Proposal 8: "Behind the Tin Sheets" by Ekta Mittal and Yashaswini, Bangalore

Behind the tin sheets is a film that intersperses diverse fantastical stories of migrant workers set against the backdrop of the landscape of a city under transformation - Bangalore. 
 

In the midst of transition: Bangalore city

It sets out to dispossess and suspend the viewer to a ambiguous realm that presents multiple meanings from the migrating world(s) of the worker – at home in the city, at work on the Metro, in his dailyness - the mundane and the magic - he emerges as the storyteller.The film attempts to blur the line between contrasting binaries of the city such as garden city and hi-tech city, Bangalore and Bengaluru; but instead work with existing contradictions and ambiguities of city and city life. It violates the standard forms of realism and romance, and instead meanders through the disparate metamorphosis of the city. 

Bio

Yashaswini  is an independent film maker based in Bangalore. She assisted in making of the film Nero’s guests, a film about agrarian crisis in India through the eyes of P.Sainath - Rural Affairs Editor of The Hindu Newspaper. She assisted Surabhi Sharma in researching her on-going film Bidesia in Bambai and Labels from a Global city, a film on garment women workers in Bangalore. Her film ‘Mom n Dad’, made as a part of the Diploma project at Social Communications Media, Sophia Polytechnic won the Best documentary award CNBC Documentary Awards and got a special mention at the Signs Film Festival, Trivandrum. She is currently involved in documenting live music concerts in Bangalore.

Ekta co-founded maraa and works there as a researcher, community radio trainer and media practitioner. She presented a multi-media installation with Yashaswini R titled ‘Footloose’ at the Centre for Internet and Society displaying hand drawn maps by migrant workers. She acted in Middle of Somewhere, a semi-fictional autobiographical play on the changing landscape  Bangalore. She is currently working on developing arts projects in the Bangalore's public spaces.

Synopsis                                                         

“When workers try to become writers, philosophers, it means a displacement from their identity as workers. The important thing is 

this displacement or dis-identification."

                                                                                               - Jacques Ranciere

Metro construction in Bangalore

As residents of Bangalore, we feel the need to make sense of the changing landscape of the city we live in, as well as intersections of this urban restructuration with other connected issues like invisibilization of certain sections of society, visible contrasts of class differences and erasure of memories. Stuck between old and new Bangalore, as it struggles to realise the dream of re’form’ing into a hi-tech city, we feel the need to personalize invisible actors to make new meanings of fragments within the city.

As migration increasingly becomes a complex contemporary issue entangled in larger frameworks of poverty reduction, sustainable development, urban studies and so on, we would like to imagine another dimension to this discourse, by pursuing a deeply personal approach in understanding him beyond the construct of a migrant worker. We are trying to move away from ideas that view migrant workers from a rights-based perspective, where his issues become the focus that strive for solutions.

In search of the workers stories, philosophies and fantasies, we wish to blend magical elements of their within the realistic environment that they inhabit. Shakti Mandal, a cook at the labour colony narrates the difference in the dreams he has in the city and in his village in Jharkhand. Surender Meenj, from rural Chhattisgarh narrates his encounters with ghosts in his village and believes that ghosts wander about only in villages and not in cities. Such stories narrated by workers could be fact or fiction and have an underlying tone of uncertainty. Similarly, the city unfolds through its transformation a sense of ambiguity. The film allows this interplay between the workers' story and the city's story, in its current metamorphosis.The idea of the film is to experience the city through the eyes of a migrant worker in a city, to create space for alternative discourse on cities and urban redevelopment.

Treatment

after a hard day's work

“…taking the empirical premise that fiction is to the documentary what a "sculpture" is to a functional object. In both cases viewers have to suspend their coherent reasoning, to put a belief in an object, and thus consider it through a higher level.” - Neil Beloufa, filmmaker

The film will be a fragmented narrative, which will hold magical stories of the workers in its realistic environment.  The treatment for the different elements in the film is as follows:

a.      Workers’ stories - All stories are filmed in traditional documentary style where the worker is in mid close and close up narrating the story shot on PD 170. Since the stories we are seeking are fictional and semi-fictional, we have presented them in a straightforward manner which allows the "real" and the "fantastic" to be accepted in the same stream of thought.

b.     Changing landscape of the city - The stories are woven with the shots of the city under transformation shot on Canon 5D. ‘Namma Metro’ (Our Metro) cuts across the city and looms large over every single Bangalorean and is the best metaphor for this transformation literally and figuratively. Long, wide shots of the city will reflect the gigantic construction work happening in the city that also locates the invisible worker within this space. Static shots of the city are held long to convey the scale of the development and construction in the city. The camera seamlessly observes the locations which once meant something to all Bangaloreans but presently has a different use. The camera unobtrusively digests the new quality of these locations creating a very uncomfortable feeling - of knowing and unknowing to present a sense of stillness. The city scape have been shot in early morning, twilight and night around three main metro sites in Bangalore – Ulsoor, Byappanahalli and Nanda Road.

c.    Workers on construction site – the worker is seen as an acrobat in creating the modern city – silhouettes of the worker meditatively working atop of the pillar against a rising moon and a setting sun and close-ups of the worker digging, welding and climbing. Long, wide shots of his firm feet and swift hands on machinery and scaffoldings and him performing his routine acrobatics on the construction site have been captured. Shadows of the workers working at night against the flood lights of the constructions site helps in developing the stories of the worker in a real environment revealing his translucent and/or opaque identity as he changes the landscape of the city.

d.    Labour colonies – Close ups and long shots of workers daily routine – brushing, listening to the radio, cooking traditional food in firewood, warming up to winter mornings,  conversing with family members on mobile phones, figuring out mobile phones, workers walking to work and back, workers getting on the truck to go to work. Point of view of the worker on the truck.  The dailyness reveals their identity and familiarity with the city and also gives one a scale of migration in making of a globalized city.

As Jacques Ranciere affirms, memory is a work of fiction.

worker's kitchen

The film will be woven in an organic manner where the images of the city and the industrial sounds of construction will interplay with the affect of each story rendered by the workers. The narrative of the worker will meet the narrative of the city as the film gradually reaches its climax, leaving the viewer with an uncanny feeling where the familiar renders the unfamiliar.

“… in the city of sadness, there runs an invisible thread that binds one living being to another for a moment, then unravels, then is stretched again between moving points as it draws new and rapid patterns so that at every second the unhappy city contains a happy city unaware of its own existence.”

                                                             -Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino

www.tinsheets.in

 Trailer