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A 1967 Films Division of India documentary, 'Face to Face' captures the political and social consciousness of India twenty years after independence. Through interviews with people across professions and regions, the film explores the country’s complicated relationship with democracy, alongside questions of poverty, development, political stability, regional identity and rising expectations. Made during a more experimental period at Films Division, it offers a candid portrait of a young republic still trying to understand itself.
By 1967, India had spent two decades living with independence and trying to work out what democracy meant in practice. The country had held elections, drawn up Five-Year Plans and expanded adult franchise, while poverty, hunger, drought and inequality continued to shape everyday life. There was pride in what had been achieved, impatience with how slowly things were changing, and a growing sense that the promises attached to independence were being tested by ordinary experience.
K. S. Chari and T. A. Abraham’s 'Face to Face', made for Films Division that year, catches the country in the middle of that conversation. The short documentary travels across India speaking to an unusually broad cross-section of people: a taxi driver, a public relations executive, a cobbler from a village in Pune district, a chemicals manufacturer in Bombay, a salesman from Goa, an industrial worker from Kerala, mill workers, farmers, refugees, political observers and women in rural local government. Everyone is asked, in one form or another, to take stock of Indian democracy twenty years in.
Bombay taxi driver Ralph Morris says, "India's a 'golden bird' but everybody's poor. How about that?" Chemicals manufacturer Ambrish Pare thinks democracy could scarcely exist in a better form anywhere else in the world. A salesman from Goa dismisses it as “absolutely a failure”. Elsewhere, a student argues that widespread illiteracy and political “hero worship” have weakened the system. “Justice is only for the privileged. For us, there is only God,” says a farmer.
With a sentiment of uncertainty across these accounts, the film looks at the tension between economic development and the expectations that development creates, the difficulty of building political stability in a country of enormous regional and social differences, and the persistence of caste, class, illiteracy, and political allegiance. At this point, regional identities had begun asserting themselves alongside a larger sense of Indianness, raising questions about how a newly independent country could accommodate its differences. The documentary also keeps returning to the gap between democratic ideals and the conditions required to sustain them: discipline, responsibility, tolerance, political participation and a population able to understand the system it has been given.
The film came during a more adventurous period at Films Division, when filmmakers including Chari and Abraham were pushing the government documentary unit towards street interviews, and more difficult accounts of contemporary India. Using a mix of montage and still portraits from the time, questions of poverty, political faith, regional identity, development, education, inequality and freedom weave a portrait of a young republic: hopeful in places, exhausted in others, impatient, contradictory, and still trying to decide what democracy should look like.
Watch the film below:
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