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A world of ignorance

Some stories about what went into the making of a given film are more fascinating than the film itself.

A world of ignorance


Shoma A. Chatterji

Some stories about what went into the making of a given film are more fascinating than the film itself. Even more fascinating are the stories behind the maker of the film. Lipika Singh Darai falls in this small group of filmmakers, who not only makes wonderful documentary films but also makes news through her rebellious nature. Lipika, who belongs to the Ho tribal community of Odisha’s Mayurbhanj district, went on to graduate from the FTII, Pune. Of the four awards she has received since 2010, three are for her directorial venture while the fourth one is for Best Audiography.

In 2015, Lipika, along with nine other filmmakers, returned her National Award for her film The Waterfall in solidarity with her FTII peers against the government’s “growing intolerance.” Interestingly, the awards were being bestowed upon by the same government! She, however, retracted and accepted the award later. It won the Best Director Award in the Best Educational Film category.

About Some Stories Around Witches, Darai says, “The documentary stretches the opportunity to engage with the real to a great extent. Editing this film has been one of the most difficult processes I have been through as an individual. The learning, the guilt, the shortcoming, the rewards of the entire journey will always be a film within a film, I believe.”

“There is a prejudice that witch-hunting is prevalent only among tribals. We hardly realise that it is a case of superstition, widely prevalent in all societies in many forms. Many houses I visit I see a ‘nazar raksha kavach’ on the door. We have accepted the concept of an evil eye without questioning. Most of the time, the fear or the insecurities get fuelled by utter ignorance and situations where we failed completely as a society, government or a mere human,” she adds.

She got involved in this film when she shifted back to Odisha in 2012. Sashipraya Bindhani, one of the petitioners of the anti-witch-hunting law in Odisha, approached Darai to  work around this. Bindhani, an advocate, was involved in some case studies herself and introduced Darai to a few cases in early 2013. PSBT agreed to fund the film in 2014 and the research was done. “Sashipraya’s research helped me do the initial groundwork. The film brought an inquisitiveness that opened up a new perspective. During the span of filming, we became aware of new cases, circumstances and challenges. Over time, my personal internalising around these overpowered the fact-finding nature of a documentary,” she sums up.

Some Stories Around Witches is more of a socio-historical investigation into what leads to witch-hunting that destroys the lives of those labelled witches than witch-killing itself. Telling stories from three major cases, the film is divided into three parts: Niru, Electric Pole and Chicken Meal. 

“I met a girl who lived in a village inside the Similipal National Park. Her mother had been killed 15 days back by two fellow villagers who thought she was a witch. The remote village had no electricity and the communication was cut off during the monsoons. No one wanted to take up the vacant post of a teacher at the only school there for the past six years. The girl had also recently lost her father as they couldn’t reach medical assistance in time. Apparently people had seen her mother climbing on to the thatched roof of her house, which gave them the impression that she was a witch. Though there were many possibilities of the actual cause of the murder, I wondered putting myself in a village going dark after sunset, having no schools, practically defunct medical facilities — how a mere fear could be fuelled by ignorance, pushing people to kill each other,” explains Darai. 

In another case, a school teacher in a small town had rusticated Moumita, a 5-year-old girl from the residential school branding her a witch. The third story is that of an old woman who was stripped, tied to an electric pole and beaten to death merely on the suspicion that she was a witch.

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