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Ali Kazimi's Narmada: A Valley Rises reminds us that despite recent feature-film hysteria, Canadians still excel at documentaries. Polished beyond its low-budget means, this film stands in the best tradition of committed film making. In the late 80s, the Indian government and the World Bank started plans to dam the huge Narmada river, flooding, its valley and displacing 160,000 people. Kazimi, who emigrated from India 12 years ago, went to the valley in 1990 to film the conflict between nonviolent resisters and money-greased government flacks. The film doesn't just document the struggle, it joins it. Like the most successful recent documentaries, Narmada builds a narrative and introduces characters that carry an audience through the complex thicket of issues. Baba Amte, the Save Narmada movement's spiritual leader, looks like an aging movie star and talks with charm of the truly disciplined. (He was once a disciple of Mahatma Gandhi.) Medha Patkar is much younger and just as beautiful - she drives the movement on pure will and adrenaline. Kazimi manages to create portraits of two compelling people, but keeps them within the context of a large-scale people's movement. Narmada is shot (Kazimi), edited (Steve Weslak) and scored (Mychael Danna) with a craft that makes it look like an expensive epic instead of the on~the-fly event that it was. For anyone worn down or cynical about social struggle, Narmada shows how it can be both effective and inspiring. The World Bank pulled out of the project, the people of the Narmada valley were honoured worldwide and, even though the Indian government is continuing with the dam, the story isn't over yet. Vale of tears Ali Kazimi's film movingly documents the agitation against the Narmada dam. It's a film which angers, frustrates, brings forth an occasional smile and even moves you to tears. Ali Kazimi's debut film, Narmada: A Valley Rises, is a 90-minute tribute to the people in the movement against the biggest dam in the world, in the heart of India. From impersonal headlines and bare numbers to making up a crowd of demonstrators, the tribals of the Narmada Valley acquire an identity all their own; living, breathing persons who are willing to lay down their lives in their fight against the dam because it takes away from them everything they have. That is also one of the film's strong points. Instead of detailing the environmental and technical aspects of the dam project, Kazimi chooses to make his point by focussing on the famous 1990 Ferkuva agitation. The filmmaker painstakingly documents the December 1990 march by 6,000 tribals and farmers to the dam site in Gujarat today struggle after the marchers were stopped at the Gujarat border by hundreds of securitymen and forced to sit on dharna for weeks.
Strangely, the film which takes an uncomfortably close look at the blockade of four years ago, still retains a sense of urgency. Four years later, the situation remains much the same as far as the movement is concerned. The Sardar Sarovar dam has gained in height but the tribals and farmers of the valley, led by Medha Patkar and Baba Amte, are still struggling to be heard. The power equation between then and now hasn't changed. Kazimi's camera cleverly moves on both sides of the border - juxtaposing the quiet desperation of the bare-footed tribal who has left his home and family, with the well dressed smugness of the pro-dam Chamber of Commerce official from Gujarat.' the weakened, tired faces of the hunger strikers with the enthusiastic picnickers brought in buses, queuing up to get their packets of food; the quiet, dignified satyagraha with Urmilabhen Patel's (the late Chimanbhai Patel's wife) facile rendering of Raghupatii Raghav Raja Ram - Gandhiji' favourite bhajan. The filmmaker from Delhi University, who has settled down in Canada , has a powerful camera. The images linger long after the film is over. The misty beauty of the river. The marchers queuing up to get their hands tied to face the line of fire ringed by gun-toting securitymen. The sinister darkness broken by floodlights when the police swoop down on the demonstrators in the dead of the night and carry them away kicking and screaming. The film records the plight of those farmers who took the government's word at face value, gave up their land and accepted alternate sites. Today, those families are living in squalid tin hutments with no water, instead of the rich fertile land they have leave behind. One criticism being leveled against Kazimi is that he has concentrated more on the stars in the scene - Medha Patkar, Baba Amte and other activists from Delhi and elsewhere - than on the tribals. But the valley people do come to life and their struggle against a perverse, warped concept of development has been well-documented. And, Kazimi, who premiered his film in the Toronto Film Festival and is now seeking to show it on Star TV or Doordarshan, does not mince his words. Or his visuals. Of course, Kazimi would do well to update his titles. B.D. Sharma, for instance, is no longer commissioner of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and the correction comes only in in the last scene of the film. Other than that, however, Kazimi makes sure that your attention does not waver even for a minute. The Narmada agitation is not just one of ministers and activists wrangling in air-conditioned boardrooms or hunger strikes at the drop of a hat. There is more to it than that Kazimi shows you just how much.
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