"A sanitation worker who dreams of becoming a lawyer. A mother who longs to share her struggles with her child. A woman preparing for a difficult conversation with her partner," writes Bengaluru-based filmmaker Varun Kurkoti about, 'Kathi, Kathi, Kaarana', an anthology of 'true fiction’, narrated by the workers and their families in the city of Bengaluru. This is the story behind an extraordinary project that turned the craft of filmmaking into a means of survival, expression, and healing.
The film was created as part of Mindscapes, an international programme about mental health and culture supported by the Wellcome Trust. Mindscapes Bengaluru, UnBox Cultural Futures, and Quicksand set out to work on a participatory film project exploring the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the mental well-being of informal workers. They engaged filmmaker and facilitator Varun Kurtkoti to lead this effort. With a small film crew, Varun began working with diverse contributors — an auto driver, sanitation workers, workers from a sex workers union, and some of their family members.
But things took a different turn when the participants expressed interest in learning how to make films to articulate themselves through a visual medium. Thus began a pedagogical experiment — Varun designed and led a weekend film school lasting about 25 sessions for the contributors in 2022, engaging participants on several topics around mental health through embodied rehearsals, scripting, and the production of short scenes.
You can go through the participant explorations below:
The film school was based on Brazillian Drama theorist Augusto Boal’s 'Theatre of the Oppressed' — a practice that aims to empower individuals and communities by encouraging them to become active participants in the theatrical process. Using theatre as a tool for social change, this approach allows them to become ‘spect-actors’ — active agents in shaping their own stories instead of being passive recipients of social narratives that often define them in limiting ways.
"I utilized the Theatre of the Oppressed (ToO) methods - but instead of direct transposition, the pedagogy re-deviced elements of ToO such as Image Theatre, rehearsing realities etc. to suit the mediums of film."Varun Kurkoti
The reason storytelling became such a central part of a project about mental well being was that they are deeply connected. Varun explains that in an age when screens and cameras are omnipresent and visuals are the primary language of learning, interaction and expression, we are a product of what we watch. He insists that films and images inform our social and mental identities and not the other way around. Films might have the capacity to empower but it's a double edged sword. With such power over us, they can also discriminate, stigmatize, and devalue people from the margins by reducing them to stereotypes, tropes, and punchlines.
The filmmaker witnessed this first-hand in his time with the participants of the film school. During one of their scripting sessions, the conversation drifted to how the unprecedented rains in Bengaluru in 2022 had flooded the workers' temporary homes, destroying everything they owned. The sanitation workers then shared how flooding brings all the sewer wastes on the road, which they are forced to clean.
"I tried to steer the talk towards scripting and wondered, do we want to make a film about how the rains have magnified the social inequities? "So, will I have to pick garbage even during filmmaking now?", scowled one participant. "Why is it that whenever someone makes a film about us, they only show the inhuman conditions that we are forced to work in? Is that all we are? Do we not have a home, do we not have love stories of our own?" asked another participant. As I learnt, this wasn’t merely a question of representation; it was also an issue of who gets to express, and how," Varun recalls.
"Hannah Arendt, in her book, 'The Life Of The Mind', mentions that 'nothing and nobody exists in this world whose very being does not presuppose a spectator.' And so, who gets to set the tone, decide the narrative arc? The contributors here were clear that they wanted to own their own story, whatever it may be. Their healing was not just in the story, but in the act of making it, and in the act of making people watch it."Varun Kurkoti
The output was Kathi Kathi Kaarana, a collaboratively directed short film created by the participants. The film explores how the ideas of home and belonging shape our sense of mental well-being. "What does it take to have a home, and manage it? More than physical infrastructure, how does a home provide an abstract yet real mental space of one's own? The film is not the end of the process, but the beginning of a dream for a film school for informal sector workers that will produce their films and run a night film school for those who wish to learn to tell stories," shares Varun.
Watch the trailer for the film below:
The making of Kathi Kathi Kaarana is the epitome of democratization of cinema. A story, especially one about the underdog changes multiple hands throughout the process of filmmaking. Power dynamics, dispositions and personal biases come into play and like a game of Chinese Whispers, it comes out distorted. Making sure it stays true then, rests on putting the reigns in the hands of the subjects of the film. Kathi Kathi Kaarana is what happens when people who have been spoken for all their lives finally get to speak for themselves. It is about storytelling as a tool of survival and resistance; a mannor of affirming that one's existence is not just labour, not just hardship, but something far richer and far more meaningful.
'Kathi Kathi Kaarana' will be screened by the Sandbox Collective in Cooke Town, Bengaluru on February 14.
Sign up for the screening here.
Follow Varun here.
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