Filmmaker Santhosh Gopal is baffled there isn’t already a documentary on the pro-Jallikattu protests that swept Chennai in January. It began as small agitations in Tamil Nadu against the Supreme Court’s refusal to entertain petitions challenging its 2014 ban on the traditional bull-taming sport, and soon turned into an unprecedented gathering of lakhs of people at Marina beach in the Tamil Nadu capital.
For Gopal, who began his career as an assistant to cinematographer PC Sreeram, documenting the unrest, which lasted for several days, was the most obvious response as a filmmaker. “This was a historic event full of material that was begging to be filmed,” he told Scroll.in.
Gopal’s documentary Jallikattu is in its post-production stage. A teaser has already been screened at the United Nations office in Nairobi. Produced by his wife Nirupama, the film also has Anurag Kashyap as its executive producer.
When did you decide to film the pro-jallikattu protests?
On January 17, I got a text message asking me to join a protest on Marina beach by a group of people who are in favour of jallikattu. I went there without my camera because I wanted to see what was happening. Around 4,000 people had gathered there by evening in front of Vivekananda Mandapam. As the evening faded into the night, the police arrived and so did the media. It was then that I asked my driver to go and get my camera. I had no idea that the protest was going to continue for a week. I just wanted to record something to upload on YouTube.
It was a protest that was very different. The police asked the crowds what their demands were. Nobody knew what to say. I realised that very few in the gathering had even been to a protest before. Later when the police commissioner asked a representative to come forward, nobody went. And yet, there was a sense of a unified rebellion, an unprecedented kind.
As the night wore on, the police switched off all the lights on the beach. I had one camera with me. From amidst the crowds, I saw one man take out his cellphone and switch on the torchlight. Another man followed and slowly the beach looked like the stars had descended on the sea shore. As a visual, it was fascinating. I stayed overnight and for the next week and filmed all that I saw. I had no script in mind, no narrative.
When did a narrative finally emerge and what form did it take?
People brought placards that said ‘Occupy Marina’ and immediately my mind harked back to the anti-consumerist protests in New York in 2011, ‘Occupy Wall Street’. I felt there were a lot of similarities between the two movements. The next day, I saw flags of Tamilagam/Tamilandam. That is when I knew that the protest had now begun to centre on a single theme and had become about a single region.
I identified five protagonists at the beach, each from a different background, and began to follow their stories. I wanted to know what brought each one to the beach and through them understand the anatomy of the protest.
How did you go about shooting the protest?
I used a variety of instruments, from film cameras to drones to phone cameras. We used a drone to capture close to 16 lakh people in a single shot. By the end of it, I had more than 200 hours of footage. It was a challenge, of course. But I’m surprised nobody else thought of taking up the event as a subject for their film.
The entire topic is quite fascinating. Even now, even as the film is nearing completion, I’m unearthing new information and research each day.
What is your own stand on jallikattu?
I went there with no motive or pre-decided perspective. Even now, I’m only putting together whatever I saw. I don’t want to force any opinion or idea. This is not fiction. There is also no voiceover. I want to show things as they happened.
Why has this particular issue brought so many people together?
I still do not know the answer to that question.
What did you take away from the experience of filming the protest?
I just saw the power of a collective and most of all, the humanity in each of them. People brought food, water and even mobile toilets for the protesters. It is baffling how through social media alone, so many people gathered all at once. Tamil Sangams all the way in Dharavi [in Mumbai] collected money and sent it to the protesters. People slept wherever they could. They trusted each other enough to leave their belongings around. Even we didn’t bother to guard our expensive cameras. Every human being has something good and something bad in him. This issue brought out the good things.
Some people say that the large numbers are just an outcome of the large population in India. I disagree. This was something else. Even the fact that it was the Marina beach was not incidental. If so many people had to gather, where else could they have assembled but at the second largest beach in the world?
Why did you decide to launch the film’s poster in New York?
I see a lot of similarities between Occupy Wall Street and Marina. The movement in New York too was a unified movement with no leader. In terms of iconography, the poster of the Wall Street movement has a native bull on top of whom is a girl in a ballet dress. Of course, the symbolism is different, but you know people there fought against corporates; it was the 99% against the 1%. Here too, it was something similar. Here, people fought against PETA.
How did the film reach the United Nations office in Nairobi?
I was introduced to a student scholar at Harvard University who was presenting a paper there on jallikattu. When I went to film the conference, I met a representative of the UN who seemed interested in the film. He asked us to send more details. My wife explained the concept to him and he felt that this was something that should be presented at the Asia office. The teaser was presented at the UN office in Nairobi and was received well. People even came up to me and asked me if this was real footage. Even they couldn’t believe the numbers.
This is your first film. Was funding an issue?
Actually, a bunch of my friends from engineering college invested in the film. These are people who know the cause and when I told them I’m working on a film on jallikattu, they put their money in it.
How did you develop an interest in filmmaking?
After studying computer science engineering, which I took up because my parents insisted on it, I assisted PC Sreeram on such films as May Madham and Kuruthi Punal. I’ve even briefly worked under Hungarian-American cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond. Filmmaking has always been a passion. My wife and I run a promotional company that takes films to festivals.
I also run a chain of DVD libraries in 12 different cities, which I began for some pocket money. It was through the DVD library that I met Anurag Kashyap and we became friends. When I told him that I wanted to film the jallikattu protest, he asked me to not waste time and go immediately.
