The Clash: Filmmaker vs. Subject of Documentary Film

In March this year, director Kartiki Gonsalves and producer Guneet Monga stood on stage at the 95th Oscars to receive their award for The Elephant Whisperers, the winner in the documentary short category. Almost immediately, social media raised questions about why the film’s protagonists — an indigenous couple, Bomman and Bellie, who nursed an orphaned baby elephant back to good health — weren’t on stage with Monga and Gonsalves. A narrative emerged about how the makers excluded their subjects from the dividends after its Oscar win. The Tamil Nadu chief minister MK Stalin announced a Rs. 1 lakh reward each for the couple and Bellie was appointed as the first full-time female elephant caretaker at the Nilgiris camp. Gonsalves, who was vocal about her gratitude towards the couple during interviews and on social media, went down to meet the couple with the famous Oscar statuette. 

Two weeks ago, the couple reportedly sent a legal notice to Monga’s Sikhya Entertainment and Gonsalves, seeking compensation to the tune of Rs. 2 crore as a “goodwill gesture”. The couple gave many interviews to YouTube channels claiming “promises” were made to them but not fulfilled and that Gonsalves had become “unresponsive”. (Film Companion tried to reach out to Gonsalves for comment, but without any success.) Conflicting reports added to the confusion: The couple told India Today they weren’t aware of any legal complaint or the lawyer who sent it.  Later, speaking to BBC Tamil, they confirmed they had indeed signed off on the complaint. 

Chennai-based social activist and lawyer Praveen Raj, who has known the couple for over a decade, had put Bomman and Bellie in touch with a legal firm, to seek legal redressal against the makers of The Elephant Whisperers. AS Mohammad Manzoor, a Chennai-based lawyer representing the couple, told BBC Tamil, “the claims that we’ve taken back our legal notice are baseless and absolutely fake." 

Apart from muddying the picture-perfect story of the first Indian film to win an Oscar, the incident around The Elephant Whisperers opens up interesting questions: What is a filmmaker’s responsibility towards their subject, especially after the film is completed? Is there a way to distinguish between a reasonable demand and an entitled one, especially if there is an unequal power dynamic between the filmmaker and their subject? What is the role of the media reporting on such matters? Most of all, can there be a prescriptive approach to avoid such unpleasantness in the future?

Controversy and Agency

“There's no rulebook to refer to,” said Sarvnik Kaur, director of the documentary film Against The Tide. “Documentary making is not an exact science. It's art where we are guided by an inner moral compass. There's no place for righteousness in this job, just an endless process of negotiations with no right and no wrong.” Kaur’s film premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and follows the lives of two Koli fishermen. She spent almost five years with her subjects, winning their trust by, among other things, drinking whiskey with them from time to time. 

What is happening with The Elephant Whisperers is not new. Best documentary nominee at the 94th Oscars, Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh’s Writing with Fire (2021) faced hostility from news outfit Khabar Lahariya, which alleged the film depicted the organisation in a “simplified” and “incomplete” manner. In an open letter released days before the voting for the Oscars ended, Khabar Lahariya said the filmmakers had portrayed the news organisation’s as biased and failed to depict how their grassroots journalism has been speaking up against various state governments of different political affiliations. “The film is a moving and powerful document, but its representation of Khabar Lahariya as an organisation with a particular and consuming focus of reporting on one party and the mobilisation around it is incorrect,” said the open letter. Speaking to the news website Scroll, the filmmakers said that their documentary depicted only what Khabar Lahariya had been working on at the time of filming. “During this period, the ruling party was the most important party at that time and so editorially, we focused on that aspect of their reporting. It was never our intention to create any other impression,” Thomas and Ghosh told Scroll. 

Previously, in 2017, Divya Bharathi’s Kakkoos – a documentary following a handful of cases of sanitation and manual scavenging workers in Tamil Nadu – became a talking point after a first information report (FIR) was filed against Bharathi for ‘misrepresenting’ the ‘Pallar’ community in her documentary. The film focused on primarily Dalit communities that are forced to take these jobs, and thereby identified a few characters that came from the Pallar community. The FIR was filed by Dr K. Krishnaswamy, founder of the Puthiya Tamizhagam, a political party working towards removing the Pallars from the scheduled caste (SC) category to include them in the other backward castes (OBC) category.

A lawyer activist-turned-filmmaker, Bharathi was at the receiving end of harassment over phone and social media, curiously almost five months after the film came out. Around the same time, Bharathi also started getting harassed over anonymous phone calls and direct messages (DM) over social media, after she released a video on how the dean of Anna University, Chitra Selvi, was accused of mistreating a couple of sanitation workers on campus. The filmmaker alleged that it was because Chitra Selvi belonged to the Pallar caste that she was subjected to a targeted attack. The FIR against Bharathi was ultimately quashed by the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court. 

Shifting Realities

Vinay Shukla, who co-directed An Insignificant Man (2017) with Khushboo Ranka, and has recently directed While We Watched (2022) on former NDTV anchor Ravish Kumar, said,  “Documentaries are made over a long period of time usually and everybody's lives — filmmakers, subjects/participants, collaborators — tend to go through changes during the process. Your dynamic across the board with each person keeps shifting because of what’s happening within your film, but also because of what’s happening outside it.” 

Shukla conceded that it’s still the filmmaker who has more power in the equation with a film’s subject. However, he also maintains that “reality is shifting constantly”. What someone might like about his film today might not evoke the same reaction six months later. “The lives of subjects, their aspirations, their understanding of cinema, its power, their feelings — it changes all the time. Documentary filmmakers must, unfortunately, suck it up when that happens,” said Shukla.

Which brings us to a rather interesting, subjective and complicated question — what might be considered “ethical” on the part of a documentary filmmaker while dealing with their subjects? If a filmmaker earns a certain amount of money from a project based on someone else’s way of life – should they share the rewards with their subject? Unfortunately, there’s no one prescribed way of doing things. Shukla said, when asked about a filmmaker’s responsibility towards their subjects once the film is completed, “Each filmmaker should decide that for themselves.” 

Bharathi, even though explicitly stating she doesn’t know the facts of the case of The Elephant Whisperers, says she would ideally like the filmmakers to give any cash reward from the central or state government to the subjects. While there are ethical issues to paying a subject to participate in a documentary — payment muddies the issue of credibility — Bharathi said she is a proponent of sharing any money that comes as a prize or award after a film has been completed, especially when the subjects are from marginalised sections of society. “For instance, the state and central governments’ money to the filmmaker, I believe should go to the people, land or other subjects of the film,” she said. “As a filmmaker, you do get your part. Especially, since it is ‘corporate filmmaking’, you would’ve received a remuneration. The prize money and awards [can be] given for the cause, the subjects. I would’ve been happier if the government directly awarded the money to the subjects,” Bharathi added. 

And the award goes to…?

In an interview with India Today, social activist-cum-lawyer Praveen Raj asked why Gonsalves hadn’t shared any portion of her Rs. 1 crore cash prize, which she was reportedly awarded by Tamil Nadu CM MK Stalin, with the couple. In the same interview, he speculates how she must have been paid “Rs. 5-6 crore” from Netflix. There is no documented proof of Gonsalves receiving any of these amounts, but the question is less about the specifics of amounts as the principle. Are the subjects entitled to a portion of the cash rewards, especially when they’re from under-privileged backgrounds? Common sense and ethics would say ‘yes’. At the same time, documentary filmmaking — particularly in India — is commercially unviable and has virtually no institutional backing. 

In response to the allegations made by Bomman and Bellie about Gonsalves promising them a “proper house, an all-terrain multi-purpose vehicle, and a one-time lump sum payment based on their revenue for the project”, a statement from Sikhya Entertainment read: “The documentary has been celebrated by heads of state across India, and the Academy Award is a moment of national pride that has brought widespread recognition for the work of mahouts like Bomman and Bellie. All claims made are untrue. We have deep respect for all contributors of this story, and remain driven by the desire to create positive change.” 

Kaur reflected on the lonely process that is pursuing documentary filmmaking in India.  “Documentary filmmakers work for years without reward, without any hope of success or monetary compensation of any kind,” she said. “They are hopeless romantics with an undying faith in humanity and natural sense of curiosity that propels them through despite lack of financial, emotional or social support. These are uncharted waters for most of us.” Few documentary films get the kind of attention and audiences that Writing with Fire and The Elephant Whisperers have. Fewer still make any profit from a film.  

Shukla warned that the tenor of media coverage often determines how public opinion is shaped. “There is a whole lot of stereotyping happening. Filmmakers are seen as ‘exploitative masterminds out to curate the world’s miseries into a profit venture’ while subjects are seen as ‘simple beings who never quite received their due’. We should take these blinders off and have a more nuanced conversation. Filmmakers and participants are often co-creating a film over years. There are mutual risks and benefits involved. Of course, filmmakers have more power since they are the ones making the film, but it would be naive to think that participants don’t benefit from these films or enjoy any agency here,” he said.

What only further complicates matters around The Elephant Whisperers, is that no written contracts have been produced – something that rarely happens in such cases. Especially in India, a lot of agreements are verbal and people operate on feelings. Yet without a written contract, there’s simply no way of proving who had been promised what. Also, in a lot of cases, when those seeking to capitalise on a misunderstanding start to take interest in either the filmmaker or the subject, things can become that much more confusing and chaotic. 

Shukla can’t understand what the country wants from documentary filmmakers. According to him, when previous generations led an idealistic and austere life, they were told that they’re not enterprising enough. Now that a generation of filmmakers are operating on a large scale, they’re being termed as ‘one-off benefactors of local tragedies.’ The truth is surely more nuanced. “Like fiction films, documentaries are now a thriving ecosphere. Please allow documentary filmmakers the privilege of operating outside stereotypes,” says Shukla.