Nupur Basu’s award-winning documentary Velvet Revolution has six directors taking their lens up-close to scribes who have faced it all
Purnima Sharma
In zones where conflict and dictatorial regimes rule and where scribes are constantly under threat of both state and non-state actors, what drives women journalists to do their jobs is the question Nupur Basu seeks to answer. Through her documentary, which won the best documentary award in the feature length segment at the recent World Kashmir Film Festival, Basu profiles women journalists who have paid a high price for being true to their work. Excerpts from an interview:
One third of the women on the Panama Papers investigation were women and some of them faced jail terms and threats as they took on the rich and powerful in their country. India, too, is fast falling in the press freedom index... all very worrying signs.
What inspired you to make this film on women journalists?
When I decided to work on this documentary, I was keen to explore how women journalists are covering conflict and corrupt regimes the world over and what impact is it having on their work. As a journalist for more than three decades, I brought my own insight but I wanted to explore more with other women directors in different regions. The result was some riveting testimonies of women journalists from Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Cameroon, India, the Philippines, Afghanistan, Syria and the UK.
How did you zero in on the many women facing discrimination, attacks from across the world?
I put out a call with my thematic vision to filmmakers in IAWRT and they pitched their stories. Our India director, Deepika, pitched a story of a group of Dalit women in Andhra Pradesh, who have been successfully bringing out a journal for over a decade where they cover issues of caste discrimination. From the Philippines, where we know journalists are under attack, we had our director Ilang Ilang Quijano pitch the stories of an older and a younger woman journalist who are fighting their regime because they believe passionately that ‘truth telling’ is the job of journalists. We selected some pitches and suggested some others — I was keen from the outset to include the Cameroon journalist who covered the Boko Haram and we got directors from the region to identify the one who headed a radio station. Similarly, we identified journalists from Syria, Afghanistan and the women who covered the Panama Papers investigation....
Are the degrees of threat between what women face in the East and the West different?
Some regions like Syria, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan and the Philippines are definitely worse than others but conflict is everywhere. Women journalists face two kinds of threats — one, the physical threat, and the other, attacks through the social media. A woman journalist from the Philippines says in the film — “I feel I am eating threats for breakfast every day!”
Syrian Journalist
One third of the women on the Panama Papers investigation were women and some of them faced jail terms and threats as they took on the rich and powerful in their country. India, too, is fast falling in the press freedom index... all very worrying signs.
Which has been the most moving story of all?
The story of Rafida Bonya Ahmed, wife of slain Bangladeshi blogger, Avijit Roy, is special. A survivor of the attack by terrorists on Dhaka’s streets, I convinced her to share her story in our documentary and she did that with one of our directors in the USA. It is a most moving account of courage and bravery as she continues to edit the blog, Muktomona, which her husband used to edit, saying: “I could not leave my co-warriors in the middle of the battlefield”.
What has been the reaction of male journalists to this film?
They have been equally moved by these compelling stories. Lyse Doucet, BBC’s chief international correspondent, gives a hilarious account of how she once went to a press conference in Afghanistan dressed as a man as the commander had said no women were allowed in the press conference!
Nupur Basu
How tough is it for documentary filmmakers to reach out to the right audiences?
There are no cinemas that screen documentaries in most countries. Distribution and screenings are always a challenge. But there are a lot of takers for non-fiction documentaries...though the outreach is a lot of hard work. In the digital age, however, many documentary filmmakers are simply putting their films on internet and reaching out to global audiences. Technology has freed documentary filmmakers. In that context, censoring films also becomes redundant.