Avijit Mukul Kishore and Rohan Shivkumar simultaneously analyse modernist architectural traditions and the state-sponsored documentary.
The FD production has been directed by Avijit Mukul Kishore, the cinematographer and filmmaker of such documentaries as Vertical Zero, To Let The World In and Electric Shadows, and Rohan Shivkumar, Deputy Director of Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture and Environment Studies. The narrative is a conscious throwback to the FD style (which has since been parodied): there is a “Voice of God” commentary in Hindi (by Kishore), which elaborates on the confluence of modernity and nation-building in the pre-independence and post-1947 periods and the neglect of this tradition in later years, manifest in public housing projects in Delhi. The gorgeously shot footage, by Kishore, meshes clips from FD titles with grainy and shaky 16mm footage of contemporary scenes. Finally, there is the ruminative and often gnomic script, written by the filmmakers.
‘Nostalgia for the Future’ makes conscious use of FD tropes – the Voice of God, the anthropological thrust of the imagery, a script with a focus on ideas and philosophy and the emphasis on Nehruvian modernity. Why did you choose this particular narrative style?
The film emerged out of an anxiety about the certainties that underpin the discourses around both documentary film and architecture/urban planning. Each of these is burdened with a utilitarian role and each therefore has to base itself on a ‘truth’. This is even more significant when both disciplines are part of making a nation.
So the film is not so much about architecture per se, as it is about the body of the citizen and the way it is constructed in the idea of the home – whether that is the nation, or the house.
....
There is nostalgia for the future, but is there also nostalgia for a certain kind of information-led and high-minded documentary that is now a curio?
Is the information-led documentary a curio? Not really. It takes other forms. And more than nostalgia, the film uses it as a reference, a frame to contextualise both nation-building and communication. Documentary and architecture continue to be embedded with messages and are an integral part of image-making and history-writing for a culture.
....
Some of the statements in the film are academic and even gnomic – “This architecture strips the act of living into the most primal. The boundary between man and nature becomes erotic. A place for pleasure and confrontation.” Why did you opt for this narration?
There was a lot of debate about the mode and the nature of the voiceover. Did it have to clarify or question? Was it meant to explain or evoke? We decided on the latter. The language was meant to emerge from the Voice of God but rather than explicate, which VOGs generally do, it was to provide another layer on the images, an aural aspect.
The Hindi was chosen for its texture and for the meanings it has within. So was the nature of the language itself, which slips between the descriptive to the poetic to the academic. It meant to evoke ideas that may or may not make complete sense in the first viewing. The speed and tonality of the voice – trying to keep it as flat as possible was also intentional – to let the words themselves evoke images.
There is also a slippage between the Hindi in the voiceover with the sudden and unexpected use of Urdu and English words. This slippage allows for something else to emerge and the subtitles add another layer of meaning that doesn’t always mirror the spoken text – it can’t.
....