2) Was the official mission stated by the government for the documentary film and for art cinema similar or different, and to which extent?

I do not divide cinema into art and non-art, what you call 'commerce'. You may call these 'parallel policies'. There was no national policy as such. The Film Institute had a mandate to improve filmmaking discipline and aesthetics by training filmmakers, young minds, and by feeding the film industry with trained hands. For example, K. K. Mahajan, who was a great cameraman, also shot many mainstream Bollywood films too and his presence there is definitely felt. All the trained cameramen, sound recordists, engineers and editors have contributed creatively to the Indian film industry at large. To that extent, the mandate was quite significant and visionary too, but then independent minds emerged, who wanted to create new aesthetics in filmmaking. For example, Kumar Shahani and Mani Kaul, in their films such as Maya Darpan (1972) and Uski Roti (1970) wanted to remove the otherwise dominating element of theatre in cinema.  They were exposed to world cinema and had also read and followed Indian epic and poetic traditions. Also Ritwik Ghatak, who became the Vice Principal of the Film Institute and who left a substantial influence on Kumar Shahani, Mani Kaul and John Abraham.

       When Mani Kaul made Siddheshwari (1989), it was rejected by the jury of the National Awards. They thought it was neither documentary nor fiction. After a long debate, it was finally allowed and it won an award in the documentary category entered by the Films Division. The nature of documentary or the personality of documentary has changed a lot. It is a matter of presentation and representation. The question of representation is important here, but it is complicated. I think essentially every film turns into a fiction the moment you see through the viewfinder; it becomes your personal fiction, story.

3) Which documentaries made between 1948 and 1975 would you say defined and set standards for documentary filmmaking in India? Where they all made by the Films Division?

I do not think there were any standards set up, but there were creative phases in documentary making. Jean Bhownagary’s phase was interesting, because he was invited by Nehru at the time (in the late 1950s) and created a new creative environment. Many outsiders were invited to make films, for example, M. F. Husain, the famous painter made a documentary on painting from his creative conscience. So did Tyeb Mehta and several other artists from fine and other arts. Such documentaries were interesting in the otherwise monolithic and monotonous environment.

In around 1990-91, the Films Division had invited me and my team to set up a computerized database of its entire production of nearly 8000 documentaries of that period, and we saw most of these films (there were no CDs or DVDs in those days and we had the most primitive computer at our disposal, no Windows!). For the basic data basing process, however, we found a certain monolithism involved, maybe because of it being a government body. During the young age of independent India, most of her population was illiterate, they could not read or write, and these films were made keeping them in mind the national priorities and realities of the country. They were part of the larger nation building project. And it was necessary too.

4) How can the concept of 'cinema of prayoga' help us understand the films made by filmmakers Sastry, Pati, Sukhdev and the like in the 1960s?

This concept is anchored on temporalityand time. I consider cinema as an elementally temporal medium, not necessarily visual because it is like music. It has its own svabhava (intrinsic nature), which is temporal, which could also be transcendental. Pramod Pati was one of the filmmakers who dealt withtime, I personally felt. Mani Kaul’s 'documentary' films are deeply temporal, whether made for the Films Division or outside of it. His film Desert of a Thousand Lines (1986), for instance, is deeply drenched in time, and the way he looks at the reality of deserts and its life. So, this is how you perceive time and reality. This becomes important for Prayoga. The documentary film made by K.P. Jayasankar and Anjali Menteiro on musicians of Kutch (So Heddan, so Hoddan, 2011) is quite temporal, I feel.

To me, the Film Institute, film educational bodies or film studies departments have not, in a real sense, contributed much to film philosophy or what I call ‘filmosophy’, maybe because of their own practical constraints and career orientations in the competitive world. It is the other people or the artists outside of these institutional or training bodies who have thought and done a lot to change our perception of cinema. I would say that the Cinema of Prayoga (or Cinema Prayoga) reflects deeply upon thoughts on temporality, the tattva (principles or aspects of reality), as well as several other pertinent philosophical concepts. Getting these from our own Asian wisdom such as the Yoga Vasisitha, the Upanishads and the Jaina philosophy, the way they treat, study and perceivetime is important and how we retrieve these wisdoms in our film making practices.

5) If the term prayōga suggests 'the eternal quest, a continuing process in time and space', how would you apply it to individual experimental documentary filmmakers of the 1950s and 1960s?

The entire oeuvre or the body of work done by Mani Kaul, including Siddheshwari and Uski Roti, Satah Se Uthata Aadmi, contain elements of Prayoga. Timeand space cannot be segregated, they go together. Space can be the container of time or time can be the container of space. Cinema is essentially temporal or kaliya. Earlier, within the broad creative domains of temporal art, scripts were not sort of mandatorily written. They were not sine qua non for filmmaking practice, as they have become now. This non-scriptwriting or being script-less becomes important for Prayoga, unlike conventional scripting, shot taking and acting.

 The Western philosophy had comprehended four constituting elements of the universe, namely, fire, earth, water and wind. India added the fifth element, which is space (ether or akasa). This was very important for Prayoga. How we perceive the universe, where space is one of the constituting elements of our existence, of our perception. All this put together, you could perhaps achieve a different perception of reality. If you have a different perception of reality, your perception of the documentary film also changes. On the surface, the documentary is defined by reality or realism. Once I had asked Mani Kaul about how he was able to reconcile with two vastly different worldviews, two different temperaments and cinematographies of Ritwik Ghatak and Robert Bresson (with whom he had worked), and what he told me would be immensely interesting in our context here. He said, ‘Both Ghatak and Bresson helped me cure the sickness called realism.’

6) In your opinion, what are the specificities of the Indian experimental documentary cinema?

Paradoxically, it was made in the governmental Films Division because of Jean Bhownagary. He was given enough space as a filmmaker by Nehru in the 1950s. Nehru’s presence, as the Prime Minister of India, gave space to creative minds and the Films Division produced many so-called ‘experimental’ films. There was hardly any animation filmmaking in the country before that time. The Cartoon Film Unit within the Films Division invited experts from abroad like Norman McLean, who taught our young people how to make animation films. Animation films were made for the first time in the country, because they could be understood by the poorest peasant in the most remote area of India.

7) How do they deal with social and political issues in their films?

This is a personal view, a subjective view. If I am making a film, for example on the Narmada river dam, I will have my own personal view, which could be political or social and that could be comprehensive of global context and national history. Finance also plays an important role. Non-government organizations are also busy making documentary films with their own worldviews and programmes. Everyone has her or his own belief system or ideology, if you will. For example, an activist making a film will perhaps bring in more transparency than others, he will not hide his commitment, or camouflage it for any vested interest, or earning anybody’s favours. Sponsored documentaries, the Films Division documentaries, or diploma films made by film Institute graduates will have their own personal views too. Everyone or every organization making films has its own worldview, which may or may not be different from others.

8) Can you identify any historical, political, economic, social, cultural or artistic reasons responsible for the best achievements and main limitations of the documentary film over the period 1948-1975?

Early on, the exhibition of the Films Division films was compulsory in theatres. However, the exhibitors filed a case in the courts against this type of compulsory showing, which eventually stopped this practice. Multiplexes and theatres stopped showing the Films Division documentaries, so, the Films Division has created its own mini festivals to showcase its documentaries across the country. Beginning from Mumbai, it also created an imaginative FD Zone across its branches all over the country that have curated shows of not only its own films but also of films made by filmmakers across the country, and even from outside. The Mumbai International Film Festival (MIFF) is a grand platform happening every alternate year. Nevertheless, the production of the Films Division documentaries has declined a lot. Earlier, it was the only body which was producing a variety of documentaries, in the form of short films, animation films and newsreels in many languages. 

I have not done any survey on the impact of these films from the Films Division. Initially, these films were shown in mobile vans in far flung villages, so I am sure they had some influence or impact on the people. For example, showing of new agricultural methods to the farmers in villages and interior parts of India would have some degree of influence. We, however, do not have exact data. In the old times, it was made mandatory by the ruling government to show these films, which is not the case now, in the present times. The government's mission to educate people in the various phases of national life through these documentaries surely had some impact on the population.

This impact was strong until the advent of public and later private television channels. Through Doordarshan, the public television network, this mission of education continued. However, the popularity of such programmes has also been lost over a period of time and as technology has developed and expanded the way it has over the past decade or so is just mind blowing, but it is for mankind to decide how to harness it before it consumes us over.