Far away from Bollywood stereotypes, independent films tell stories of love and resilience in the Valley, minus pretty landscapes and gun-toting militants
Sonam Joshi (THE TIMES OF INDIA; March 31, 2019)

When 50-year-old Hussein Khan began working on his film Kashmir Daily in 2013, friends asked him whether he had gone mad. He had no financial backing, there was little infrastructure for shooting and post-production, and the Valley’s last cinema theatre had closed in 2010. Yet, Khan persisted, working for four months, then using the earnings to shoot for a few days. Five years later, Kashmir Daily, the first locally shot and produced film in 45 years, finally got a limited release last October.

“There have been many films on terrorism. As a journalist, I thought of focusing on other problems such as unemployment and drug addiction so people understand why we’re losing our youth,” says Khan.

His movie, which ran for a fortnight in a Srinagar auditorium, seems to have paved the way for several recent independent feature films, often starring Kashmiris, that go beyond Bollywood stereotypes of the picture perfect Dal Lake or snow-capped peaks or gun-toting militants. They shift the focus to the emotional trauma of women and children, and issues such as corruption and sexual harassment. While films such as Hamid and No Fathers In Kashmir have managed commercial releases, others like Widow Of Silence and Half Widow have had to be content with critical acclaim at film festivals.

Kashmir entered popular consciousness through Hindi films from the 1960s onwards. However, these showed it as a place of escape for young metropolitan Indians, mostly non-Kashmiris, says Ananya Jahanara Kabir, a professor at King’s College London. “The Kashmiri person was not a part of this modernity. Usually a shepherd, a boatman or a heroine to be romanced and educated, they were simple and rural,” she says. This trend persisted in the 1970s and 1980s, when “the Valley was reduced to a visual backdrop for romantic song sequences”. From 1990s onwards however, films began to depict the changing political situation but were unable to find a solution for it. Popular cinema has flattened the complexities of Kashmiri identity, using it mainly to “serve Indian anxieties about Islam and Pakistan,” Kabir writes. Bollywood has produced the odd ‘real’ film like Meghna Gulzar’s Raazi,which examines the notion of patriotism with more nuance and less jingoism but that’s still an exception.

“Most people only think of Kashmir in terms of its tourist attractions,” says Praveen Morchhale, whose self-funded film Widow Of Silence entirely eschews visual clichés associated with the landscape. It is about a half widow’s struggle to get a death certificate for her missing husband, while dealing with corruption and sexual harassment, and looking after her 11-year-old daughter and mother-in-law. Except for the lead character, the film shot in villages near Sonamarg and Drass comprises of local non-actors whose chit-chat gives it an air of authenticity.

Los Angeles-based filmmaker Danish Renzu grew up without seeing a single film in a theatre in his home town, Srinagar. Yet, after studying screenwriting at UCLA, he returned home to make his debut feature film. Titled Half Widow, it explores Neela’s struggle after her husband is picked up from their house in Srinagar by the armed forces, but also her desire to tell her own story by learning how to read and write. “We want to focus on human stories emerging out of the conflict,” says Renzu, an electrical-engineer-turned-filmmaker who hopes to revive Kashmiri cinema by setting up a production company with local talent he’s trained himself.

If Half Widow and Widow Of Silence delve into the interior lives of women, films such as Hamid and No Fathers In Kashmir portray the Kashmir conflict from the perspective of children. Released this month, Hamid is an adaption of Kashmiri playwright Amin Bhat’s play Phone No. 786. The film revolves around a seven-year-old boy who dials the number 786 to request Allah to ask his missing father to return, but is instead accidentally connected to a CRPF jawan who is coping with demons of his own.

Unlike his previous documentaries, Inshallah, Kashmir and Inshallah, Football, Ashvin Kumar’s forthcoming feature film No Fathers In Kashmir has a romantic arc that follows a teenage British-Kashmiri girl Noor and a local boy Majid, whose search for their missing fathers takes them to a dangerous military camp near the Indo-Pakistan border. Kumar uses the themes of young love and heartbreak to strike a chord with young viewers. “You see how it is difficult it to fall in love at all in Kashmir, and how difficult it is to dream in Kashmir,” says the Oscar nominated director.

Challenges in filming, funding and censorship persist. “During shoots, there were times when a few stones were thrown at us,” says Hamid director Aijaz Khan. “We’d take shelter and later shoot again.” The team also had to change the script to get permission to shoot in a CRPF camp, and postpone the release after the Pulwama attack.

But filmmakers are not giving up. Morchhale’s next film is based on the life of a gravedigger in Kashmir. Hussein Khan and his team have set other films in the region: 2 Band Radio looks at the coming of the radio to a village during the 1970s, and Lines is about two elderly sisters who live on either side of the India-Pakistan border. “Terrorism is only in the backdrop. We want to tell our local stories to the world,” he says.