BAAT CHEET
Interactive Wednesdays at Anhad
6.00-7.30pm
Every Wednesday at Anhad office we have two hours of vibrant discussion and hot tea ( we can continue to serve tea if you also contribute towards it)
March 11, 2015
Screening of the documentary ' Zulmaton ke Daur Main'
followed by discussion among those present.
Zulmaton Ke Daur Main ( In Dark Times )
How fascism grows and takes over unsuspecting societies
A film by Gauhar Raza
Hindi/Urdu, 24 mins
Gauhar Raza's black and white film uses footage from Hitler's Germany and the triumphalism of the Third Reich to make a chilling point about the way fascism grows and takes over (unsuspecting) societies. This is a film about learning lessons from history and examining the present in terms of the past.
In Dark Times appears to be a simple film of grainy images from a faraway history interspersed with an apparently random selection of shots from close to home. A careful viewing, however, removes the veil of subtlety and the message comes through loud and clear. It is the commentary that lifts the film out of the ordinary. Bertoldt Brecht's powerful words and warnings (through extracts from his play scripts and poems) about how a society can be easily manipulated by clever rhetoric and cynical stirring up of bourgeois fears ring harsh and true.
The film impressionistically traces Hitler's rise as the leader of a democratically elected minority party that eventually takes over the country. Using unemployment and economic depression as a springboard in a war-ravaged country, the Nazi propaganda machine starts to lay the blame: on communists, and Jews and intellectuals. With amazing swiftness, a nation low on self-esteem and a people struggling to make ends meet transforms itself into a juggernaut of prejudice and hatred. Those that can afford to leave do, other dissenters are eliminated and ethnic cleansing begins under the very noses of polite society. By an inexorable internal logic, the Nazis target art and culture, persecuting artists, burning books and creating a national culture that is purely 'German'. All this with the tacit consent of the electorate. By raising fears and creating bogeys, the state can easily persuade its citizens to give up their democratic rights, or encourage them to stand by and watch as the rights of the 'threats' to society are trampled upon.
Raza's film resonates with Istvan Zsabo's recent Taking Sides and Michael Moore's Oscar-winning effort Bowling for Columbine even as it recalls Noam Chomsky's seminal argument about 'manufacturing consent' within democracies. It also shows how the simple fact of democracy and an elected government is no protection against a concerted attack on individual rights and freedoms. But more than that, In Dark Times suggests that we look carefully at what is happening around us these days. Religious groups are targeted and blamed for a host of social and political ills that are both real and imagined, freedom of artistic expression is constantly under threat, the state pays little heed to intellectuals and other social critics, artists are called upon to censor their works or face attacks from various 'private' organisations with muscle and the ownership of the past has been wrested from us. It is important to understand that these phenomena are related, that they do not happen independently of each other. It is equally important to realise that silence becomes complicity (if not consent) and that ignorance is no longer an adequate defence.
Raza's allegorical film deserves to be seen and shown lest we sleep through our own darkening times and wake up when it is too late.
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ANHAD
C-5, BASEMENT, NIZAMUDDIN WEST, NEW DELHI-110013
TEL- 011-41670722.
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