‘It’s a people’s film’: Diving into Punjabi-language feature 'Birds in the Dark'

Birds in the Dark has been directed by Shashank Walia and produced by Hansal Mehta, Reema Kaur, and Sahil Saigal

"Our grandparents are from West Punjab, which is now Pakistan. But we have grown up in Delhi and have never really known Punjab, except for what we read in books or saw in films," says director and cinematographer Shashank Walia about his and editor and co-producer Reema Kaur's backgrounds. Their Punjabi-language feature Birds in the Dark (Hanere De Panchi), which will have its World Premiere in the Vision section at the 31st Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) this month, grew out of their extensive travels through the state.

A grant for a documentary on Punjabi folk music in 2015-16 first got them journeying across Punjab's Majha, Malwa, and Doaba regions looking for folk artistes. It was during these trips that they found the people who would become a part of Walia's debut film. "It's a people's film," he insists, "The landscape is explored through its people - their hopes, ambitions, histories, and struggles."

At the heart of Birds in the Dark is a land-based struggle where overlapping identities of class, caste and gender are brought into sharp focus

At the heart of Birds in the Dark, which is also produced by Hansal Mehta and stars Mauli Singh, Sapna Das, Harwinder Aujla, Shahnawaz Bhat, and Navdeep Bajwa, is a land-based struggle where overlapping identities of class, caste, and gender are brought into sharp focus. The conflict's epicentre, Walia tells us, was the Sangrur district in Punjab, in a village called Balad Kalan where they witnessed a protest against the illegal occupation of land, reserved for landless Dalit farm labourers. He explains that shamlat (village common land) which, as per the Punjab Village Common Lands (Regulation) Act 1964, reserves 33 per cent for Dalit farmers, but through deceitful means like dummy bidding during auctions, or other ways of coercion, big landlords grab that land for themselves.

There were a few times, Walia recalls, when he found that some landless Dalit farm labourers were able to get hold of this land, but ultimately not able to sustain it as the ecosystem does not support them, and they found cultivating the crop through the year difficult. "There is also an important aspect that comes into play - the idea of collective farming, where Dalit families farm the land together and profits and margins can be equally distributed," he says, "There is a sense of dignity which comes with it. That is a core element that the film wanted to explore." Moreover, Walia noticed a sense of solidarity among the women in the agrarian movement. "The protest was largely steered by women," an aspect that translates strongly in his film.

Shashank Walia

Walia - who has also written and shot the film - has a post-graduate degree in Mass Communication from Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi, a place that "shaped" him and "taught him to see the world", and is also a cinematography graduate from the Film and Television Institute of India. He is critical of the tendency, seen in a lot of cinematographers who transition to direction, to let the image take precedence over the imagery. Imagery is what goes beyond the visual language to appeal to the other senses. "It's what you hear, what you feel, what you reflect on. It's also what shapes your viewpoint, your vision. It is through Punjab and its people that I was really able to break through that aspect."

The film is also shot in black-and-white, a decision Walia took during the writing of the film. He feels that the starkness of the image helps to bring audiences closer to the people and the space. At the same time, "when the colour goes away from that realism, it also moves into a certain kind of abstraction". For the director who has shot documentaries, the monochromatic image also helps create a bridge between the modes of fiction and non-fiction.

"There is a documentary aspect to the film which integrates with fiction very gently. The film doesn't commit to the idea of the real and yet creates a new real for the viewer to experience." This in-betweenness, Walia says, is an important part of his practice. "Black-and-white helps in playing with that kind of liminality. The characters are not really polarised or working in binaries. It's an intersectional film because it deals with notions of class, caste, gender, sexuality, patriarchy, and even those of the state and nation as connected aspects."