When Anand Patwardhan, popularly known for his socio-economic and human rights oriented films like Bombay Our City (1985), entered the realm of documentary filmmaking in 1971, he challenged the institutions dominating Indian documentary film production, distribution and censorship. Whereas when Paromita Vohra, acclaimed for her documentaries on urban life, popular culture and gender like Morality TV and Loving Jihad (2007), entered much later, in 1995 she had to deal with a completely different media-scape. Each adapted methods and techniques to suit the political and historical context in which they worked.
Patwardhan and Vohra through their documentaries Bombay Our City and Morality TV and Loving Jihad respectively critique mainstream moral-political …show more content…
In the winter of 2005 Indians switched on their TV sets to watch yet another “breaking news” story, but one which shocked them. In the town of Meerut, police officers, mostly women, swooped down on unsuspecting lovers in a park and began to beat them up. Along with them, they took photographers and news cameramen with the promise of an exclusive sting operation where people were humiliated, paraded with blackened faces on television. Though this has not been uncommon, for television news channels to break into the same park at the same time to capture the events live is questionable. The whole thing was planned so that news channels could get exciting footage. This film explores the intertwined and symbiotic relation between the police and media that ultimately calls in question the sanctity of the news and television media which inflicts harm and shame on those captured on the camera. As the film begins, the voice-over says that people who once began the day with bowing to the Sun God now worship the new global God—the television screen. How much of what the news channels offer through this God is factual news, and how much of it has been concocted by the media itself? This is another question that motivates the
Patwardhan and Vohra through their documentaries Bombay Our City and Morality TV and Loving Jihad respectively critique mainstream moral-political …show more content…
In the winter of 2005 Indians switched on their TV sets to watch yet another “breaking news” story, but one which shocked them. In the town of Meerut, police officers, mostly women, swooped down on unsuspecting lovers in a park and began to beat them up. Along with them, they took photographers and news cameramen with the promise of an exclusive sting operation where people were humiliated, paraded with blackened faces on television. Though this has not been uncommon, for television news channels to break into the same park at the same time to capture the events live is questionable. The whole thing was planned so that news channels could get exciting footage. This film explores the intertwined and symbiotic relation between the police and media that ultimately calls in question the sanctity of the news and television media which inflicts harm and shame on those captured on the camera. As the film begins, the voice-over says that people who once began the day with bowing to the Sun God now worship the new global God—the television screen. How much of what the news channels offer through this God is factual news, and how much of it has been concocted by the media itself? This is another question that motivates the