A nonetheless from Catapults to Cameras
It’s a sultry afternoon. 5 youngsters are idling on a bridge amidst lush inexperienced fields in an obscure village in Jhargram district, West Bengal. They’re enjoying with a catapult, making an attempt to enhance their goal to strike their goal — a hen.
This scene comes early on in Ashwika Kapur’s movie Catapults to Cameras. Lower to the tip: one of many youngsters, Ajay, fingers his catapult to Kapur, who’s heading again house to Kolkata after an adventurous week with the younger boys. Ajay now holds a digicam in his hand.
Catapults to Cameras is a poignant story of transformation. The 5 boys — Raja Khisku, Ajay Mandi, Surajit Tudu, Tarash Mandi and Lalu Soren — go from being future hunters to conservators. Produced by RoundGlass Maintain, it’s directed by Ashwika Kapur. The quick movie was shortlisted within the ‘Influence Marketing campaign’ class within the prestigious Jackson Wild Media Awards 2024.
Ending the killing spree
It’s troublesome to fathom that in our nation, the place searching is against the law, there are ritual searching festivals. In a number of villages in southern West Bengal, tons of of males and younger boys take part in an annual massacre. Carrying conventional weapons corresponding to axes, spears, catapults and bows and arrows, they arrive in vans, vehicles and on bikes, and kill the whole lot that strikes — birds, wild cats, boars, snakes, reptiles and even tigers, if they’ll discover them.
Kapur was disturbed when she realized of them whereas volunteering with HEAL (Human & Setting Alliance League), an NGO that works within the area of wildlife conservation. She and some members of HEAL discreetly recorded one of many festivals, and a few of the footage has discovered its method into the movie. It’s gory, to say the least.
However that’s not what Kapur needed to concentrate on. “It was by no means a movie; it was an experiment,” says Samreen Farooqui, govt producer. “Working with 5 youngsters for per week and making it into a movie was not truthful. We needed to keep on. Catapults to Cameras needed to have an effect.” The boys had already accompanied their fathers on hunts, and at some point, would have participated within the festivals. Kapur and RoundGlass Maintain believed that by impacting the youngsters’s conscience, they may break the chain.
Merely a sport
HEAL has been documenting, monitoring and investigating ritual searching in West Bengal’s southern area. In accordance with Meghna Banerjee, lawyer, environmental activist and CEO of HEAL, human-animal battle within the space is big. It’s going to require many such interventions to alter the mindset. Whereas the hunts are mistakenly assumed to be rooted in conventional tribal tradition, Banerjee states that “there isn’t any cultural significance. For those who ask them why they kill, they don’t have a solution”. Furthermore, some who take part don’t belong to any of the tribes. “These males are available vehicles from totally different areas. It occurs on 50 separate dates all year long, so you’ll be able to think about the dimensions. They’re drunk and kill the whole lot, together with jackals and wolves. So it’s not only for meat,” she provides.
Influencing change
Early final yr, accompanied by Kapur and HEAL’s co-founder Suvrajyoti Chatterjee, the younger boys had been taken on area journeys the place they took photographs of animals, birds and reptiles. The images had been then exhibited within the village. “A few of the pictures had been superb. Our method was that on no account had been we going to evangelise. We weren’t there to chastise them,” says Kapur, who received the Wildscreen Panda Award in 2014 for her documentary, Sirocco: How a Dud Turned a Stud, on a kakapo, a critically endangered parrot native to New Zealand.
Ashwika Kapur with the boys on the workshop
Throughout the week, the youngsters encountered a snake rescue mission and even witnessed a harmful face-off between elephants and villagers. “I didn’t realise the empathy the venture evoked in them till Ajay got here to me and handed over his catapult. Once we exhibited the photographs, your entire neighborhood felt a way of pleasure.”
A photograph of butterflies by Raja Khisku
Tarash Mandi pictures a monitor lizard
Kapur feels that as “extra youngsters undergo these workshops, they are going to change into one thing like native influencers. They’ll begin redefining what’s cool, as a result of the dimensions of this hunt is being pushed by the youth”. For now, the 5 boys have turned mentors for an additional batch of kids — turning into a basic instance of the butterfly impact.
The Bengaluru-based journalist writes on artwork, tradition, well being and social welfare.
Printed – September 12, 2024 01:12 pm IST
