Frames from the streets
The Unknown, a documentary on street children and women in an Indian city, conceptualised by Gireesh Nair, a UAE-based television professional, has been short-listed in competition at the Vancouver International Film Festival. Rajeev Nair has the details
On the pavement by a bustling street, a child turns on its paper-cot — a poster torn out from the wayside wall. The tiny tot studies the prints on its ‘bedding’ as flies buzz over him, and then, abruptly, he sinks his head down. It hurts. He cries. The vision freezes on the boy’s pain.
Same city, another pavement. An old woman in rags reaches out her hand to passers-by. They are busy – laughing and talking, they walk past briskly. As the camera pans on the woman’s nonchalant expression, the pavement senses the flurry of a rustle. It is a woman draped in a fancy silk sari. She clutches a big bag closer and walks away. The camera moves back to the old lady, and settles on her hand — it doesn’t have a palm.
Children and women — all from the streets of Kochi, a city in the south Indian state of Kerala — are the subjects of The Unknown, a 17-minute documentary. Filmed by Gireesh Nair, a UAE-based television professional during his annual vacation back home, the documentary has been short-listed in the competition section at the Vancouver International Film Festival.
The Unknown dwells on unknown faces, alright. But in its totality, the documentary is about people you know, people you see but do not watch, people you hear but do not listen to, people you sense but do not feel for. They are known, yes, but best left forgotten. And it is this raw nerve that Gireesh pricks with his documentary.
Not surprisingly, The Unknown does not have words. Except for three narrative breaks, the documentary does not rely on the spoken word. Music, culled from selections by the masters, underscore the mood of the production but it is the camera that does the talking.
Despite the lack of words, the vocabulary that the frames throw up is tremendously rich. There is every emotion in these 17 minutes: Anguish, frustration, sadness, despair, nonchalance, resignation… and then, a little hope.
That is what you want to read on the faces of those children, wide awake on the shoulders of their mothers (or total strangers), as they watch the city go past them.
In their life is the constant backdrop of traffic, speeding buses, chugging trains, huge billboards that mean nothing to them, and people — countless faces who are on the move, always on a journey, to a destination. And what is theirs? One street to another? One shop to the other? One hand of charity to the next?
The Unknown is brutally honest. It pinches where it hurts. It is a painful reality we are happy to forget, and Gireesh and his crew simply dig them out and lay them bare, without preaching, without holier-than-thou pomposity.
It all started with Gireesh attempting to make a television piece for Sakhi, a home for distressed women in Kochi, initiated by the Cultural Foundation for Peace. Ann Sharon Lopez, the organizer of Sakhi, had suggested doing the shoot.
But once Gireesh studied the subject at hand, and decided to use candid shots for the production from the streets (and also to protect the identity of the women who were given shelter at Sakhi), the scope widened.
The Unknown, eventually, had little to with Sakhi. At no point, does the documentary try to endorse Sakhi. The Unknown is just facts based on actual people on the streets, and nothing more.
Gireesh and his camera man, Nithin Thalikulam, shot The Unknown with a hand-held DSR370, at different locations in Kochi. They had no story-board, no sequence of events, not even expectations of what to be shot. It was as candid as it could get.
They had their little brushes with trouble too. Once, at a railway station, a few women threw stones at them. At another time, women who also sold flowers while their little ones slept and played by the roadside were annoyed and raised a ruckus. But these were minor and forgettable episodes, says Gireesh.
From a footage that ran to over two hours, shot and mixed over ten days, he eventually culled the documentary to 17 minutes, also adding observations by social worker Justice VR Krishna Iyer, Ernakulam District Collector APM Mohammed Hanish and journalist Leela Menon.
The documentary was screened to encouraging response by Sakhi in Kochi, recently. And now comes the honour of being screened at Vancouver…
Gireesh, who works with an Arabic channel in Dubai, has previously assisted accomplished cinematographers including Rajeev Menon (on the feature film Minsara Kanavu) and Madhu Ambat (on the Kerala shoot of Raj Kumar Santhoshi’s Lajja).He has also worked with cinematographers Sunny Joseph and KG Jayan, and film director PN Menon. He started his career in advertising in Mumbai, before moving to television. More productions for television, and eventually, films form his dreams.
The Unknown, he says, was a moving experience, personally. “To take the camera to the street, and watch things that were always there, but see it in a new light, was a different experience.”
It is that difference, which he communicates through The Unknown — a no-frills take on reality.
