David MacDougall, an Australian ethnographic documentary filmmaker born in America, has been in close association with India since 1987 and making films on institutions of children and children’s experience of growing up in such establishments. His documentary “Gandhi’s Children” (2008), exploring the lives of 350 boys in a shelter home in sub-urban Delhi was nominated for “Best Documentary Feature Film,” and awarded the High Commendation at the Asia Pacific Film Awards (2009) in Australia. And now he is on to his latest project, titled “Childhood and Modernity: Indian Children's Perspectives.” where he allows 11-year olds to shoot a short film about anything and everything they feel passionate about. A compendium of four films titled "Delhi at Eleven" is a result of workshops held in Delhi. These little ones have done a commendable job and four of these films were recently screened at the India International Centre in New Delhi. In his film, “My Lovely General Store,” Ravi Shivhare explores the day-to-day workings of a small general store near where he lives, where his uncle has a part-time job. He seems curious about what the owners were like, the relations between them and the customers, how the store maintained its stock, how they made deliveries in time, and how they handled the money involved. Anshu Singh’s very interesting film, “Why Not A Girl” shows how girls are oppressed in a certain section of families; she goes on to show how boys are favored, girls are subjected to household chores and boys are free to do the things they like. The film ends with a powerful monologue by Anshu where she speaks about her experience as a girl in a patriarchal family and the injustice she has uncovered. Other two films, “My Funny Film” and “Children At Home” by Aniket Kumar Kashyap and Shikha Kumar Dalsus respectively are based on yet other children’s perspective of the world.MacDougall started the five-year project in 2011. The idea was conceived when at the Rishi Valley school at Madanpalle, in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, he asked children if they had ideas to make films and a bunch of them nodded in approval. This snowballed into proposing a larger project wherein this could be done more systematically in video workshops of about 8-10 weeks with children where they are taught how to use the camera while filming, discuss and explore their the topics which interest them.“The basic idea is to give the children a chance to explore topics of interest to them, using the video camera as a kind of research tool. We think we can learn a lot about society and children's perspectives from films made from a child's unique position,” he says.MacDougall got in touch with the children through different schools and NGOs. He has conducted five workshops over four years in Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Rajasthan, Kolkata and Ladakh. The kids were from a varied background — rural, urban, middle-class, poor — and they were provided with camera kits with a handycam, external microphone, hand-grip, accessories, and an accessory bag. The first screening of “Delhi At Eleven” was held in 2013.“What I have found particularly interesting are the surprises that the films contain, their personal and unusual ways of looking at the world. The films vary a great deal, but in general they are very rich in detail and gave a vivid sense of domestic life and the spaces in which the children live. The films are also very revealing about the impact of modern media (films, TV, music, mobile phones) on contemporary Indian life. But there are many other things to enjoy in them aesthetically, and much else that can be learned from them,” says MacDougall.Follow @ARTINFOIndia
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