Tell-a-vision While 9/11 shocked the world, the reactions were predictable. With a sad déjà vu, we watched the horrors of its aftermath unfold on the tele, prompted by formulas and agendas tried and tested. With frustration one heard the rhetoric as it filtered down, echoed by heads of State the world over. More of the same. Evils and goods, Terror to fight terror. Wars for peace and freedom. In answer to Presidents Bush’s war cry, Our Prime Minister rushed to declare that we were with US, not against. Reversing 50 years of India’s non-aligned, peaceful and multilateralist history, it offered the United States its air bases. (this from the same man who had declared India a nuclear weapons state when he was barely in poewer as head of a dissenting coalition.) But the US didn’t need the largest functioning democracy in the world as its ally. The Pakistani President (Former general functioning as head by a military coup) was a more useful stooge. Old bedfellows these: US govt. and repressive undemocratic regimes of the World. Predictable, by continuous pattern formation; these strategic games for and against the people of the world. Predictable, thanks to media control and packaging, the ignorance and insularity of those whose world is in their television. Predictable, and sad, how patriotism and national pride, like gas bubbles create highs, obfuscating pressing issues within the country and veiling a reality, that bubbles burst and often the after tastes are bilious. The gases noxious. But till then, for those, even within our country that don’t have to worry about food, water or housing, it’s a cola war on tv. Television! The middle class of India has been given heady sense of ‘choice’ at their fingertips. Within a few years India went from 2 state-run channels to over 90 And yet, in over a decade of privatization, the country’s huge middle class (more than the entire population of USA) can’t lay claim to a single private independent channel. Global media monoliths that have ‘converged’ to capture our airwaves. So even as we can’t chose our cola anymore, we can’t chose perspectives that are not sanctified by CNN/DD/Fox/CNBC/BBC. While electronic media has brought the images of the war into our bedrooms and drawing rooms it has ironically distanced us from the reality and proximity of the war. Afghanistan, our neighbor seems like a far away desert of replayed images; the Pentagon and the White House briefings-intimate intimidation. Alternative media is providing voices of sanity. Solace, in solitary moments comes from the world over on the Internet. Solidarity in our virtual world makes us happy to be a part of it. But we yearn for ‘action’. It is time to square up to the challenge. To reaffirm life and realize the changes we wish to see. ‘Action to realization’ is the processes we have chosen in our work. We believe in it. Like we believe in change. Like we also believe that 9/11 painful and shocking thought it always will be, might come to symbolize a time when we examined and re-educated ourselves, and reinterpreted the world we live in- closely, critically, with honesty, humanity and a global oneness towards a truly just and free future. Infinite injustice/Ensuring freedom War/peace (working title) A video documentation and Public intervention Project. Soon after the US govt. announced its formation of a coalition against terror, protests and public actions condemning unilateralist US policy started taking place all over the world. While protests from Islamic countries made it to homes via mainstream media, the elusive but bright glimpses of public action in India and elsewhere in the world were sidelined. In Calcutta, a huge protest of over 60000 people went largely unnoticed. Workers and young student activists organized one of the first protest marches in Bombay city. Women’s empowerment groups came together to distribute pamphlets in trains. In the weeks that followed, the city saw a couple of more public actions, but more and more, public meetings and talks were taking place inside closed enclosures. This is the city whose recent active political history as port and industrial capital of the fifties saw people claiming the streets, changing government policy, standing up for justice and equality. The nineteen nineties saw the city burn for weeks as communal riots, loot and violence were initiated and planned by the machinery’s of the State. In our post-industrial cityscape, public protests of most forms are now banned. They are considered a public inconvenience. They may disturb the peace. Regardless, despite efforts to rent the fabric and spirit of the city, the city moves on. But there is never a sense of the histories that pass, as it is a city that remains grossly undocumented. We systematic followed the anti-war movements. Our journey took us through the labyrinth of the inner city, almost never before documented. And here were so many voices of sanity. Fiery oratory. Community leaders who have dedicated their lives to civil liberties, secularism, defending human rights and democracy. Writers who run alternative publications. Women’s organizations. Trade Union Solidarity groups. Concerned citizens. Lawyers, students, journalists. Fearless. Passionate. Urgently expressing a need to take this campaign for humanity onto a wider more visible public platform. Emerging from this documentation are myriad voices denouncing the violent oppression of the last half-century and seeking to reaffirm and ensure fundamental understandings of freedom, pluralism and democracy. In these local agreements, there lie critical elements of an alternative politics that is waiting to be consolidated. What was also evident in the process of documentation, however was that while prolific information was being transmitted at these meetings and talks almost everyday; there was little networking and planning between various groups and even fewer new faces. Community leaders and concerned citizens are already forced into small rooms to talk about large issues. While those outside, the middle class, retreat to their living rooms, politically depoliticized to digest their daily quote of haterevengejustice bombarded at them through television. The gentrification of the city’s Public spaces, the absence of alternate new media tools for disseminating dissent and the dying out of college campus initiatives have resulted in progressive movements being virtually non-existent in the eyes the city youth. As we write this, our government is meeting to pass one of the most draconian acts of recent times, the Prevention of Terrorism Act. In its provisions are tools to curtail people’s freedom further, and penalize democratic dissent (in the name of preserving freedom and enhancing democracy). We need your support in making a radical intervention that will bring together these discourses and imaginations. Infinite Injustice-Ensuring Freedom (working title) is our way of realizing a space through electronic media in a manner befitting this city. Imagine if Mumbai had an alternate multilingual tv channel, if only for an hour. This is perhaps the first time that a truly independent, local film will be made that will collect and connect these city voices and present them to a large audience through existing and emerging networks. The treatment of the film emerges from a deconstruction of cable TV language. It strips bare and re-examines overloaded imagery and uses text, tv bytes, and running subtitles, in bold new energetic ways structured to hold the attention span of the viewer, by keeping a finger on the button and a mission in mind-Everybody must see the film. In that sense, part 2 of the film, ensuring freedom will move beyond the end of the film. It will become an ongoing process that we hope to support through tape distribution, screenings and public debate and discussion in public and private spaces. On one hand this film will be a valuable data resource that will inform community activists and viewers of the various networkings in the city. It will also inform them of alternative spaces where thought and action can be consolidated. On the other, through its language, it will inspire the youth of the city to take an active interest in their local histories and in their futures. In that the film is universal. The issues are global. And the perspectives are fair, just and human. The message is for the individual. Learn to see. Act. One person can make a difference. Lets have a revolution in the mind. Infinite Injustice-Ensuring Freedom (working title) is our way of releasing this much-needed space in the city. Imagine if Mumbai had an alternate multilingual tv channel, if only for an hour. This is perhaps the first time that a truly independent, local film will be made that will collect and connect these city voices and present them to a large audience through existing and emerging networks. We have over 25 hours of promising footage. To date we have invested hundreds of hours of our time and also the expenses of the digital tapes. But now we urgently need funds to begin editing the film. The processes of digital video permit us to make this a relatively low cost affair. Yet, time is of the essence. The sooner the film is edited, the sooner it can be used for the processes of networking and dissemination. We would greatly appreciate if you or your associates could provide your valuable support in any way possible. Finishing funds, distribution support and infrastructure to form a mobile screening facility. We see Tell-a-vision as an ongoing eye-opening project, hoping to be able to create moving domains for street-side-mixed-media interventions in radical new efforts to reclaim free spaces. Please contact us at the earliest. Do join us in joining us. Shaina Anand has been working independently in film/video and other medium for the past 4 years. After completing a Film & Video production course while still in college, she worked with Film Director Saeed Mirza on screenplays and was first asst. director on a docu-series based on a 5-month travel through the heartland of India. She has been writing on her travels and the issues of media ethics and representing reality. She was an active member of the Indian Peoples Media Collective and organized an Anti-nuclear campaign in the city colleges by screening films, coordinating talks, forming networks of students that lead to a 12-hour concert for peace. In 99, she went to Temple University to pursue her MFA in Film & Media Arts on the Inlaks scholarship but returned home a year later as the streets of Bombay beckoned. She shoots and edits her own video films, believes in copyleft and free media. Nikhil Anand has worked on issues of economic justice and ecological sustainability over the last three years. A 1998 graduate of Reed College, Portland, Nikhil’s early assignments were with Earth Island Institute, San Francisco and at India Centre for Human Rights and Law, Mumbai, where he worked with community organizations that were grappling with the rapid processes of economic globalisation. Since then, he has been working as Coordinator for Seeds of Hope, an effort to document alternative development practices that further the goals of social justice and ecological sustainability. He is an associate of PUKAR. (Parnters for Urban Knowledge Action and Research.) Please email us: tell-a-vision@onebox.com *The identical last name is purely coincidentalJ