thedoorwithoutwalls
Divya is an alumna of St. Xavier’s College Kolkata. She holds a diploma in Film Editing from Satyajit Ray Film & TV Institute, Kolkata. From studio - productions, as one of the early adopters of 16mm and 35mm NLEs on Avid, and the tape based television format footages over the years be it in fiction or non - fiction projects, to budget constrained indie - ecosystems on a bouquet of other NLEs, Divya has edited various feature and short length films and television programs.
Divya Hansda, 41
Celluloid. & I
Film labs were about to be closed when our batch was completing the training in cinema on film and celluloid. However, with changing technology, the discipline and practice remain the same. In digital world what's more fascinating is, the "Glitches" began to be sold under the category of 'special effects'.
MOSSÉ
A small boy lived in a village near the jungle which was frequently visited by the elephants. After losing his parents in a stampede he came to the plains to sell forest products.
I was thirsty, we sat on the step of an old well near Tin School. It was very interesting to hear jungle stories from Mossè. When an elephant strayed from it’s herd and lost it’s way from the jungle into Mossè’s village, people ran, there was a chaos. The agitated animal ramped through the mud walls. I was thinking, are they really destructive? They travel from one area to the other in search of food, some die of the electric wires. Where do they come from and where do they go? Aren’t they displaced? Same happened to a lost blue bull which was hunted down. Mossè was a snake charmer. They say there are pythons and rabbits here. Peacocks, porcupines, boars, fox, hyenas and blue bulls are the old inhabitants of the Rajmahal hills. I used to hear the screechy howl of the fox at night, now this has become a bedtime story for the children of this generation. I heard from my grandma about a Santal boy called Chaitan who came to study in the Tin School, he was from one of those villages near the hills called Aprol in Banjhi of Sahibganj district. Earlier, there was no transportation facility, natives walked on the trails up and down the hills stepping on the granite stones making a way through the rocks of solidified lava following a series of Toddy Palms at the foot of the hill towards plains. They crossed small paddy fields. Natives had sacred groves of Sal trees, known as “Jaher Than”, and the small woods that opened in the tall grasslands.
Mossè and I walked up the hill, we captured orchids and yellow flowers in the graveyard near the Epiphany Church. No one talks about Puxley’s infant son whose grave I saw on the west side of the church. The abandoned graves are decaying with time, but I could still read their names on it’s broken concrete slabs – Puxley the junior remains in his celestial calm.
On the way back we saw an old man in red clothes, he was curious about my camera, he asked me what I was doing.He had dreadlocks like a Guru, he said that he treats people by casting out bad spirits, and that he had gone to buy medicines for his grand son from a clinic on the main road. It was refreshing to talk to him, he was courteous and he spoke to me in Santali. He knew I would take his pictures and he was cool about it. The branches of two very old pipal trees in front of which he is standing, used to host largest of the beehives I have ever seen in my life – larger than my stretched arms. He departed, the trail up the hill is a shortcut to Harijan Tola. Today, the lava rocks have been moved to the either sides of what used to be a trail so that people drive their new vehicles to the church. Soon an epidemic concrete will swallow it’s natural beauty. This disheartens me.
"The Indigenous" speaks about the external influences on Santals, the indigenisation of certain beliefs and practices, and the socio - political upheavals that took place in these areas in order to bring their lost Tribal independence back.
"This work is born at the crossroads of my being", says Divya, "I am a Santal, bonded by its ethnic roots, living in an urban milieu, with the technical upbringing in a mainstream Cinema school. When I return to my roots, the personal and the professional juxtapose together, so I tend to allow my camera to speak for itself. Often I am asked whether I am from the community or outside. I tend to organically build my presence through such queries at home. My documentation of religious practices perhaps carry this transition that I find myself in which the camera translates for me. Through my documentary, here, I would inquire into these aspects of documentation and the changing nature of ethnicities."
“Everything you look at can become a fairy tale and you can get a story from everything you touch.”
― Hans Christian Andersen
The pistons of a black steam engine created a rhythm, some kind of a peculiar music accompanied by the short interlude of poles when we passed through jungle area after crossing Barharwa station. The sun hiding behind Rajmahal hills in the west was like a canvas of vibrant hues, creating a silhouette of a series of small birds resting on old telegraph wires, leaving behind Mohua, Toddy and Palm trees in the paddy fields. Forests had trails, grass fields looked unsafe, who knows if an animal is hiding behind (to feel safe)? The horse and bullock carts on the road in front of our orchard had a smell.Though I was a bookworm, the suicidal insects always distracted me. My father never allowed me to read in the dim light and I’ve never needed power glasses till today. The paraffin lamps (commonly known as Petromax) were lit when my father came home from Hiranpur. The intrusion of an on radio at night disturbed the songs of frogs and crickets. Water dripping from lemon leaves gave me some kind of a solace if I was sad in my heart on a gloomy dark cloudy day. It was soothing to look at white, yellow and pink lilies. Haemanthus blood bulbs appeared in the beginning of monsoon. Trumpet vines remained indispensable for many years until the arrival of hibiscus in our garden that hosted thousands of butterflies. During summer when we sat outside in an open air, the evening breeze carried with itself dry leaves, it’s masculine scent possessed a blend of lemon and jasmine flowers. Wild cats and fox made their presence felt after it was dark. No wild animals followed young Santal school girls who walked through Banyan, Sarha and Toddy Palm to fetch water in mud pots from a pond outside the mission campus before going for an evening prayer in Dhorompur Mission. My mother says, she bought me a slate when they told her I have drawn these straight lines with a chalk on freshly dung-wiped court at the age of two. I remember my first slate – my mother teaching me numerical, and Hindi alphabets at home. My father taught me English alphabets.
The question is, how familiar are we with our surroundings ?
“Her and I, we have a two chairs and a table kind of love. You should pull up a feeling and have a seat.”
― Jarod Kintz
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Post Production Head
Avid // Final Cut Pro // Adobe Premiere // Illustrator
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