial western assistance from companies like Doc Society and LONO Studio. “They have been such incredible collaborators for me that I hope they happen for every film I make,” the director pays tribute to his international backers and producers, for example Luke W Moody and Jess Search.
He adds that it is now the responsibility of Indian filmmakers to build their own institutions and support systems. He has high hopes for India Docs, the new funding body being set up by his producer, Khushboo Ranka. He predicts this will be an “oasis” for Indian documentary makers. In the immediate future, though, he himself is turning his eye to fiction. His new project, yet to be titled, is a “ticking time bomb-style” hostage drama which he is writing with his cinematographer, Amaan Shaikh.
Sales on While We Watched are handled by CAT&Docs.
