Notes on Aājoor, by Aaryan Chandra Prakash, India. 2024

 

Despite all the obstacles Indian art cinema and especially independent cinema (not seldom made with a shoe string budget) are facing, I am still amazed that still some beauty arises. Among the greatest film countries in the history of cinema (and India is definitely one of them) each filmmaker who works today outside the mainstream, is struggling. There is hardly a healthy infra structure for arthouse,- or alternative film theaters, there is hardly any institution for public film fundings and by now after India almost wiped out DVD/Bluray-releases – there is not much free space beside the commercial film industry. But that films like Aājoor are nevertheless existing is not short of a wonder like, for example, the miraculous films by Assamese Rima Das. It is not only that these filmmaker like Rima Das or Aaryan Chandra Prakash have to assert themselves with little resources against the commercial Indian cinema. They manages an own kind of visionary cinema with a depth and poetic richness which is completely disproportionate to their difficult working conditions.

Aājoor is made entirely with non-professional actors. And even other, mostly young people from this village community in the Indian state Bihar have participated in different aspects of this film. Supported by a whole community, crowd funding and the Non-profit-organization Shrirampur Samvad Foundation (that is also named as the official producer), Aājoor (the first Indian film in the Baijika-language) is a very interesting hybrid between ethnographic and narrative cinema with a strong “Coming of Age”-aspect. There is a very unique confidence in cinema, one feels almost from the beginning of the film. What French critic André Bazin called “that the things reveal themselves” in front of the camera, is here a very sophisticated approach. First of all, it is the impressing landscape which frames the life of the protagonists and especially the school girl Saloni who lives with her widowed father (who is also a folk singer) on a little farm. Prakash presents a rural world between traditions and signs of the modern world. While Saloni is struggling for her right to get proper education in this still patriarchal society, some boys in the neighborhood (who often harass her) are busy with installing a facebook account. For now, the film´s approach is rather observational than forcing a story but it gives a glimpse to a hardly detectable number of myriads of stories hidden but guessable in every scene.

There are, for examle, the efforts of Saloni, who has a very long way to the school and the way back from. She is always busy. On her long way back from school she collects dry leaves and brushwood for the fire, helping her father in the household or with farm work etc. Finally after all work is done she does her homework for school at dim light. Only a small spot of light surrounded by impenetrable darkness. At first, that sounds very prosaic, but one can see it as well like a voice and instruments are tuned for the long and beautiful song the film will become.

There is a conversation between Saloni´s father and a vegetable seller. The seller recommands to Saloni´s father to get his daughter married as soon as possible. An education for girls is for him a waste. But the father insists that the most important thing for his daughter is a proper education. Despite living in this traditional culture, he nevertheless supports his daughter´s education and finally her chance for independence in this still patriarchal society.

The concrete tangible physical world in this film is as well embodied in the landscape and its relationship with the people. The nature is indifferent towards society, ideology, traditions or man-made rules. Her long ways to and from school are often filmed in long shots, sometimes in traveling shots. The camera accompanies her and sometimes looses her. Sometimes she disappears in this mighty landscape and reappears as if she asserts her presence almost defiantly. These moments are a good example that Prakash does not form his “good intentions” into didactic sermon but in very sophisticated cinematic visualizations of a young individual who is looking for her place in this world.

In one scene, Saloni is harassed by this gang of school boys. They steal her last bit of change. It is exactly this “Children´s pranks” that reveals the cruelty of a patriarchal society.

There are these seemingly opposite visions of cinema: On one hand entertainment, spectacle, action, overwhelming emotions etc and on the other hand the celebration of the prosaic repetitive every day actions, we spent most of our lives with. . That both aspects can be pure cinema, is already proven in the diversity of more than 130 years of cinema. Aājoor celebrates this second possibility of pure cinema, these repetitive every day moments, especially the ones of Saloni and her father. A closer look and one can find it prosaic and poetic at the same time, inspiring and even moving.What are Saloni and her father dreaming, when they are absorbed by their everyday activities? Maybe the occasional songs which appear in this film are one important option. Poetry in cinema is not always something which is intended and done or fitted but naturally originating from the chemistry between the precision devices of image-making and the human mind who uses these devices. It is probably Prakash´s confidence in cinema as the “art of seeing” that is the key to the strange poetry of this film. Not only for the many Villagers that participated in this film project but as well for the spectator, Aājoor appears like a very special journey. No wonder that in retrospect, the films becomes in my memory like a long and beautiful dream of an imaginary journey.

Aājoor is not only an excellent first film, it is not only another contribution to the long Indian tradition of wonderful “Coming Of Age”-films. The film evokes both in me, the hope that cinema will never die and almost the wish to rediscover the magic and diversity of cinema.

Rüdiger Tomczak