ABSTRACT
This chapter makes a critique of the ‘nationalist historiography of documentary films’ (already elaborated in Chapter 1), yet this time in relation to the period of Jawaharlal Nehru’s leadership, making an analysis of perceptions of the state-owned institution, the Films Division. By juxtaposing 2007–2009 fieldwork material with more contemporary interviews and interactions, the chapter provides evidence of the way in which a ‘discourse’ about film practices and state-institutions constantly modifies in history and how, despite the changes, its primary discourse continues affecting filmmaking practices and discourses. Specifically, the chapter goes through the national discourse that circulated during Independent India and the role that film institutions and filmmakers played in this. Rather than reducing the role of the Films Division to a state-institution of national political propaganda, it suggests looking at this institution also in its social context, that is, also from the filmmakers’ agencies, their individual trajectories and their sense of ‘community’. It is thanks to this ‘openness’ of the role of the FD in postcolonial India that, the chapter argues, we can better understand a change of discourse in the more contemporary time where state-independent filmmakers have started reconsidering their practice in relation to state institutions.
