Documenting Transit: In Conversation with Shishir Jha

In a scene towards the end of the film, Dharti Latar Re Horo (Tortoise Under the Earth, 2022), one of the protagonists sings about how vines die after embracing trees, but leave their marks on the bark. This aptly encapsulates the thematic kernel of the film—the gradual dilapidation of the Godda district in Jharkand, inhabited by the Santhal peoples. This process started as a result of industrial intrusions in the 1980s, when the government and private companies first discovered profitable minerals and uranium in the region. Consequently, the villagers were warned, and then compelled to evacuate the land when its resources became toxic. Filmmaker Shishir Jha focuses on a real-life Santhali couple, Jagarnath and Mugli Baskey, to convey the story of their land, using a local creation myth as an anchor. The couple has lost a child, and this intimate tragedy is equated with the slippage of the land.

The story takes up space through lilting exchanges, lingering images, folktales and devices (such as the radio) that communicate the certainty of their disappearance. At one point, the people are seen exiting the village en masse; but like the vines, they persist in residues—through the houses they had once built with love and care. In an era where claims to legitimacy through land have become precarious in the light of authoritarian manoeuvres, the displacement of an Adivasi population from their ancestral land—to perhaps become anonymous labourers in the nearest city—evokes a discomforting familiarity. With his first feature film, Jha narrates a story of these peoples, and their passive resilience in the face of erasure. In conversation with Najrin Islam at the Dharamshala International Film Festival, Jha talks about the ethnographic groundwork he laid for the docu-fiction film, gaining the trust of his subjects, and deploying an insider’s perspective on camera. He shares his motivations for the film as well as the practical challenges of translation and using non-professional actors to document a real story of uprooting. 

^{(Featured Image: Still from Dharti Latar Re Horo (Tortoise Under the Earth, 2022) by Shishir Jha. Image courtesy of the director and the Dharamshala International Film Festival; Video by Aprajita Gupta.)}

To learn more about the films screened at the 2022 edition of the Dharamshala International Film Festival, please click here, here, here and here.