The King and His People

 

Documentary on little known Swaziland, a country in southern Africa, now known as eSwatini. 

This country is an absolute monarchy ruled with a tight fist by the king. Everything is controlled by the king - the Parliament, the legislature, media, telecom, the taxes. The country is poor and its people are dying of Aids and other diseases, life expectancy is only 31 yet the king is supposedly among the richest monarchs in the world. 

Teacher activists, student protesters, lawyers who protested are all routinely killed or beaten up. There is no human rights, no land rights, no rights whatsover to anybody in the country. The king has multiple wives and polygamy is routinely practiced in the country. 

Economically the country is in bad shape, with most of the people surviving on subsistence farming. There is high inequality and unemployment amongst the youth and schools and educational institutions are in bad shape. All in all, the country has gone to the bottom. Until and unless the monarchy is removed and real democratic reforms take place, there is no hope for Swazi people. 

The documentary is good, follows a narrative plus interviews with people and there are activists who are ready to speak out. You can watch this documentary here

N!ai, the Story of a !Kung woman

 

Iconic documentary made by John Marshall on the life of N!ai of the Jul!hoan tribe in Botswana. 

The documentary took 27 years to make on the life of N!ai a young girl who is married off at the age of 8 to another boy aged 13. She does'nt go to live with him for many years and even when she goes to live as a wife, she does not sleep with him for many years. 

Tough life for the bushmen of that part of the world, and apparently they were happy with their lives until the white people came along with their guns and rules and regulations like not killing giraffe for meat and their bible. 

The documentary has got some very rare footages of their life in the wilderness, a tough life subsisting on roots, fruits and sometime no water for days together. N!kai is a sort of a rebel girl/ woman who has a mind of her own. 

In the later part of the documentary, we see the people wearing clothes, and children go to the school and elderly to the church. The men are sent for military training to fight the then rebel guerilla group SWAPO. 

Interesting documentary to watch. 

Asgari Bai

 

Documentary on Asgari Bai, the rare exponent of Dhrupad in Hindustani Classical music. Dhrupad is one of the ancient ragas in classical music and as far my limited knowledge of listening to Dhrupad, i have heard only male singers rendering it, most famous being the Dagar brothers. Asgari Bai was a court musician during the royal times in the pre Independence India. She became the main singer of the Orchha dynasty in the Bundelkhand region. By the time this documentary was made, she was quite old, 86 years of age, and the best years were behind her. There were no performance by her during the documentary nor are there very many youtube videos of her singing. One link i got in youtube was this one

Documentary is nicely made by Brahmand Singh, the doyen of documentary film makers in India. You can watch the documentary at this link

A Crude Awakening - The Oil Crash

 Absorbing documentary about Oil - its history, its development through the ages, its role in the society, including Oil as War, Oil as Politics, oil developing the world, so much of petro products being consumed by people all over the world. It talks of the oil fields that were there in Baku, Texas, Venezuala - all finished, all ghost towns over there. Oil as war tool when Saddan Hussain invaded Kuwait but even otherwise almost all wars have been about oil. US goes into war with Iraq over the so called weapons of mass destruction when it was all about securing oil assets and securing oil contracts for George Bush's Republican friends. The conflict in Darfur in South Sudan was all about oil discoveries with the military using force to clear families staying there.  There are some lovely live footages including one of a smiling Adolf Hitler (which is rare, indeed). Baku produced all that oil that was used by the German army. The film gives a realistic picture of the forthcoming shortage of oil in the world, with the world running out of oil reserves. Alternate sources of energy like wind power, solar, bio diesel, are all too puny in quantity and too much expensive to be affordable. Same applies to electric energy one expert says that even if you hybridised all the automobile vehicles in the world today, still we will be requiring as much oil as we are consuming today. Oil is virtually ruling the world which is why we see so much influence in the middle east. Then there are problems with OPEC and the production in Saudi Arabia is not growing that much to be of comfort to the world.  Very feeble or practically nil attempt being made to enforce democracy in the middle east - reason - oil. Very rich documentary with lots of expert voices, lots of live footages and material. Well made documentary. 

Available on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odCZpBPfFQk

Picture taken from internet, not with a view to violating copyright. 

 

Roshni

Nice sweet documentary on a Himachal girl who lives in a village in Himachal Pradesh and aspires to travel to a big city like Mumbai once. The documentary shows life in the villages are self sufficient with their own produce and own water. They live a contented life, with the TV being possibly the only link to the other world. In between the documentary shows a Sanskrit teacher talking about the values etc. which i thought was a bit out of context. Then there was a lengthy interview with Dr. Vandana Shiva, the renowned environmental activist about food being corrupted with western thoughts coming in with genetic engineering distorting the natural food system. The visuals are quite good and does inspire to leave the city life and go back to the villages. After all, if there is wifi available in the villages, then no problem in working from the villages and occasionally travelling to the city for business or negotiations. With the covid situation, even the business discussions are being carried out online with anybody sitting anywhere in the world. 

Okay documentary, but goes a little wayward in the middle. This was on Amazon Prime Video.

Picture taken from the internet and used for representational purposes only not with an intention to violating copyright. 

Bela Bela What keeps mankind alive

https://www.idfa.nl/en/film/08c0c38d-3e15-41d4-878c-c7dfd0b8749d/bela-bela-what-keeps-mankind-alive

Very poignant and touching documentary on four poets who were incarcerated by their repressive regimes and speak out after their release on how they were tortured and blackmailed by their captors during their incarceration, how they kept their hopes alive, how they did not break and their lives post their release. The four poets are Nizatmedin Achmetov, Maria Elena Cruz Valera (from Cuba) Irina Ratoesjinkaja from Russia and Marcea Dinescu from Romania. Achmetov i suspect is also from Russia. What's with dictatorial regimes and their fear of the poets and hatred for their poems. India has also imprisoned a 81 year old poet on a trumped up charges and not given bail despite many people clamoring for his release on the grounds of his ill health. 

Of the four poets above, the Romanian guy speaks very little, whereas the others recount tales of horror in the prison walls including isolation cells. The Russian lady says that they started a practise of smiling at each prisoner which lifted their spirits and when they were kept close to each other in a small cell violating their private space, they adopted a method of conversing in 19th century language with lot of respect for each other, so that in turn them a space. 

Bowling for Columbine

Brilliant hard hitting documentary film (2002) by Michael Moore about the gun culture and what is wrong with that. The film starts with Michael opening a bank account in  a small town and getting a free gun in exchange. Strangely everything wrong with that - guns being given free in exchange for opening a bank account. Then it goes on to the Oklahoma bombings and the Columbine school massacre and various other school shootings including a 6 year old kid shooting another 6 year old kid. Moore delves into what is wrong with American culture, the fear of everybody by Americans, their supposedly violent history which he contradicts by saying that other countries have had much more violent historical past. At one point, he also refers to Gandhi who overthrew an entire British empire without shooting a gun. The film explores everything that is wrong with America today including their racism, their fear, their violence on the telly, the non stop 24/7 TV coverage of events, their leaders' penchant for destroying other countries. He then goes to Canada and does an analysis of why there are'nt so many shootings in Canada compared to US. In the end he has an interview with Charles Heston, the film actor (of western roles) cum President of the National Rifle Association, who could not give any satisfactory replies to Moore. Brilliant documentary for anybody to watch.