Even before the visuals of Pinki’s father caressing his daughter’s hair after she underwent cleft-lip surgery could fade from one’s memory, Megan Mylan has come up with a fresh set of father-daughter relationship to highlight a bigger issue. For Mylan India has become her second home. The American director who became a household name when she won an Oscar for “Smile Pinki” is in news again. This time she has turned her camera on Monika Barman from West Bengal’s Cooch Behar district. Monika is one of the beneficiaries of the State government’s micro agricultural programme for adolescent girls to make them financially independent and ensure that they are not married off by their parents before 18. Called “After My Garden Grows”, the short film is produced by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and has been adopted by the Ministry of Child and Women Development and PVR Cinemas to take the message to two divergent set of audience.
Mylan, who will conduct a masterclass at the ongoing 45th International Film Festival of India-14 on ‘Making Films-Making Change’ this Friday, is known for her observational style of filmmaking. She seldom intrudes into the privacy of the subject to juice out some emotions. Nor does she make the experience dreary by bombarding the audience with statistics. “I like to pull you into the life of someone who is going through a life defining moment that reveals a larger issue, a larger truth. Like Monika is at a critical point in her life because her parents are actively looking for a groom while she wants to find her feet first. I keep the style non-intruding and don’t make it narration or interview heavy so that the audience have their own experience. Of course, I chose Monika, I chose where we shot and decided what to leave out but I leave you connecting with the material in your own way. I don’t have easy answers. I feel if I heavily narrate it I am limiting the experience that you can have. You can have a completely different interpretation of Monika’s story that what I have but what I do hope is when you report about her, read about her or listen about her in a politician’s speech you see her as a person who is part of your human family. If a person stays with you, and you continue to grapple with his or her state than I feel I have done my job.”
But when you bring camera and editing tools to the picture, the reality does get affected. “If you do it honestly, it translates on screen. I have the rigour of an independent film journalist. So I direct the crew and not the people in it. Like I never asked Monika to act in a certain way so that I get my shot. If I missed it, I missed it, and I feel if she is genuinely into something it will come up again. Like the shot where her father takes her with him on the cycle to the market. Manipulative and propaganda are different kinds of filmmaking and I guess audience can see through them. While shooting such films the protagonist keeps asking do you want me to do this, do you want me to do that and it becomes a problem. Having worked with many NGOs, I come from the background of social justice and won’t indulge in something like this,” emphasises Mylan, who has extensively worked at the grassroots level in Brazil.
On the film reaching out to a divergent set of audience, Mylan says if you follow a story honestly it translates to a lot of audience. “At multiplexes, audience might see it as a corporate social responsibility. I have seen people discussing, ‘so they should scale up the vegetable sales’ and I say no, you are sort of missing the point. Not good. In the community everyone comes with the lens with which they see the world and I lead them to a big room and don’t hold their hand to make it easy. I feel if you work a little harder to figure things out, the point stays with you. She is growing gourd and there is no magic to it. It is not a cure all magic pill. It is not an hour long surgery that is done for free,” says Mylan referring to “Smile Pinki”.
Mylan says a national conversation is going on to save the girl child and educate her and she hopes that the film will do its bit. “I am not going to gauge its impact by finding out if the last girl was not married before 18 because of the movie. But the fact that Minister Maneka Gandhi has decided to include the film in the ministry’s basket of films to be shown in rural areas of 100 districts is heartening. It works at that level. I think Indians are great storytellers and the film will help in social engagement.”
Mylan says here it is difficult for a girl to talk to her father about her marriage but here she can say, ‘like the girl in that film’. “It makes the conversation a little easier for Monikas in different parts of the country. They can start the conversation by saying that they don’t feel that way but the girl in the film does. It creates space for dialogue and the father won’t put his guard up.” Mylan hasn’t demonised the father. “It is what I saw. He is a man who is forced by tradition and economic circumstances and feels that the best thing he can do to his daughter was to marry her as soon as possible because if he doesn’t either she won’t get married and even if she does he would have to pay a large sum as dowry which will render him bankrupt. The penny drop moment comes for him when she starts earning. You could see him taking her to the market. She is not the only girl there but it is indeed a male dominated place. You can sense the let’s-do-it- together approach. We have not tied everything together because this is how it is here. If it had been in the U.S. there would have been a high-five moment between father and daughter. That sort of expressive solidarity doesn’t happen here. So it is more subtle.”
Financial independence seems to be the solution but Mylan doesn’t believe in mission statements before going to shoot. “To me the most critical piece of it is learning life skills. I am not there to give the version of Monika. I am there on behalf of my audience. I give you a slice of Monika’s life with all the limitations and handicaps like not being from her community, not speaking her language. Let it be what it is, let it be complicated. As one of the girls says in the film her sister didn’t get married and now neither she has job nor children. Now that was not supposed to happen. But that’s real and reality is messy.”
While shooting Mylan says she was conscious that it should not come across as if Monika is getting importance in the community because of the camera and not her work. “Out of the 10 hours of footage I edited out many such moments but still you can find one or two,” she concedes.
However, what actually hurt her is the anti-smoking disclaimer. “When the father is smoking in front of the daughter he is doing it in a way that makes him conscious and he kind of tilts his neck away from her and lowers her gaze but that nuance is lost because the disclaimer takes the attention away.”
Mylan is now making a film on how Japanese take care of their elders. “When people have to work far away from their native places, the young adults in Japan have come up with a solution. They take care of an elderly couple in their neighbourhood while somebody takes care of their parents in their city. But is it as simple, does it bring emotional parity that is what I am trying to figure.”
