Images that stand the test of time do so not just aesthetically, but they also open up our understanding of events or situations, years or even decades later. Kya Hua Is Shahar Ko? (What Happened to This City?), Deepa Dhanraj’s debut documentary made in the mid-1980s on the religious riots that ravaged her hometown Hyderabad in 1984, still looks very prescient, going by the history of communal polarisation that has spread across the country since then, and by how similar images are seen from multiple cities in contemporary India. It was one of the first documentary films from the country to carry such an autopsy of a riot.
In an interview with The Hindu, Ms. Dhanraj says the documentary began as an idea to study the reasons which attracted young men from different castes to join the Ganesh processions, a phenomenon of recent origin, which were followed by riots. But, it morphed into something else while they were doing it.
“While we were there, riots broke out. So, we just continued filming. Later, we abandoned our initial idea, and the film shaped up on the editing table. We looked closely at all the players involved and mapped out the events. We cannot talk about riots as spontaneous acts. We have to understand the context, the players, their agenda and what they stand to gain,” says Ms. Dhanraj, who is in the capital to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 15th International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala (IDSFFK).
