Why documentary on the dark chapters of Bengal’s political history missed out on National Awards?

Sanghamitra Chaudhuri’s documentary ‘

Sainbari to Sandeshkhali

’ which has made it to the

Indian Panorama

at the 52nd International Film Festival of India in Goa traces the exact meaning of ‘Crime Against Humanity’ as It applies to

West Bengal

, given the last fifty years' political history.

‘Sainbari to Sandeshkhali’ is more than a work of non-fiction. It is a tour de force of Democracy as the hard-hitting docu film gradually transforms from an empowering tool to a millstone around the neck of India's poorest millions.

According to the Bengali director, she had missed the

National Awards

deadline because of a dilemma from the Central Board of Film Certification as they allegedly took almost six months to get the film censored. The Kolkata office had informed Sanghamitra to send the copy to Mumbai headquarters, where she had to arrange a special screening. And, some deletions were suggested at that time and to make the film finally ready it took a lot of time. Then she got the certificate in July but by then it was already too late for the National Awards application. So, for Sanghamitra, the selection at the Indian Panorama is a big recognition for all the hard works.

Speaking about the docu-feature’s core concept, the director explains, “Nowhere is the phenomenon more distinct than the eastern Indian state of West Bengal. A political formation led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has managed to stay in power there since 1977 without losing an election, whether to the national Parliament or the local panchayati raj body. What is most amazing is that the secret of their invincibility-an admixture of terror and deception-has gone virtually uninvestigated owing to a conspiracy of silence imposed on the collective conscious by India's institutions of free inquiry. In the docu film, to mark his twentieth year as a journalist, an author returns to his home state,

Bengal

, to find a province of 80 million rendered the last outpost of Stalinism anywhere in the world. He discovers people brutalized and their culture laid waste by a pernicious system that relies on violence, intimidation and election manipulation for self-preservation.”

The 52nd edition of International Film Festival of India in Goa will be held from November 20 to 28 this year. Apart from ‘Sainbari to Sandeshkhali’, Abhijit A Paul’s ‘Naad-The Sound’ and

Ashok Viswanathan

’s ‘Badal Sircar & the Alternative Theatre’ will also compete in the non-feature section.