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India’s rich and vibrant culture, though visible in the well-lit alleys of its urban centres, is actually a product of its farmers, weavers, and artisans who exist on the margins, pushed aside by the voluminous growth of our mechanised mass production systems. Every morning, our newspapers are filled with rural suicides and despite being aware of this dark reality, we continue to exist in our little bubble, conveniently forgetting that our traditional handlooms are the source of living for more than 6.5 million Indian families.
But with the advent of power looms in the recent past, this ecosystem, that has existed for generations, is being severely threatened, with almost no representation in mainstream media, something Puja Aparna Kolluru hopes to change with her upcoming documentary film Tangled Threads.
An alumnus of Ringling College of Art and Design, 24-year-old Puja, who likes to call herself ‘a filmmaker by skill and an activist by heart’, upon her return to India, set out in search for traditional handloom clothes. Her parents, who are a part of the Rotary Club of Vijayawada Midtown that provides services to the residents of Kappaldoddi in Andhra Pradesh, took her to visit this village - which is where she was moved by the plight of the local weavers and decided to document these stories in a way that was informative and impactful. Tangled Threads is her way of showcasing the lives of the forgotten and unknown faces of the struggling weavers.
She spent the next 3-4 weeks in the village itself, speaking to various weavers and artisans and filming stories that portrayed a world beyond what us urban-dwellers experienced on a daily basis. “I have been to 4 different counties and worked with locals everywhere I went. Yet, coming back to my own country, and interacting with people who speak my mother tongue felt so different. I was feeling so distant from their reality, almost like I was from a different country”, she tells Homegrown.
Puja has previously worked on films that explore diverse facets of human life and the different kinds of struggles that come with it, but nothing prepared her for the kind of issues she had to deal with while working in her home country. “The biggest challenge was getting the villagers to talk about their problems. They have accepted their situation so much so that some of them don’t even feel the need for a better life”, says Puja. “The first few interviews were heartbreaking, it was almost too difficult to be professional and keep asking them questions. It was like prying their old wounds, wounds that would possibly never heal”, she adds.
Tangled Threads, which is being produced with support from Rotary International - Vijayawada Midtown, is not just a dive into the unfortunate lives of the weavers of Kappaldoddi but also a fundraising initiative for the elderly women of the village, who are currently homeless and unable to fend for themselves. “With this documentary, we aim to approach private donors for funds and political parties for some systematic reforms that would help these women. Our immediate goal is to use these funds to feed them on a regular basis, the Rotary Club already provides them with groceries for the entire month. Our long-term goal is to build a self-sustaining old-age home in the village”, says Puja. Personally, she hopes she can also encourage young entrepreneurs to get rid of the middlemen and directly reach out to local weavers for raw materials and other supplies.
An exploration of a handful of rural narratives that plague India, Tangled Threads is Puja’s way of telling stories that emerge from the grassroots, that are real and representative of common people. Moreover, as a filmmaker, Puja wants to personally take this film to various problem-solving avenues where she can garner some mainstream attention for a problem that is so rampant across the country.
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