Documentary films: Spectacle of the real

When I was growing up, cinema wasn’t just a pastime; it was our lifeline as it was the only form of entertainment that existed in pre-television days. The cinema houses that we frequented in Amritsar were fairly grotty spaces, with rats having a free run, along with frequent electricity cuts and fans whirring furiously. Yet all this didn’t matter once the lights dimmed.

Before the film started, we had to stoically endure the mandatory Films Division documentary on topics such as family planning and the effectiveness of fertilisers and water conservation. At that age, we felt that it was a necessary tax to pay before we were finally able to escape into the vibrant world of masala films.

While its primary mandate was to produce newsreels and documentaries that promoted state policy, it inadvertently provided the financial backbone for the Parallel Cinema movement. This era proved that state support and creative genius could coexist, even when the resulting work was deeply critical or complex.

The Films Division of India occupies a unique space in cinematic history because it functioned as a government body that somehow fostered a revolutionary artistic movement. A prime example of this is Shyam Benegal’s ‘Bharat Ek Khoj’. Though it was commissioned to celebrate Indian heritage based on Jawaharlal Nehru’s writings, Benegal transformed it into an epic narrative that bypassed the dry tone of official history. Similarly, Govind Nihalani’s ‘Tamas’ tackled the harrowing reality of Partition with a level of honesty that was unprecedented for a state-funded project. Instead of sanitising the past, Nihalani held up a mirror to the communal tensions of the subcontinent.

Beyond the monumental works of Benegal and Nihalani, Films Division and Doordarshan served as a vital sanctuary for an entire generation of filmmakers who sought to redefine Indian cinema. Mani Kaul and Kumar Shahani were perhaps the most radical beneficiaries of this system, using state resources to move away from conventional storytelling toward a formalist, avant garde style.

Kaul’s work on documentaries like ‘Siddheshwari’ allowed him to experiment with non-linear structures and minimalist aesthetics that would never have survived the pressures of the commercial box office. Similarly, Kumar Shahani utilised government grants to produce deeply intellectual films like ‘Fire in the Belly’, which examined social crises through a lens of classical art and rigorous theory.

Since these directors were not tethered to the commercial pressures of the box office, they were free to experiment. In the end, the institution that was meant to be a mere mouthpiece ended up documenting the soul of a nation through some of its most enduring cinematic masterpieces.

Anand Patwardhan acts as the definitive moral compass of documentary films, using his lens as a scalpel to dissect the anatomy of national identity and dissent. He became the radical conscience of Indian non-fiction, stripping away the polite veneer of state policies with films like ‘Bombay: Our City’, ‘Jai Bhim Comrade’, ‘In The Name of God’, with content that was jagged and unashamedly political, proving that the camera could be used for social justice rather than just being an extension for institutional progress. While Patwardhan turned the camera into a political weapon for social justice, Kamal Swaroop became its most enigmatic shapeshifter. Best known for the cult masterpiece ‘Om-Dar-B-Dar’, Swaroop brought a Dadaist sensibility to non-fiction. His visual language intersects with a hallucinatory world, dissolving the boundaries between ethnographic reality and surrealist dreams. His work, such as ‘The Battle for Banaras’ — a documentary that captured the 2014 electoral spectacle, treated the political landscape not as a series of facts, but as a grand, chaotic theatre.

Swaroop introduced an avant garde, non-linear logic that blended myth and memory, suggesting that “truth” was not just a collection of facts, but a collage of the surreal. To engage with Swaroop’s work is to accept that the traditional “grammar” of cinema — linear plots, stable geography, and clear character arcs — is being systematically dismantled to make room for something far more porous and plural.

Gurvinder Singh is the vision behind ‘Trolley Times’. He captured with his camera the specific, raw zeitgeist of the farmers’ protest, turning a newsletter into a cinematic record of history. The film is a deep dive into the “trolley” culture — where tractors transformed into bedrooms, kitchens and newsrooms. It is less about “the news” and more about the grit, the quiet moments of waiting, and the radical reclaiming of a political identity through the sheer endurance of the people. The contemporary pulse of resistance finds its form in this documentary, transforming ephemeral moments of protest into a permanent record of determination and collective will.

This journey from a “farming manual” to modern-day issues culminates in the breath-taking success of contemporary films like ‘Nocturnes’. Directed by Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan, it follows scientists studying hawk moths in the Eastern Himalayas, eschewing the traditional lecture format for a trance-like “slow cinema” experience. Here, the power of sound and a sophisticated visual atmosphere take precedence over data, pulling the viewer into a gaze that centres on the natural world.

This shift toward the deeply personal and collaborative is further echoed in the work of Deepa Mehta and Nisha Pahuja, who have deconstructed the traditional “objective” gaze. In ‘I Am Sirat’, Deepa Mehta collaborates with Sirat Taneja, a trans woman, in New Delhi. Rather than being a film about Sirat, it is a film with her — shot largely on smartphones, allowing the subject to control the narrative as she navigates the duality of her identity. While Mehta pivots her cinematic empathy toward the unvarnished lived experiences of the marginalised, a project like ‘I Am Sirat’ pushed the medium further, dismantling the hierarchy between filmmaker and subject through a radical, self-authored portrait of trans identity.

Similarly, Nisha Pahuja’s ‘The World Before Her’ provides a searing, dual-narrative look at the soul of modern India. By juxtaposing the world of the Miss India beauty pageant with the fundamentalist training camps of the Durga Vahini, the women’s wing of the RSS, Pahuja avoids the old trap of sermonising. Instead, she allows the contradictions to breathe, revealing the surprising commonalities in how both ends of the ideological spectrum attempt to mould the female body and mind.

Fuelled by the democratisation of technology and the global reach of streaming platforms, Indian non-fiction is experiencing a golden age. International accolades for films like ‘Writing With Fire’, ‘All That Breathes’ and ‘The Elephant Whisperers’ (the first Indian documentary to win an Oscar) have proven that these stories are no longer just for “educational” purposes, but are cinematic events that command the same critical discourse as a film by Federico Fellini or Jean-Luc Godard.

The scale of this movement has grown so vast that the documentary has effectively become a shadow industry — nearly as expansive in its reach and subject matter as the Bollywood monolith, yet operating with a radical edge that the mainstream often lacks. While Bollywood provides the spectacle of escape, the new documentary provides the spectacle of the real. What was once a niche form, relegated to the dusty corners of public broadcasting, has now moved to centre stage.

The documentary film promises a direct encounter with reality while inevitably shaping that reality through the filmmaker’s choices. Every cut, every angle and every decision about what to show or omit constitutes an intervention. Yet the degree and visibility of these choices define a film’s ethical and aesthetic stance. There does exist a risk of voyeurism or exploitation; interventionist filmmakers risk manipulating subjects or imposing ideology. But the ethical core remains the same: subjects must be informed and must consent.

The documentary has finally shed its reputation as a dull educational tool, and has moved from the expository to the sensory, proving that today’s filmmakers are no longer extensions of a propaganda machine, but poets and philosophers.

— The writer is an acclaimed theatre director