Article

“Sun in the Belly”: Film Practice BioScope

8(1) 103–123
at Films Division of India © 2017 Screen South Asia Trust
SAGE Publications
1965–1975 sagepub.in/home.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0974927617699647
http://bioscope.sagepub.com

Ritika Kaushik

Abstract
This article looks at one decade (1965–1975) in the history of Films Division of India
(FD), the first state film production and distribution unit in the country. It tracks the
changing political environment and several administrative, infrastructural, and policy
changes of the time, along with the emerging “experimental” film and interview for-
mat films. Under the dynamic supervision of Jean Bhownagary, a constellation of film
makers and artists like Pramod Pati, S.N.S. Sastry, S. Sukhdev, among others came
to the fore, experiment with film form was encouraged, and dissonant voices rose
against the state itself. I suggest that it is possible to study certain experiments and
formal practices emerging at a particular time and space not as mere aberrations, but
as something that emerges from complex shifts in institutional practice. I locate these
as part of a layered body of film uses, a palimpsest, in which the filmmaker’s creative
engagement needs to be situated in a bureaucratic order that could be arbitrary and
inflexible but also provide for a regime of the permissible.

Keywords
Films Division of India, experimental film, documentary, state-sponsored film, film
history, governmentality, bureaucracy

Films can be born and also die in a FILE. It is not the fault of the file. The file belongs to no one. It can
always be pushed upstairs … (Sukhdev, 1969, p. 15)

Filmmaker S. Sukhdev made this acid remark in a piece on Films Division of India
(FD), published in its twentieth anniversary souvenir in 1969. Sukhdev’s sense of fatal-
ism in his evocation of Films Division captures a key dimension of its film making
culture, that of the bureaucratic form which shapes the terms of a film’s production,
release, and circulation. Sometimes referred to as the “Files” Division1 FD, officially
formed in 1948, was the first state film production and distribution unit in India after
independence. Following the model of monopolized production and exhibition of
documentary films started by the colonial government in the period 1943–1946, it soon
turned into one of the key sites of documentary and short film production in the

Ritika Kaushik, Department of Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA.
E-mail: ritika.kaushik0404@gmail.com
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country.2 From the mid-1960s to the proclamation of the Indian Emergency (1975–
1977), the changing political environment and several administrative, infrastructural,
and policy changes led to substantial changes in its film practice. Not only were non-
conventional films made, but in the process they could also say an occasional “boo to
the establishment.”3 In this article, I chart the history of this institutional practice at FD
from 1965 to 1975, a period distinguished by FD encouraging experimentation with
film form in an overall setting of considerable social and political unrest.4
As part of the twentieth anniversary celebrations at FD, an anthology of writings
and a film was also commissioned. While the anthology Four Times Five voiced
responses from all over the world regarding FD, the FD filmmaker S.N.S. Sastry made
the film And I Make Short Films (1968) for the occasion. The self-reflexive compilation
film assembled newspapers, film scenes, and film sounds in order to evoke a dissonant
environment of film practice and highlighted the debates surrounding filmmaking
efforts of the time (see Figure 1). In the following audio quoted from the film, Sastry
refers to Pablo Picasso’s famous statement in relation to his professional rival Matisse:

“What do you want to convey with this film?”—(another voice answers)—“I don’t know, it’s
a very difficult question … I make films to express myself … to show other people something
more than myself … perhaps, it is the sun in the belly!”

Picasso had said that the only reason “why Matisse is Matisse” is because he’s got “the
sun in his belly” (Strickland & Boswell, 2007, p. 134). Sastry uses the phrase to evoke
the creative drives of an artist, and his film captures the entire constellation of film-
makers and artists involved in the process of experimentation in short films. The
simultaneous presence of the incapacitating force of bureaucratic files on film practice
referred to by Sukhdev, and the possibilities of experimentation by filmmakers like
Sastry in And I Make Short Films, suggest that the epistemic category of experimenta-
tion at FD cannot be attributed to formal artistic interventions alone. Navigating

Figure 1. Still from And I Make Short Films.

Source: Provided by the author.
Kaushik105

slippages and stoppages in the institutional film practice, the phrase “sun in the belly”
can be seen as a metaphor for the elusiveness of experimentation at a state-funded
institution. The diverse arena that led to the changing film practice in this period needs
to be understood in terms of the complex and contradictory entanglement of govern-
ment policies, the discourse around the use of film, bureaucratic arbitrariness, patterns
of patronage, zones of permissibility, and the practice of filmmakers. I will place par-
ticular emphasis on the cultivation of a creative imagination within an ethic of govern-
ment responsibility, a patronal form which negotiated to insulate filmmakers from
bureaucracy. Complicating the relationship between state sponsorship and documen-
tary and short film production in India, I locate experimentation as a practice that both
emerges out of as well as circumvents the bureaucratic practice of the institution—as
the elusive “sun in the belly” of FD itself.

Films for a “Purpose”: Film Practice and Functionality

In the study of film in India, in its first twenty years the state-funded documentary and
short film has been understood to be a fixed form developing from a Griersonian
model of filmmaking.5 Other modes like the independent documentary movement of
the 1980s have been seen as forming an oppositional practice to this dominant mode of
documentary (Deprez, 2013; Paul, 2012). Srirupa Roy theorized that FD in “consolidat-
ing the gaze” of the nation state was confronted with postcolonial anxieties, inscribing
the films with “visible evidence of the representative commitments of Indian inde-
pendence” (Roy, 2007, p. 39). Anuja Jain has questioned FD’s position as a “statist tool”
and configured FD as a site of “dynamic interplay of colonial, postcolonial, nationalist
developments …”6 Thus, from various points of view, the state institution of film needs
to be seen in a constantly changing and at times ambiguous relationship with the state.
I find Michel Foucault’s concept of governmentality helpful here: as “arranging things
in such a way that through a certain number of means, such and such ends may be
achieved” (Foucault, 1991, p. 95). Foucault posits:

… with government it is a question not of imposing law on men, but of disposing [emphasis
added] things: that is to say, of employing tactics [emphasis added] rather than laws, and
even of using laws themselves as tactics. (1991, p. 95)

Tracking governmentality at a state institution such as FD involves analyzing the

maneuvers of bureaucrats, filmmakers, and policy makers as a “profusion of entan-
gled events” (1984, p. 89): on the one hand, the institution was mobilized tactically to
promote experimentation involving bureaucrats in “unbureaucratic” methods; on the
other hand, there was a countervailing tendency in which everything became mired in
the workings of a deeply inflexible bureaucratic institution, and the filmmaker was
consigned to being just another detail in the film’s production file at FD.
The title of the pamphlet “Four Times Five” comprises a mathematical formula that
refers to the twenty years of FD’s history and the beginning of the 4th Five Year Plan
initiated by India’s Planning Commission. The pamphlet had a cover design by the
renowned painter M.F. Hussain and contains an array of cartoons, prose work, and
106 BioScope 8(1)

opinion pieces from cinema stalwarts all over the world as well as people from within
FD (see Figures 2, 3, and 4). The reference to India’s formal planning system of govern-
ance in an artistically produced souvenir highlights the relation between film produc-
tion and bureaucratically organized planning at FD. FD made films as required by the
government for “public information, education, motivation and for instructional as
well as cultural purposes.”7 Its role was to use film to “weld” the vast multitudes of
people of the country into a “nation” (Mohan, 1990, p. 22). The central government and
state governments issued their own agenda for film publicity. Different ministries got
together once a year to decide upon the topics that would order FD’s Production
Program. Once the topics were decided, FD would begin the production of films. It
assigned the films to directors and producers, either internally or through the tender
system to outside producers (called OPs). The directors would work within deadlines
and under the given budgets in tandem with producers. Even after this, the film was
subject to censorship and approval by the Film Advisory Board (FAB), where it might
undergo changes.
Overtly, government film objectives were strictly functional: FD’s efficiency, its
achievements and failures had to be measured in terms of how effectively it

Figure 2. Cover Illustration of Four Times Five by M.F. Hussain

Source: Provided by the author.
Kaushik107

Figure. Section Illustration in Four Times Five

Source: Provided by the author.

Figure 4. Cartoon by Films Division’s Filmmaker Kantilal Rathod, Four Times Five pg 21
Source: Provided by the author.
108 BioScope 8(1)

communicated government plans and activities to the people of the country. As I will
show, in the late 1960s, the Chanda Committee was set up precisely to look into the
functionality of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and its institutions like
FD. But, if “use” determined the aims of film policy and debates surrounding the role
of documentary and short film in the country, what change had taken place in man-
dates and policy briefs during the late 1960s such that the same institution could also
act as a site of experimentation in film form?
This period was followed by the Emergency era (1975–1977) where policies changed
again and FD was mandated to produce films on the “gains” of the Emergency and
“boost public morale.”8 This involved government in exercising more centralized con-
trol, with individual industry experts overseeing production and strict censorship
being enforced (Kaushik, 2016). Filmmakers making experimental films from the ear-
lier period too had to produce films under the new diktat, giving rise to an arguably
ambiguous body of work. The question of how the same institution that facilitated
experimentation also produced emergency is an important one, but will have to be
treated separately.
In relation to the National Film Board of Canada, Zoë Druick identifies the National
Film Board’s “nation building mandate” (Druick, 2007, p. 183) as the root both of its
longevity and for aspects of its creative success. Druick argues that it has been the “site
of innovation in film making not in spite of [Ritika’s emphasis] but precisely because
[Ritika’s emphasis] of the nation building mandate… Much of its innovation has come
in the form of creative rejection of its official mandate or in response to public ambiva-
lence about its products.”9 Adapting Druick’s formulation, I would suggest that in the
case of FD too the objective of nation building would continue to justify policies, but
within this there would emerge a changing institutional practice, which determined the
circumstances of filmmaking. FD’s documentary and short film production was gov-
erned by sometimes rigid, sometimes ambiguous, and sometimes pro-actively innova-
tive mandates. After a particular mandate for film use was worked out, it went through
a bureaucratic process that assigned a project to a filmmaker; he in turn could engage
with the mandate by exploring what was institutionally possible. In a default sense, any
film produced by FD was subject to an inertia of bureaucratic processes/delays/stop-
pages, but also subversion and contingent developments. Thus, I conceptualize film
practice at FD as a synthesis of bureaucratic state mechanisms and the technical, intel-
lectual, and artistic forces of filmmaking involved in the making of the government
film. My contention therefore is that this film practice needs to be seen not “in spite of”
the government mandate or bureaucratic way of functioning but because of it.

Film “Experimentation” and Documentary

Films Division specially commissioned M.F. Hussain to make a film on its twentieth
anniversary. The film credited Jehangir Bhownagary for “Experimentation,” a credit
category not common at the time. The opening of the film features Hussain’s interview
where he talks about the film form.10 This, being his first film, was a radical move on
the part of the institution to support independent artists like painters and give them a
chance to explore the film medium. It can also be seen as FD giving experimentation
Kaushik109

with film form a green signal to encourage independent filmmakers and its own staff.
However, in spite of Husain’s film winning the prestigious Golden Bear award at
Berlin film festival, 1967, and being hailed by some, the first experimental film of India
at FD was also severely criticized. People could not make “‘head or tail’ of it, quite like
Hussain’s abstract paintings,” as a newspaper report put it.11
This moment marks changes at FD where, for the first time, “multiplication of for-
mal approaches” (Rajagopal & Vohra, 2012, p. 17) was in evidence. Bhownagary
reflected on how it became possible to undertake practice differently from before:

The Films Division now worked out its annual programme with the help of Planning
Commission, thanks to the help of Secretary Asok Mitra, on a much more rational priority-
conscious basis. We were now permitted to let the people freely speak their minds on screen
in such films as Report on Drought (which the Prime Minister agreed to be sent abroad in spite
of some ministries’ objection), Face to Face (which criticized some of the official tenets) and I
am 20 (in which youngsters born in 1947 spoke their minds about the India they were living
in 20 years after independence). (Mohan, 1990, p. 77)

Even though some filmmakers had been making films or were involved in film pro-
duction at FD earlier, a sharp change in their approach in this period can be noted.
Among the directors and films which illustrate the changing trend include Pramod
Pati’s Explorer (1968), Claxplosion (1968), Trip (1970), Abid (1972), Six Five Four Three Two;
Sastry’s I am 20 (1967), And I Make Short Films (1968), and This Bit of That India (1970); S.
Sukhdev’s India’67 (1967); and K.S. Chari and T.A. Abraham’s Face to Face (1967). In
certain films, ambiguous montages replaced didacticism, people speaking out openly
about contemporary problems replaced voice-of-god narration and the talking-down
to the audience.
In fact, in the National Film Awards of 1967, several new awards were introduced in
the short film/documentary section. Instead of the two categories earlier used, Best
Documentary Film and Best Educational Film, there were six new award categories:
Best Information Film (Documentary), Best Education/Instructional Film, Best Social
Documentation Film, Best Promotional film, Best Experimental Film, and Best
Animation Film. While, the Experimental film award was given to Hussain’s Through
the Eyes of a Painter (1967), Sukhdev’s India’67 was awarded the Best Information Film
award, and Sastry’s I am 20 received the Best Social Documentation film award in the
same year. In 1970, And I Make Short Films received the Best Experimental film award.
As a pamphlet on the National Awards notes, the reorganization of the award scheme
aimed to make it more representative of the growth and development of different
trends in documentary work:

The most significant evidence of this trend is to be seen in the regeneration of the documen-
tary movement as the base for film experimentation. Documentary film has a very inexhaust-
ible potential not only in themes but also in terms of cultural needs. The advent of television
and the prospect of an early nationwide network sustained by satellite communications have
thrown up a new challenge and an opportunity for the short film maker in the country. One
can clearly see the future development in Indian cinema as being the birth of T.V. film. Taking
this aspect in view, the short film awards this year have been so modified as to reflect this
trend as also to encourage it.12
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It appears that award categories were meant to speak to the potential of documentary
as it was to be actualized through television. The category of the Best Experimental
Film, however, had no precursor and could be said to be a little out of the mix. However,
the trend in the selection of films at FD for various categories suggest that the distinc-
tions among these remained blurry and that experimentation at FD was epistemically
fluid and not fixed in relation to a particular category of production. Short films, docu-
mentary films, social documentation, information film, and experimental film as cate-
gories tended to overlap at FD.

“Files Division”: The Problem of Government Film

FD’s main office, at 24 Pedder Road, has accommodated documentary and short film
production since 1952, when its staff moved into the Gulshan Mansion. While this
building has the size and scale to represent the filmmaking and communication ambi-
tions vested in FD by the nation state, the condition of FD’s premises in Mumbai elicits
skepticism about the possibility of any film production at all. FD seems assailed by an
atmosphere of stifling bureaucracy to even the most uninformed bystander.

… staff calls it the “Files Division” … Ministry allows it to exist on sufferance, public thinks
it is the official propaganda unit and treats it with derision … Films Division is a quarter
century behind … cinemagoers see Films Division’s documentary as a time signal for leaving
the theatre for a smoking break … (Viswam, 1966)

Report of the Committee of Broadcasting and Information Media on Documentary Films and
Newsreels, also known as the “Chanda Committee Report,” identified major problems
and recommended various changes in the organization (Chanda Committee Report,
1966). The Chanda Committee found that FD was connected with too many activities
“extraneous to its responsibility for producing and distributing documentaries and
newsreels,”13 with repercussions on FD’s own functioning and efficiency. K.L.
Khandpur, who had just been appointed as Controller, elaborated the various objec-
tives FD was expected to accomplish in a 1967 seminar (Seminar on the “Role of
Documentary Films in National Development,” 1967). Khandpur said these included,
for example, serving the Ministry of External Affairs by recording visits of dignitaries,
making films to boost trade on behalf of the Ministry of Commerce, and responding to
requests from Indian Missions abroad to counteract adverse criticism about India in
international fora. Apart from these there were demands for education, training, and
instructional films. In fact, Khandpur admitted that they could not meet the demands
of the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Defence and suggested that while all such
demands were “legitimate,” no one organization could be “burdened” with them
(Seminar on “Role of Documentary Films in National Development,” 1967, p. 59).
Therefore, in spite of being the largest documentary film producing organization in the
country, FD was able to meet only a fraction of its expected uses and came to be seen
by various actors as a dysfunctional institution.
The Chanda Committee highlighted that one of the main problems with FD was the
poor quality of films produced and cited various reasons for this: appalling working
Kaushik111

conditions, non-maintenance and improper storage of film equipment and films, pau-
city of raw stock and cameras, multi-level bureaucratic interference, lack of interest
and commitment of filmmakers. FD films used “superficial treatment,” stereotyped and
predictable situations, too many “spoken words,” lacked humor, satire, suspense, and
drama (Chanda Committee Report, 1966, p. 10). Such failures were attributed to the film-
maker’s lack of interest as an artist, deriving perhaps from his inability to function in a
bureaucratic environment. The filmmaker, sandwiched between the governmental con-
sultant asserting his ministry’s concerns and the producer managing the logistics of pro-
duction, was inevitably compromised in his creative engagement with the film.
The consultants appointed by the ministries started assuming the role of producers
and interfering in the filmmaking process. The Chanda Committee therefore recom-
mended they stick to their position as subject experts overseeing the accuracy of con-
tent and leave the treatment of the film to the director. Also, the report highlighted the
financial deficiency of resources at FD. It also observed that there was a need to “econ-
omize” use of film stock in terms of the ratio of consumption of film in the final cut.14
Film circulation also faced serious problems. Sometimes films would take 52 weeks to
circulate throughout the country, and by the time the films reached rural audiences,
they would no longer be topical.15
Apart from problems of bureaucracy and lack of resources, FD was also vulnerable
to regulation by specially constituted oversight bodies. Since FD had monopoly over
exhibition of approved films in theatres, the FAB, a separate organization, was set up
to decide on the approval of films. FAB formulated categories for films deemed eligi-
ble for exhibition, and films that did not conform to these were rejected. In the case of
each approved release, the FAB would attach a note on the quality of the film. FAB
made comments on shots and scenes and recommended cuts and alterations in the
final versions. While FAB’s role was to recommend the film’s release, the Chanda
Committee asserted that this role did not make it eligible to be “arbiter of film’s quality
and presentation” (Chanda Committee Report, 1966, p. 26). FAB’s assumption of the
role of acting as a judge of film quality shows that FD as an institution lacked auton-
omy, its film production a complicated negotiation or resultant of the interventions of
various institutions and agents involved in sponsoring and regulating documentary
and short film practice. Such intermeshed trajectories of control alert us to the fact that
the state mechanism of film in India was not in fact an integrated mechanism.

“New Horizons” and the “Unbureaucratic” Bureaucrat

When a contemporary practitioner such as B.D. Garga (1966) observed “winds of
change” in the mid-1960s at FD, he was referring to changes in film policy, and how
this impacted the internal constitution of FD as I have described it; above all he was
referring to a marked change in FD films.16 It is not possible to pinpoint the exact
moment at which attitudes, ideas, and ways of working began to change. However,
Indira Gandhi’s arrival at the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in 1964, the
mobilization of Jehangir aka “Jean” Bhownagary as Chief Adviser (Films) in 1965,
and the twentieth anniversary of FD (1969) all serve as important markers of this
transformation.
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The period witnessed major shifts involving issues of political succession, war, and
economic distress. The death of Jawaharlal Nehru, the drought in Bihar, the wars with
China (1962) and Pakistan (1965), the liberation of Goa, the devaluation of the Indian
rupee, and the fourth general elections that made Mrs Gandhi the Prime Minister of
India in the face of opposition from within the Congress party, all signaled new chal-
lenges to political representation and governance. Changes in FD’s film practice has to
be placed within the topography of this political churning, and coincided with the first
phase of the Indira Gandhi era, when she was prime minister from 1966 to the state of
Emergency from 1975 to 1977.17 After the death of Nehru, the national political consen-
sus represented by the Congress party in India was seriously threatened by rising
political upheaval. This led to what Madhava Prasad has called a “moment of disag-
gregation,” in which government film policy responded to the crisis by highlighting
new “developmental realist” objectives and the film industry generated new genres to
address the register of popular unrest.18 In turn, shifts in the temper of the times were
reflected in Films Division’s changing documentary and short film practice.
In 1964, when Indira Gandhi talked about “new horizons” in the field of informa-
tion and broadcasting, she sparked hopes of substantial change in the field of broad-
casting and films (Times of India, July 8, 1964, p. 8). Critiquing the “narrow propaganda”
and “routine bureaucratic approach” of institutions like All India Radio and Films
Division, Indira Gandhi also spoke about freeing Films Division from narrow depart-
mental control (Times of India, July 8, 1964, p. 8). She declared the “need to experiment”
with the freedom to make “honest mistakes” (Times of India, July 8, 1964, p. 8). Later in
August, in her address to the second convocation of the Film Institute of India’s stu-
dents, Indira Gandhi asked them to commit toward “making new and original films.”19
Thus, she presented herself as a minister who promoted experimentation. Also, at the
behest of Indira Gandhi, the government borrowed Jean Bhownagry from UNESCO
for a two-year period (1965–1967) and gave him the “freest hand … most unbureau-
cratically” to act as Chief Advisor (Films) to the Ministry. Quite in accordance with
Indira Gandhi’s new direction, Bhownagary was told to “revitalize” the Films Division
and the Film Institute in Pune and to oversee the work of the Film Finance Corporation,
Children’s Film Society, other government-sponsored film organizations, and the
growth of Television (Mohan, 1990, p. 76).
Sudipta Kaviraj argues that the political initiatives of Indira Gandhi “systematically
shifted functions, initiatives, and decisions from party to government bureaucracy ...
the slogan of a ‘committed bureaucracy’ was explicable in these terms, since the una-
vailability of party men forced her to demand increasingly explicit political work from
high officials” (Kaviraj, 2010, p. 193). Bhownagary’s appointment in the Ministry of
Information and Broadcasting needs to be placed within this ambit of “committed
bureaucracy.” The period at FD under his leadership is generally seen to be the essen-
tial breath of fresh air that brought FD out of its stupor into its most creative phases
(Garga, 2007; Jhaveri & Heredia, 2012). Jean Bhownagary was born in Bombay in 1921,
educated in Bombay and Paris and involved in the arts in varied ways. Bhownagary
was seen to be equipped with a “world perspective” about mass communication due
to his time with UNESCO.20 Perhaps, this is why he was seen as the right candidate to
be roped in to handle a “medium of mass communication” in India. As a statement
declaring a new direction for film and broadcasting in India, Bhownagary’s
Kaushik113

appointment drew upon his unique position as someone who belonged to the intel-
lectual elite and who also had the administrative experience to balance creative and
official demands.
Bhownagary was crucial in bringing a constellation of filmmakers, editors, music
composers, and cinematographers together to develop new idioms and new content,
encouraging them to “probe deeper into their subjects, to make structured films,
instead of enumerations of our treasures and achievements as is so often required by
non-filmmakers in the ministries” (Jain, 2013, p. 18). One of his major initiatives was to
improve the status of OPs and their productions. In the competitive tendering system
for film commissioning to OPs, the producer who quoted the lowest would get the
film.21 This often led to OPs quoting unrealistic budgets, and films suffering in terms
of quality due to the lack of resources. Independent documentary producers had com-
plained that cinema houses were compelled to show documentary films by the Films
Division and therefore they had to “seek its patronage and be subject to its vagaries”
in order to get their films exhibited (Chanda Committee Report, 1966, p. 12). Also, it
was ascertained that some OPs worked with FD due to their own “idealistic involve-
ment with this medium and some because of the prestige value of a release which
could bring them other assignments” (Chanda Committee Report, 1966, p. 13). On the
one hand, these independent producers were sometimes enthusiastic, and wanted to
work for FD, on the other, FD’s own filmmakers did not feel fully involved in the “ide-
ology and purpose of films” and needed motivation (Chanda Committee Report, 1966,
p. 9). Bhownagary, in his earlier tenure from 1954 to 1957 as Chief Producer at FD, had
tried to improve the condition of OPs and their productions as unlike other people at
FD, they did not have secured jobs and benefits of being government employees
(Seminar Report on the “Role of Documentary Film as a Medium of Communication
and Education in India,” 1972). But, he could bring about a substantial change only in
his next appointment in 1965. Alongside improving the film commissioning process,
the lack of motivation and dedication on the part of filmmakers was another task that
Bhownagary had tackled head on. As the mandates were redefined to suit the needs of
the hour, the filmmaker was also seen as an artist with creative imagination instead of
just a salaried employee like in any other government office.
As I have outlined, the Chanda Committee to review broadcasting and communica-
tions, including institutions such as FD, was set up at the same time, and Bhownagary
was a consultant to this important government review. The committee’s recommenda-
tions, published in 1966, led to the initiation of many changes at FD (Chanda Committee
Report, 1967). It was recommended that commentary in films be reduced and “humor”
be introduced.22 The ministry consultants, who could be done away with, were now
termed “subject specialists.”23 Only specialists on the subjects of the films were to be
nominated for these posts, and their function was to check accuracy of information in
the film. Cinematic treatment of the subject, the techniques of presentation, and so on
were to be left entirely to FD.
In his first tenure, Bhownagary had defined the FD mandate as one of nation-
building and placed it in a larger trajectory of pre-independence films:

Those goals had, indeed, already been set during Ezra Mir’s time with the pre-independence
Information Films of India (IFI) and again when Mohan Bhavnani built FD from scratch …
114 BioScope 8(1)

We started to make films that would help build the nation, build a sense of citizenship and
community. In this process, the first step was to inform our people about our own country …
This was necessary before and after the First Five Year Plan. But, distribution was limited
to urban cinemas. After the “Know Our Country” phase, the people had to be informed of
the mobile social and economic structure of the country and its progress … The Second Five
year Plan extended distribution beyond the cinemas … most importantly, to the rural circuits
through the mobile vans of the Integrated Publicity Programme. (Mohan, 1990, p. 75)

However, during the 1960s, he used different terms: “new ideas, new approaches had
to be found, encouraged and put to work,” and he encouraged directors to create their
“individual style” (Mohan, 1990, p. 76). He described his work during the period in
terms of efforts at probing into the problems faced by people as well as presenting the
solutions offered by them. He illustrated the changing mandate and the role of minis-
ters as follows:

We now concentrated not only on achievements but also pinpointed problems and showed
what the people most concerned felt about them and took into account the solutions sug-
gested. Luckily, Minister Indira Gandhi and Secretary for I&B, Asok Mitra, backed us up and
gave us the freest hand we ever had—most unbureaucratically. (Mohan, 1990, p. 76)

Bhownagary’s changing position shows how such mandates were influenced by indi-
viduals like himself who were able to insulate filmmaking from the constraints exer-
cised by bureaucracy, in ways, as he terms them, “most unbureaucratically.”
The changed mandate, to probe problems rather than avoid them or to offer ano-
dyne solutions, was to now dictate the form of the films. With the coming of sync-
sound cameras, it was now possible to record people’s interviews. As the filmmakers
from FD with their ARRI cameras and Nagra recorders went around capturing what
people had to say, films like I am 20 (Sastry, 1967) and Face to Face (Chari & Abraham,
1967) were made and these became the first interview format films in India. In an
obituary on the occasion of Sastry’s untimely death in November 28, 1978, P.B.
Pendharkar illustrated his later style of filmmaking:

Sastry will introduce dissonance, pretty images mixed with harsh sounds, softly focused men
asking bitterly, “What is democracy? Is it freedom to starve, to go naked, to die of starva-
tion?” ... “Well I don’t love my country—And even if I love it, to whom should I go and speak
of my love.” (Indian Cinema, 1978)

This introduction of “dissonance” in films marks even those films that may not have
been categorized as experimental. With people voicing their dissonant views about the
nation in the films, film practice at FD registered a shift, accommodating skepticism
and sharp critique of state practices in contrast to earlier models of focusing on
“achievements.”24 The filmmakers were encouraged to probe deeper into problems
faced by the people. Moving away from the earlier trend of writing only at desks,
scripts were written on location after talking to people, sometimes based on interviews
that brought fresh material to the scripting process from the people themselves. Thus,
Kaushik115

the ball was set rolling for FD to change its prevailing image as a “Files Division” and
to gain credibility in the eyes of the public. However, along with such tactical maneu-
vers a host of other contingent and chance happenings, negotiations, and agencies
involving filmmakers and bureaucrats were to alter the documentary and short film
scene in the country.

“Permissiveness/Permissibility,” Political Patronage, and

“Government Responsibility”
As a bureaucrat, Bhownagary saw himself in the tradition of creatively working with
films within the confines of government institutions. Quoting John Grierson,
Bhownagary illuminates his own stance regarding film practice at FD, “One of the
problems—perhaps, the greatest problem—is to fit imaginative film purposes into the
normal frameworks of government responsibility and government procedure”
(Mohan, 1990, p. 78). Grierson had asserted that much depended upon the personal
imaginative support or “permissiveness” afforded by great political figures who as
ministers of government made it possible for “dramatic and poetic” things to be done
within the framework of government sponsorship and responsibility (Datt, 1969, p. 8).
Film historian Sanjit Narwekar, distinguishing “permissibility” from “permissive-
ness,” argues in a personal interview conducted in 2014 that it was a question of “per-
missibility” which governed the atmosphere during that time. Narwekar coins the
term very precisely: it was a question of doing things that some disapproved of but
were tolerated by most. In an interview (2014), V.S. Kundu, then Director General of
FD said, “As head of an institution and as a conduit between the institution’s needs
and those of individual Ministries and the government, one could create a space for
creativity to flourish—it was more a matter of allowing it to happen.” Therefore, the
objective to “fit imaginative film purposes into the normal framework of government
responsibility,” addressed by Grierson and followed by Bhownagary, has some reso-
nance with the practice of enlightened bureaucrats who continue to create the space
for innovation, experimentation, and radical practices at FD. Here, we should not
ignore the elements of bureaucratic intelligence in play, of “allowing things to
happen,” and using an overall opinion of tolerance and accommodation to neutralize
elements of opposition.
However, Grierson’s own position about FD films was sharply critical. Jain alerts us
to Grierson’s position when he visited India and saw FD films in 1971, “His own
remarks are very telling of not only how he saw his own legacy, historically, but its
relationship to developing nations like India: ‘they win obscure prizes at festival, and
then talk about mass communication. They are using public money for self indul-
gence’” (Jain, 2013, p. 23). This discourse on FD’s venture into experimentation at the
expense of public money was reiterated by mainstream filmmakers from the industry
like V. Shantaram who said,

… art is a luxury which the Films Division cannot afford at the expense of its main task of
enlightening and educating the masses. It is only when our country has achieved the same
educational and economic standard of living as the West that the Films Division could afford
the luxury of art. (Datt, 1969, p. 81)
116 BioScope 8(1)

Even K.A. Abbas while defending experimentation in cinema would add a clause,
“the filmmaker must do so at his own expense … But not at Public expense” (Datt,
1969, p. 76).
In this light, despite the “creative imagination” or “permissiveness” which Grierson
apparently aimed for, he reacted strongly against its manifestation in Indian govern-
ment documentary. There is much debate about Grierson’s changing perspectives,
including the claim that by the time of his stint at UNESCO in the late 1940s, he had
come around to the idea that a simpler, more functional documentary form that clearly
communicated messages was more appropriate, especially in the context of the devel-
oping world (Rosalyn Smyth, 2013). If so, and the case still has to be made that Grierson
had embraced such a simplistic communication model at the expense of creativity,
then the Grierson that Bhownagary quoted was a figure of the past who no longer held
these views.25 In these maneuvers, the role of FD as an institution of cinema, and bids
to redefine its agenda to accommodate innovation and experiment emerges through a
layered and sometimes contradictory reference to past perspectives and practices,
refracted by ambiguous and disjointed interlocutions by critics, bureaucrats, and
industry stalwarts.
A film like India’67 (1967, Dir. S. Sukhdev) illustrates these instances of institutional
permissibility and the networks of power in the central lines of governance. Filmmaker
S. Sukhdev had friendly relations with Indira Gandhi, and it appears this relationship
helped to advance this film project. It was Bhownagary who decided that Sukhdev
produce this film for the upcoming Montreal Expo’67 (1967). Made in Eastman color,
Sukhdev was allowed to make the film from about 20,000 feet of shot material into a
5,000-feet cut. Being a specially commissioned film, the film’s production cost was
unusually high compared to the prevalent costs of an average film at FD. Sukhdev
described the mandate given to him:

The Films Division was making a documentary for the Montreal Film Festival. They asked
me to make it. My own discovery of India. I gave them a one-page script. How can you give
script for what is essentially going to be your own discovery of India? This was going to be an
experiment. I was going to present India to the world, and wanted to discover it with a fresh
point of view, with an open mind, reacting to images as I went along. (Mohan, 1984, p. 42)

With a one-page script and such high costs of production, Sukhdev’s privileged status
in the FD bureaucracy is quite apparent. But, once the film was made, it had to navi-
gate its own share of critics. The Deputy Prime Minister then, Morarji Desai, dismissed
the film saying he could not understand it and the film was also not passed by the
Censor Board. It is possible that it was Desai’s opinion that caused the Censor Board to
stop its release. Sukhdev appealed to the prime minister. After watching it, she sent a
personal letter to Sukhdev appreciating the film and congratulating him on it. In the
letter Mrs Gandhi remarked, “It is sensitive and made a well rounded and thoughtful
statement in contemporary language” (Mohan, 1984, p. 6).26 It was thus that the film
was approved for the Exposition. India’67 was possible not just because of a mandate
that allowed a substantial budget for making a film about projecting India, but also
because the filmmaker had access to patronage from the prime minister and the net-
works of permissibility cultivated by bureaucrats like Bhownagary.
Kaushik117

This instance needs to be seen in marked contrast to another, relating to Mani Kaul’s
Indian Woman: A Historical Assessment (1975). At the time, Kaul had no access to the
network of patronage, permissibility, insulation or any “unbureaucratic” practice and
struggled with getting his film approved from the Film Advisory Board. In a Films
Division production file, a disgruntled Kaul wrote a letter dated November 26, 1975 to
Chief Producer Mushir Ahmed that the additional shots and the cuts imposed by the
FAB were not acceptable to him. He stated that if these changes were indeed to be
imposed, his name should be stricken from the credits of the film. Indeed, the film was
edited in accordance with FAB’s suggestions and featured no credit for the director. A
section of commentary from the end was removed and a series of shots were added:
pan from a board that says Manager to a woman sitting on the desk, lady (sic) scientist
at the microscope, (Flight Lieutenant) Geeta Chanda in glider, she is jumping and
Parashoot [sic.] dropping among others. FAB’s instructions were that the film “deserved
to end on a more positive note” unlike the ending provided by Kaul which maintained
a critical view.27 Occurring at the time of the state of Emergency in the country, a film
depicting the progress of Indian women through the ages was mandated, but the
director’s own cut of the film had to be modified so that it conformed to the guidelines
sanctioned by the state institution.
However, India’67 also faced certain contingent problems when its print did not
arrive in time for its scheduled screening in Montreal. Also, although it featured in
festivals abroad, the film was not shown in India for the next few years due to the gov-
ernment regulation that limited film length to 2,000 feet for the compulsory theatrical
screening of approved films. It was only in 1972, edited into a 20-minute version, that
the film received theatrical exhibition. While Sukhdev was given the privilege of edit-
ing it, it is ironic that a film about India in 1967 was released as India Today in 1972.
Thus, the international audience of film festivals abroad and the Indian audience actu-
ally saw different versions of India’67.
The case of India’67 was not a solitary one, and reveals how bureaucratic processes
and the relationships between bureaucrats, ministers, and filmmakers affected film
practice at large. Although FD was not responsible for approving the films or censor-
ing them, as the authorized institutions were the Film Advisory Board and the Censor
Board, the ministerial offices in Delhi had a lot of clout. The prevailing perception at
the time was that a filmmaker only had to say he had “just came back from Delhi” for
all the obstacles to having his film approved to magically vanish (R.S., 1972, p. 6).
While this unpredictable institutional matrix must remain a key framework to
understand the FD process, a regime of permissibility to work innovatively, indeed to
play with the cinematic medium was, for a period, also part of the mix. Pramod Pati’s
Explorer illustrates the radical mode of experimentation at FD, completely indifferent
to the prevalent style of filmmaking at the institution. But even in other films, where
the state mandates were much more pronounced, Pati managed to imprint his own
individualistic style. His films on family planning, Claxplosion and Six Five Four Three
Two show complex negotiations between official mandate and the film text and form.
Claxplosion uses the pixilation technique and electronic music, to show an artist strug-
gling to make a sculpture. Finally, he makes a sculpture of a couple, with two children.
The camera then moves to the image the sculptor works from, a couple with five kids,
with a mark striking off the inconvenient extra children. The film makes an ironic
118 BioScope 8(1)

comment on the state’s promotion of family planning with a limit of two kids per cou-
ple. Six Five Four Three Two chooses a construction building as its site and artists mim-
ing a couple planning their family. The mime artist Irshad Panjratan’s dexterity, the
starkness of the location of the set, the simplicity of the topic make the film an interest-
ing experiment rendering state imperatives in an ambiguous register, as with the use
of sculpture, artist and a painting in Claxplosion. Thus, these films with clear mandates
on very specific policies became cinematic negotiations both with the medium and the
mandate/use assigned to the film.
Just like Pati’s films on family planning, Sastry’s And I Make Short films should be
understood as being viable not in spite of the mandate, but because of the regime of
permissibility I have outlined. While the trajectories of filmmakers like Pati, Sastry,
and Sukhdev are more complex and need a separate engagement, and are beyond the
scope of this paper,28 the governmentality tracked through the article provides the con-
text for FD’s film practice at that time. Prem Vaidya, film maker at FD, mentions in a
piece called “FD at 42,” “be it a film director or a cameraman, an editor or a recordist,
a painter or a narrator, a writer or an animator, Jean Bhownagary knew the stuff they
had in them—like ‘the sun in the belly’” (of Picasso) (Jag Mohan, 1990, p. 59). Vaidya
was here reiterating the phrase from Sastry’s And I Make Short Films and applying it to
a wide swathe of film professionals at FD. It emerges as an institutional referential
code to capture the peculiar condition of the filmmaker’s artistic engagement with film
while negotiating the maze of the bureaucratic mechanism.

The Palimpsestic Visage of the Government Film

Mandate does not trickle down from top to bottom in a linear trajectory. It involves a
complex and even rhizomatic route as the state institution is a complex set of mecha-
nisms, which works sometimes in an orchestrated but more often in an arbitrary and
indeterminate way to meet the mandate. This (un)coordinated effort comes across as a
peculiarly dysfunctional mechanism. FD was assailed by a lack of resources, and inter-
ference by ministers, ministerial consultants, and institutions like FAB. The study of
documentary and short film needs to expand from its established framework to include
the bureaucratic mechanisms, institutional dysfunctionalities and incapacities, and
also to the periodic emergence of innovative strategies within this matrix.
However, the objective of film as a useful medium, to follow Acland and Wasson’s
formulation in Useful Cinema (2011), needs to be retained even when we move to the
particular decade that came to be defined by an experimentation with form and con-
tent (Acland & Wasson, 2011). The uses assigned to documentary films need to be
understood as multifaceted in the years following the mid-1960s in India. These
include making “honest mistakes” and experimentation to learn the art of cinema;
harnessing the creative imagination of filmmakers within the ambit of government
responsibility; and in the important dimension of the changing mandate, from telling
people about the nation to probing into their problems and eliciting their viewpoint
through films. The task of “informing and educating people” needs to be analyzed in
terms of different viewpoints, such as the perspective of bureaucratic and enlightened
administrators as well as both the imaginative and more matter-of-fact filmmakers, as
Kaushik119

these people were actually following the model, modifying it, or engaging with it in
creative ways.
Government film emerges as a complicated site to explore film practice. In the par-
ticular practice focused on in this article, I have suggested that it is possible to study
certain experiments and formal practices of a particular time and space not as mere
aberrations, but as something that emerges from complex shifts in institutional prac-
tice. I locate it in a layered body of film uses, a palimpsest, in which new forms arising
from a regime of the permissible and the filmmaker’s creative engagement need to be
situated in the bureaucratic catacombs of older lineage. They also need to be located
amidst the shifts in the clout of different government departments, networks of power
and access, and political patronage enjoyed by administrators and filmmakers.

Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Ravi Vasudevan for his invaluable feedback and painstaking efforts in
helping me shape this article in its present form. I am indebted to my MPhil disserta-
tion advisor Veena Hariharan for all her inputs and support at School of Arts and
Aesthetics, JNU, as well as Ratheesh Radhakrishnan for his feedback as external exam-
iner. I also thank my friends who have enriched this article with their comments.

Notes
1. Films Division was infamously called the “Files Division” due to its bureaucratic way of
functioning and the extensive filing system in place for film production (R.S., 1974, p. 4).
2. Through “block-booking and blind-booking contracts,” theaters in India were forced to
show only “approved” films; not surprisingly FD supplied most of them (see Barnouw &
Krishnaswamy, 1980, p. 186).
3. Garga (2007, p. 168). Further Garga elaborates: “Commenting on films like Face to Face, I am
Twenty, Report on Drought, India ‘67 and Explorer, the noted film critic Bikram Singh said that
they reveal ‘a degree of sophistication which was rarely to be seen before the sixties. There
is today greater willingness to face facts and, occasionally, even to stick the neck out (and)
say an oblique “boo” to the establishment.’”
4. After 1975, FD was more rigorously tied to pro-emergency propaganda mandates for the
state of internal emergency and the film practice underwent several changes. But, as the
same filmmakers continued to work on Emergency films, there were arguably elements
of continuity in their work, unsettling any account that would emphasize how political
mandates enforced a linear shift in the nature of film practice. The course of the Indian
documentary would take on a different aspect when a different direction emerged in the
interventions of Anand Patwardhan and other independent documentary filmmakers.
5. The Griersonian mode refers to the filmmaking styles and policies attributed to John
Grierson. Grierson is generally regarded as the father of the British documentary film
movement, and also designed and founded the National Film Board of Canada. It has been
argued that he played a crucial role in early Indian film practice as the apparatus for making
documentary films in India were modeled after their British counterpart (see Deprez, 2013).
6. Jain has also problematized FD in terms of “negotiations and ambivalences,” divergent
motives and agendas, by locating it as a “complex historical paradigm rather than a
compulsory postcolonial condition” (Jain, 2013, p. 13).
120 BioScope 8(1)

  7. “Policy Guidelines for Distribution of Documentary Films” (1976).

  8. Production of Film on Bonded Labour (1976).
  9. Druick (2007, p. 182). Citing Bruce Curtis, Druick emphasizes the “operation of represent-
ing or seeing the population” as being inherently “productive.”
10. M.F. Hussain says, “Today a work of art is not confined to a limited source, its material,
colour pigment, brushes, canvas … which I have been doing since my childhood. But now
I have tried to tackle the film medium with the feeling of a painter. There are unrelated
moving visuals juxtaposed to create a total poetic form well integrated, no spoken word but
the very sound of music makes a dialogue between short sequences …” Through the Eyes of
a Painter (Dir. M.F. Hussain, 1967).
11. Rao (1970). Incidentally, the newspapers also reported the conspicuous absence of Jean
Bhownagary and M.F. Hussain at the National award ceremony. One wonders if that was a
chance happening or a political statement by the filmmaker (Hussain) and the bureaucrat
(Bhownagary), who were responsible for the film, due to the prevailing controversy around
it (see also Times of India, November 26, 1968, p. 1).
12. National Awards for Film-1967 (1968) held at Vigyan Bhawan. Ministry of Information and
Broadcasting. Government of India.
13. “It is consulted on the workings of Film and Television Institute of India, Film Finance
Corporation, Children’s Film Society, The Film Consultative Committee and also required
to organize film festivals. It is asked to advise on many matters concerning the film industry
as a whole. We consider that the Films Division should not be involved in activities con-
nected with its charter to produce and distribute films” ( Chanda Committee Report, 1966,
p. 35).
14. Chanda Committee Report (1966, p. 11). Although the ratio of film stock used in the final
film at FD was much lower than what existed in “advanced countries,” where it was as high
as 25:1 or 15:1—indicating a massive limitation in terms of using the shot footage in the final
film. Similarly, the changes suggested by the Film Advisory Board at the final stage of the
film leading to cuts and thus wastage of stock was also cited as a major problem resulting
from lack of coordination between the departments.
15. Ibid., p. 27. An instance of this was a film on the floods in Orissa, which when it was finally
shown in Orissa, was shown at a time when the state was experiencing drought.
16. Garga (2007, p. 166). Garga titles the chapter as “winds of change” to describe the changing
terrain of documentary in India in the 1960.
17. Prasad (1998, p. 118).After the death of Prime Minister, Lal Bahadur Shastry, Gandhi was
elected by the Congress party in his place.
18. Ibid., pp. 119, 120. This volatile political situation was characterized by signs of popular
dissatisfaction rising in the country especially in the states of Gujarat and Bihar, the offen-
sive led by Jaiprakash Narayan threatening the dominance of the Congress party; the rise
of urban middle class militancy and of communist mobilization. By this time the Maoist
movement was on the wane after extensive state repression.
19. In September 1964, two important directives were issued to FD from the Ministry of
Information and Broadcasting. The first was that newsreels should give greater importance
to non-official, social, cultural organizations, and completed projects (rather than inaugura-
tion or ribbon cutting ceremonies). It was said that the newsreels should describe the effect
that has been brought to the lives of people during prime ministerial visits and other events.
Newsreels should also use selected material from international coverage and national and
international level sport activities. The second directive was for documentaries but was
somewhat vague—it stressed the importance of “quality” even if it “compromised quan-
tity” (see Times of India, August 5, 1964, p. 9).
Kaushik121

20. Mohan (1990, p. 75). Jag Mohan is perhaps referring to the prevalent movements in the field
of documentary filmmaking right from the Griersonian documentary. Bhownagary appro-
priated Grierson’s formulations often, but was also aware of Cinema Vérité styles, and the
Russian formalist movements owing to his involvement with UNESCO and being based in
France for a substantial period of time.
21. In this system, FD would take out a tender and independent producers would submit
their quotations to FD. After a careful selection procedure, the film commission would be
awarded to the candidate deemed suitable. The competitive tendering system led to low
rates quoted by filmmakers for the production of film, as the criteria for selection was based
on the lowest tender.
22. Chanda Committee Report (1967). While some films with dialogues and interviews were
made, their rural corollary was that some of those films would only be released in one or
two languages instead of the 14, limiting circulation. It is not clear why this would be, per-
haps because to make them separately for each region, the same interviews could not be
used, unlike the images with music and voice-over.
23. Chanda Committee Report (1967) S.N. Limaye had deduced that while they could not do
away with the consultants from the Ministry, their designation could be redefined.
24. Bhownagary says, “We now concentrated not only on achievements, but also pin-pointed
problems and showed what the people most concerned felt about them and took into
account the solutions they suggested” (Mohan, 1990, p. 76).
25. The symbolic importance of Grierson to filmmakers in India is evident from the incessant
reference to him in writings by those involved with FD and non-state players as well. But,
it also indicates how filmmakers, bureaucrats and critics appropriated Grierson in vary-
ing and contradictory ways to justify their arguments about Indian documentary (see Jain,
2013, pp. 22–23).
26. Another film, Report on Drought (Dir. Prem Vaidya, 1967)—based on the 1966 drought in
Bihar was also allowed to be sent abroad due to Indira Gandhi’s decision, despite objection
by some ministries.
27. Indian Woman: A Historical Assessment (1975). Kaul’s original commentary at the end was
as follows: “Until she recognizes her oppression as a reflection of the total social, moral and
cultural situation of our society, the new woman cannot appear.”
28. I have dealt with the filmmakers and their films in detail in the second chapter of my MPhil
dissertation.

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Interviews Conducted
Interview with Sanjit Narwekar conducted by author on 11 February 2014.
Interview with V.S. Kundu conducted by author on 10 February 2014.