By focusing on non-fiction films, i.e. documentaries we depict and develop a narrative to show the plight of our coastal and riverine villages and polluted cities by focusing on the individual leadership and community action undertaken to fight climate change and development-led dispossession. Through the convergence of ideas in the climate change discourse and concepts and techniques used in film studies, we ask, “How do narratives in non-fiction films depicting the impact of disasters and mal-development converge with the socio-political realities of the human-nature interactions in the context of climate change?”
For that we used three films as case studies: The No Man’s Island (Sourav Sarangi’s Moddikhane, 2012), Nodir Kul Nai (Parasher Baruah’s, 2019), and Agar Wo Desh Banati (If she built a country) (Maheen Mirza’s, 2018). Thematic analyses were undertaken with repeated film viewings, unpacking aspects of human and nature interaction in centering marginalized people’s voices, experiences, and struggles against dispossession.
We use visual case studies to understand how recent films have depicted floods, cyclones, and erosion, which are recurring elements of the cultural landscape in Eastern India, namely West Bengal, Assam, and Chhattisgarh. Eastern parts of India present a unique opportunity to portray the struggles of its people in dealing with its hazardous landscapes, socio-cultural impacts, and environmental and gender representation. We covered Indigenous filmmaking in Eastern India, sociocultural vulnerabilities in the deltaic region, Gender and displacement in the deltas, and resisting state-led dispossession. There is a need to situate indigenous filmmaking production and performance within the larger debates about who gets to make films, what the objectives of such films and what capacities we have to include and center these voices and narrate these stories.
