Mini-INPUT Series brings humane stories Three Thousand and Human Smugglers

International Public Television (INPUT), an organization invested in sourcing and commissioning the best of documentary and public service broadcasting films from across the world, has collaborated with Public Service Broadcasting Trust (PSBT) to showcase a series of international films at the 18th Open Frame Film Festival.

The ongoing Open Frame Film Festival, organized by the PSBT, will be held till 18 September at the India International Centre, New Delhi.

The series titled Mini-INPUT consists of films from countries such Denmark, Finland, Germany, Syria, Tajikistan, Japan, United Kingdom, Canada and the United States of America, including collaborative productions between several countries.

Abhijit Dasgupta, national coordinator and presenter, INPUT, along with Rajiv Mehrotra, managing trustee, PSBT, inaugurated the MINI-INPUT showcase last evening emphasizing on the transforming digital sphere of public service broadcasting like any other film and media culture today.

Dasgupta, who has had a long association with news and public broadcasting such as Doordarshan and BBC London, and is also a two-time National Award recipient, introduced the scope and role of INPUT in bringing such films under such a curated package for discerning audiences in various countries.

The inauguration was also attended by Iris Yudai, an executive producer with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation; Manitoba and Deniz Sertkol, Film, TV and Radio Department of the Goethe-Institut Headquarters, Munich, who would be moderating discussions on the MINI-INPUT film series.

The films for the evening include short film Three Thousand, an imaginative reflection on the convergence of a marginal ethnic community with the dreams of modernity, and a documentary, Human Smugglers, which follows the gritty realities of men who undertake risks to transport people across European borders.

The Canadian film, Three Thousand made by ‘Asinnajaq’ Isabella-Rose Weetaluktuk reimagines the journey of the Inuk communities, indigenous to Alaska, Canada and Greenland, by beautifully combining ethnographic footage, digital animation and a personal voice over.

In its brief runtime, the film manages to push the boundaries of digital storytelling, as well as an ethnographic imagination by reimagining their everyday spaces, rituals and means of living in the future. In combining the indigenous architecture of the past with digital futuristic spaces, the Igloo becomes an interesting referent where the effects of time converge.

While Three Thousand dealt with questions of a civilization through the poetics of footage and digital imagination, Human Smugglers presented the harsh geopolitical realities of migrancy across European borders.

The film deftly combines and contrasts interviews and conversations of “human smugglers” with both hopeful migrants, who look up to them and law enforcement forces in charge of tracking these smugglers down. It largely takes the form of the television investigative documentary showcasing a montage of events captured in pursuit of its subjects.

This film by Danish filmmaker, Poul-Erik Heilbuth follows a couple of human smugglers with a small camera as they source their clients/people to illegally transport them across the borders to European countries to build a complicated picture of such a figure. We see how these figures imagine themselves to be saviours of people, believing in their work to be humanitarian rather than an illegal or corrupt practice.

As the camera follows these men, we get to know their modes of work and larger legal and global political discourses at work. Alternatively, we also get an insight into their fears, anxieties and beliefs as they assist hundreds of people looking for better life on European shores.
The film combines footage from news, low resolution videos from phones and personal cameras lending it an unstable, but rapid narrative voice. This aesthetic helps the film to maintain the grey areas and blurring boundaries between the act of smuggling people and human aspirations for a better life elsewhere.