Indian cinema has truly arrived in the global circuit. But the Academy is no yardstick to measure our best

Composer M.M. Keeravaani (R) and Indian musician Chandrabose accept the Oscar for Best Music (Original Song) for "Naatu Naatu" from "RRR" onstage during the 95th Annual Academy Awards at the Dolby Theatre.

It is always a good feeling when Indian films get accolades abroad, like selection at a prestigious festival like Cannes, Berlin or Venice, or honourable mentions or awards at events like Oscars or BAFTA. They are recognitions for the spectacular and stupendous aesthetic and technical labour that sustains the behemoth called Indian cinemas (always in the plural).
It is a massive industry that has, unlike many other national cinemas across the world, not only managed to survive Hollywood, but has in fact thrived during all the ups and downs, booms and recessions. The Indian film industry is also one that produces the largest number of films every year in the world.

So, the Academy Awards bestowed upon Keeravani for the scintillating ‘Naatu Naatu’ song in the Rajamouli’s blockbuster RRR for the Best Original Song, and on Kartiki Gonsalves for the documentary The Elephant Whisperers for Best Documentary Short Film are well deserved though long due.

Behind The Glitz

While congratulating ourselves, let us also remember that the Academy Awards or the Oscars as it is popularly known, has been severely criticised for decades for its racial and gender bias; the members consist of aged (60 +) and predominantly white males .

Only in the last few years, after extended and trenchant criticism of its biases, did they decide to include more women and ethnically diverse members. The anonymity of members, the convoluted eligibility rules and selection process, and the opaqueness that pervades all these have been discussed and critiqued.

But despite all this and the glamour and glitz of the occasion, alongside some radical moments like the outspoken political speeches, walkouts and rejections, the Oscars is basically a Hollywood spectacle organised by and for  the white American.Its constitution, process, film preferences and priorities – all these naturally get reflected in its awards too.

What’s Acceptable, Awardable?

If one looks at the films from India that have been shortlisted and nominated for Academy Awards during the last two decades, we can see a pattern: Born into Brothels (2004) by Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman, about child prostitutes in Kolkata; India’s Daughter (2015) by Leslee Udwin, about the gangrape and murder of a girl in Delhi; Period. End of Sentence (2018) by Rayka Zehtabchi about the stigma around menstruation in rural India and the women’s initiative to manufacture sanitary pads; and Writing with Fire by Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh about a group of Dalit women journalists running their own newspaper.

Curiously, all these films are about women, and mostly about discrimination or violence against women. So, it is not a coincidence that Shaunak Sen’s disturbing documentary – All That Breathes – on the ecological and political pollution in the capital city of Delhi did not make it to the final accolade this year.

This pattern is not accidental. The skewed choices are all the more striking considering the fact that during the last few decades, India has produced some of the most aesthetically provocative, politically relevant and thematically contemporary documentaries that have won awards at several international festivals.

What makes them different is that they all deal with contemporary India that is not exotic and esoteric; and they ask very troubling questions about gender, development, ecology, human rights, right to water, land etc. These documentaries place India as a site of vibrant democratic struggles relating to issues of global consequences and about how global capital is implicated in the whole process.

Very uneasy questions for the West to hear from the rest of the world; for, the West consider themselves as the only commanders and producers of the ‘global’ , while rest of the world is allowed to talk only about itself - that too, about inequalities, violence and conflicts, in order to become acceptable and awardable!

What The Academy Missed

Let us now take a ‘native’ look at the song and documentary that made it this year. The Elephant Whisperers is a very simplistic, naively innocent film made in the National Geographic mode (in terms of cinematography and scripting) about a couple Bellie and Bomman who nurse baby elephants, developing intimate bonds with them.

The documentary, while focusing its attention solely on the couple and their parental love for the animals, keeps itself safely away from the colonial and ecological histories of the place. While briefly mentioning about Mudumalai forest reserve and its more than a century-old history, the documentary keeps silent about the fact this site was identified and used by the British for logging and obviously, they needed elephants to economise the plunder.

Moreover, one should also see this film in the context of some heart-breaking and visceral documentaries on elephant lives in our times: P Balan’s Green Oscar Award winning The 18th Elephant - 3 Monologues (2004) by P Balan and Gods in Shackles (2016) by Sangita Iyer – both about the violence and torture perpetrated upon the pachyderms today.

New Market Forces

The scintillating music score, design and choreography of the Naatu Naatu song had already received rave reviews and great admiration from all around the world. This recognition also marks the fact that Indian cinema has arrived in the global OTT circuit. With mega productions – all fictitious historicals – like KGF, RRR, PS-1 and Kantara bursting into the scene, turning the tables on Bollywood, the power equations are set to change in favour of the South Indian film industry.

The radical shift to e-learning during the pandemic has opened up, along with the curriculum, a massive domestic market for OTT platforms. That way, the recent Oscars are about global film capital waking up to the rise of Asian cinema. The increasing Asian presence is not just the indicator of aesthetic or technical excellence of Asian cinema (Japanese, Korean and Hong Kong films have already shown that they can beat Hollywood in their own games) but an acknowledgment of its emerging and  expanding market potential.

In fact, the elephant has started roaring. Or, to paraphrase the Naatu song, the aggressive bull has started jumping in the dust of the fields.

CS Venkiteswaran is an award-winning film critic and documentary filmmaker based in Kerala. Views are personal and do not represent the stand of this publication.