Kolkata: A special screening of ‘Deja Vu', a documentary chronicling a 10,000-km journey across the US's agricultural heartland to capture small-time farmers' struggles against corporatisation and draw parallels with India's farm protests, was screened at the 31st Kolkata International Film Festival on Saturday.
Bedabrata Pain, the Los Angeles-based scientist-turned-film-maker pointed out Zohran Mamdani's mayoral win in New York and the theme of his documentary merged to highlight how corporate oligarchy was the root of most of the problems of the working class.
"One of the first books in the US that impressed me was Mahmud Mamdani's ‘Population Matters'. Now, it is his son Zohran's turn. Though I have met Mira Nair and Mahmud, I am yet to meet the new mayor," said Pain, who had just reached India when Mamdani won.
"The election created quite a stir. Media is abuzz with the fact that a Muslim, Asian immigrant with mixed heritage and multinational roots, a young, charismatic and rather inexperienced but authentic-sounding Zohran Mamdani became the mayor of one of the richest US cities. A man who named an all-female transition team. A man who took an uncompromising stand on Israeli genocide and navigated the media adversaries," he told TOI.
The track of ‘Dhoom' played at the end of Mamdani's first speech as New York City's mayor-elect. In a campaign video, he reimagined Amitabh Bachchan's ‘Deewar' monologue. "The use of Bollywood theme was both an attempt at reclaiming his identity as well as reaching out to a segment that was very divided in support towards Mamdani, many upwardly mobile NRIs being vociferously against him," Pain said.
According to the director, Mamdani's real significance, beyond New York, and the US, is he brought focus on economic justice.
"That is where he stands apart from liberals as well as the right-wing. He made affordability—rent, costs of groceries, food, childcare and transportation—the central theme of his campaign," said Pain, pointing out New York was a city of both billionaires and the working people.
That is also the theme of ‘Deja Vu', a documentary filmed when Pain, along with Rumela Gangopadhyay, Rajashik Tarafder and Sristy Agrawal, drove to the US mid-western states of the US in peak pandemic.
Set against the backdrop of market reforms in agriculture in the US, it chronicles how the market reforms devastated small-time farmers and small towns, while heaping bonanza on the corporate monopolies. "With India poised to embark on the same path, it is extremely important to raise the question—if something didn't work in the land of milk and honey, why would it work here?" he said.
Pain highlighted the common thread running through ‘Deja Vu' and the work of DSA and Mamdani. The 72-minute documentary explores how the US went through the exact kind of changes in the agriculture sector that India is trying with free market, no MSP, contract farming and met with disastrous effect for small-time farmers. While the original English voice-over is done by Ali Fazal, the Hindi dubbing is by Naseeruddin Shah.
"The KIFF screening is a recognition that working people are suffering. The source of the problem is identified as the financial and political oligarchy," he said.