Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh on Writing with Fire
Addy Fong speaks to Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh about their documentary Writing with Fire, which is currently showing at Sydney Film Festival:
Filmed over the course of five years, Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh’s documentary Writing with Fire follows the story of Khabar Lahariya, India’s only all-female newsroom and their transition from print to digital. The challenges of gender politics and India’s caste system provide an intriguing backdrop to the film’s narrative, the story of a group headstrong women overcoming adversity and using the power of journalism to provoke real social change.
‘When we met them, they were at a very interesting cusp of transition from 14 years of print working mostly in media dark villages and transitioning now to digital. The nature and the makeup of this news organization is what spoke to us very strongly, it was India’s only all women newsroom, working in a space that’s geographically, politically, socially, extremely harsh. Women are not expected to be journalists, it’s usually men belonging to a higher caste who are journalists so they had every odd stacked against them, and yet they had been successfully running this news outlet for 14 years, so we felt like it would be a wonderful time to enter the story and see them through this journey.’ Rintu Thomas explains, sitting beside her co-director and co-editor Sushmit Ghosh as they speak about their film Writing with Fire which is screening this year’s 68th edition of the Sydney Film Festival.
The film was produced by a small crew, consisting of Karan Thapliyal and Sushmit Ghosh on camera and Rintu Thomas on sound. ‘We had to keep it very lean because of the regions we were shooting in. If we took a huge crew or loud equipment that calls for attention that would come in the way of telling the story. Early on we made the decision of being a very lean crew, to have gear that fits in a backpack. This helped us tell a very intimate story because we filmed in places that were dangerous and at times not very welcoming, we shot in the homes of these women, we wanted to be as invisible as possible.’
This intimacy is echoed in the close working relationship Rintu and Sushmit have from their 11 years together, having met in film school and then starting Delhi based film production company Black Ticket Films. The challenge of producing Writing with Fire however when compared to their previous projects has been the transition from short to feature, requiring a longer commitment to the project. Thankfully they explain, the whole process of filming was broken down across the five years to help them engage with the story and disengage as needed.
Writing with Fire presents the possible blurring of news and documentary, the film itself an observational piece inviting us into the film’s more intimate moments with its characters, the camera following their personal and professional lives, the use of hand-held camera and close ups, echoing the intimate relationship the filmmakers formed with their subjects throughout the years. ‘The joy of a documentary is a bunch of things happen by chance and you can never plan it.’ Sushmit tells me, ‘When we started back in 2016, the idea was to see what’s going to happen with the newspaper, this experiment that they’re trying out, shifting to digital, but we were deeply invested in the personal narratives of Meera, Suneeta, and Shyamkali to see how they negotiated spaces outside and within their homes, they live in complex worlds.’
A level of trust naturally formed between the filmmakers and their subjects overtime, ‘After the first year it evolved into friendship, you’re spending so much time on the ground [with them] and when you instinctively trust the person in front of you, it evolves into something deeper. We were working in an average temperature of 44 to 45 degrees, walking at least three to four hours every day with the journalists. We’d always end up having these funny conversations about life. We spent a lot of time with their families, lived with them so it was a very, very deep friendship and that allowed for the intimacy with which the film was shot.’
Choosing to tell the story of Khabar Lahariya through the lens of the characters and simply letting the story unfold on camera is a simple and powerful choice, ‘the one critical thing that we did early on, in the beginning between the three of us, was decide that at no point in time are we going to intervene in the process of them doing whatever it is that they had do. We merely followed them, shadowed them through these spaces, whether that be their homes or in the professional spaces in society. The ground rule was what would they do if we were not there? That’s where the most beautiful and elegant of solutions were sought by them, whether that be through conversations, phone calls, or just figuring things out on their own.’
Curious as to whether the filmmakers were involved in the process of helping train the journalists in their shift from print to digital Sushmit explains that these moments were rare, ‘There were a couple of occasions where filming aside we did do a couple of training sessions for them, designed around what is storytelling, the nature of news, and the larger debate of where is news going and how are platforms like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook changing the meaning of news. This came out of these very sophisticated conversations they’re having within their own newsrooms about how to report, the meaning of consent, the need to diversify, etc.’
Amongst an ever-changing political landscape, forging deep relationships with their subjects was inevitable as India’s transition as a democracy occurred during the period of filming, key to understanding the story’s context and characters. A fourth character, Satyam, a young man is introduced at the film’s midpoint representing a shift in the film’s tone, ‘he essentially represented to us what was happening in the country. It felt that his positioning in the film was going to be inevitable, it would be a very different film if he wasn’t there’. The choice to include Satyam’s story in Writing with Fire shifts the focus from a documentary on female journalists in India to something greater than mere gender politics, perhaps the power news has to evoke social change.
The power of media to evoke social change is something that was touched on during conversation, the journalists at Khabar Lahariya aware of their influence in bringing awareness to wider audiences through the power of publishing on social media platforms such as YouTube and WhatsApp. ‘They were understanding the power that exists while being in front of and behind the camera. We were both talking in a very similar language of shots and storyboards and edit. There is a sense of similarity in the process and approach, but you realize when you watch the film that although the purpose is the same, with the styles of journalism and filmmaking there’s a very subtle line that separates the two.’ Rintu tells me explaining the distinction is that between filmmaking and journalism is that journalism is often in search of a truth, ‘corroborating facts, asking questions, finding answers, approaching this one issue through multiple angles’ whereas ‘filmmakers we’re interested more in the questions than the answers we’re exploring.’
Writing with Fire’s screenings at international film festivals brings this story to new audiences; this was the justification as to why Rintu and Sushmit decided to commit to the 5-year project. The film explores ideas of press freedom and the importance of diversity in storytelling, aptly timed with this year’s Nobel peace prize awarded to Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov for safeguarding press freedom. ‘I think it’s one of the biggest challenges that’s facing us globally.’ Sushmit remarks, ‘it’s as critical as the climate crisis where there is a shrinking space for the free press, whether that be in the more modern westernized part of the hemisphere or more in the global south. The hallmarks of a healthy democracy have traditionally always been the free press that have been dissident to speak and have ensured transparency and accountability in governments. I think with deeper corporatization across the industry of journalism now where you have big corporations or big governments working in cohort to ensure that mass media is now owned or in private hands is leading to dangerous times for all of us. I think we need more like Maria Ressa and that’s why the Nobel Prize this year was significant because we had two journalists winning it, I think that’s an indicator of how we as societies, as citizens, need to start looking out for, investing in, and supporting independent journalists and independent news outlets.’
The rise of popularity in Lahariya’s viewership is an indicator of the group’s success and the thirst society has for the free press. Independently run news organisations like Khabar Lahariya that produces stories written by Dalit women aged between 18 to 50 plus provides a wider selection of news beyond the ‘views of those in power, middle-aged upper caste upper-class Indian men who are choosing what Indian news looks like or should be.’
With the affordability and accessibility of news the internet and mobile technology brings, there will always be a delicate balance at play in this ever-changing media landscape. The publishing of online content allows for a wider audience reach beyond physical borders is wonderful however the consideration of content fatigue and rise of fake news is something to consider. ‘We’re all overfed with what national, mainstream news media puts out in its main pages or headlines but when a road is broken or there is no water in a canal for farmers, who’s going to report those stories? There is greater accountability and diversity in these voices, but this kind of visual proliferation has also a flipside, you see all kinds of videos being forwarded on WhatsApp, there is a proliferation of fake news as well so it’s a delicate balance. It has given us multiplicity of voices, but it also has its pitfalls, so I think it’s an interesting time to be in to be both makers and consumers of media.’
Rintu tells me the democratization of the internet has helped with the process of telling stories, ‘a very important component of the conversation around who is telling whose stories and how are they doing that.’ In this way, my own understanding of this subtle blur between journalism and documentary is that this new era of news making, or filmmaking speaks to the affordability and rise of communities in telling stories from their communities whether it be in the form of documentary, news reporting, or the narrative form all bring a diverse understanding of stories and the ways they are told. ‘With people having that power in their hands, literally in a mobile phone, has transformed that space with the rise of Tiktok and Instagram reels you can see people now articulating in a new visual language their own stories. Khabar Lahariya very intelligently used this moment of transition to shift to the other side. These are journalists professionally trained reporting from within their communities and that has a huge impact in understanding or reorienting the discussion around what is newsworthy.’Writing with Fire is an enjoyable watch that has audiences naturally supporting the journalists at Khabhar Lahariya who are able to overcome great adversity. Whether it be empathising with the frustration felt when witnessing a female journalist mansplained by a man, ignored by authorities, abused online, or witnessing the growth in the team understanding how to film a news story on a mobile. Little moments such as witnessing the team grow in their journalistic and production skills is heart-warming to see unfold onscreen. Khabar Lahariya states ‘We’ve been holding the powerful to account. We made our journalism the voice of democracy. And we continue to hold a mirror to society.’
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Writing with Fire plays on Sunday 14th November at 11am at Event on George Street. For details go here. For more information about the Sydney Film Festival, go here.
Interview by Addy Fong.
