The challenges of filming Auroville

Auroville Today: There have been many films on Auroville. Why the need for another?

Olivier: The Visitors’ Center requested a new introductory film to show visitors, as the last such film was made ten years ago. They wanted an update of the old movie, but I thought it would be more interesting to do something different.

What do you think are the most important things to communicate about Auroville in an introductory film?

Christine: I think it is important to show that it is a unique experiment in its high ideals and its goals. That is why The Dream and the Auroville Charter had to be included. Another thing we wanted to show is that Auroville is not only concerned with itself. It is an experiment that is important for the world and for the people living around. We also tried to emphasise that we haven’t yet achieved our goals, that it is only an attempt.

Olivier: We wanted to show that Auroville exists in the context of a universal crisis and it is an attempt to find an alternative. A few Aurovilians said we were presenting The Dream as if it had already been achieved here, but that is not the case. The second part of the film makes it very clear that we are not there yet, but that every day we keep trying.

Over the years, there have been two approaches to presenting Auroville to the outside. One focuses on the practical aspects, on the here and now, the other approach is more idealistic and focuses on the ideals. Your latest film falls more in the second category. Why have you chosen this approach?

Christine: I remember a past brochure that tried to be more factual, down to earth, but the problem when you read or see something like this is that it is not inspiring. We need to touch people at a deeper level because then they might want to join Auroville or help in some way. But I agree that it would be interesting to try to make a synthesis of the two approaches.

Olivier: This film is an introduction, it just gives some hints of what Auroville is about. If we really wanted to make a more factual documentary about Auroville, we would need at least one and a half hours because Auroville is so complex. We were limited timewise – the film could be no more than 30 minutes – and by the fact that the people who come to the Visitors’ Center are so diverse in education and culture. We had to make something that is easy to understand.

In this context, the text The Dream is very interesting because it doesn’t compromise in terms of ideas or the level of what is expressed, but the form is very simple.

I found this film, from a technical and artistic point of view, the most successful introduction film yet. What I missed was something about the process behind the achievements: what it means, for example, to turn a barren land into a forest.

Christine: I agree. I wanted to have more of this in the film because it conveys something important. But for Olivier the film had to be beautiful, and process can be messy.

What did you learn from making this film?

Christine: We made about 40 interviews. In all, we have between 20 -30 hours of interviews and more than half of them are very interesting and touching, particularly the interviews of young people.

Olivier: What was interesting was to see that these young Aurovilians have a deep understanding; it’s not something they have learned at school about The Mother and Sri Aurobindo. When they speak, you feel it is really them speaking, and it comes from somewhere deep inside.

Given a free hand, what kind of film would you make for Aurovilians or for people who know Auroville well?

Olivier: It would definitely be very different from the one we just made.

Christine: I think it would have to be a militant film, to show what needs to be changed or challenged in our present situation.

Olivier: We would need to question our present economy, our organization and system of education, because we know the ideals and we know we are far from achieving them.

Christine: I also dream of making a film about Auroville where, at the beginning, nothing is said about the ideal. We would just follow the daily life of one person and then, progressively, show that this person is here for something different. This is a little bit the secret of Auroville. At first sight it looks ordinary, but there is something else going on.

Olivier: You could also start with somebody who comes to Auroville for the first time knowing nothing and slowly, through meetings with people, he or she discovers what Auroville is about. Auroville is a difficult place to understand. If you look at it from the point of view of its collective organization, it is really chaotic. At the same time, it is a place where you have many interesting people making very interesting experiments: I don’t think there’s anywhere else in the world where so many things are happening in such a small community. This contrast between collective chaos and individual creativity is one of the mysteries of Auroville, and it is definitely something I would like to show in a movie.

Christine: One thing that expresses for me the fact that Auroville is a place where people are motivated by something else is the way certain Aurovilians have faced their imminent death. They show courage, a faith, which is absolutely remarkable and extraordinary.

Olivier: It is essential to find a way of conveying these things because it shows there is a certain level of consciousness here. But how to talk about this in a movie?

What other aspects of Auroville are difficult to convey on film?

Christine: I think the inner difficulties, the inner struggle of Aurovilians to deal with the gap between the high ideals and the daily reality, is difficult to convey, although this is there in almost everyone.

Olivier: Auroville is difficult to talk about because it is such a complex adventure. It includes everything – there is spirituality but also all kinds of things that are apparently the total opposite. It would be very interesting to show how and why it is like this. But before doing this you have to understand it yourself, and perhaps nobody is able to do this at present.

All we can say is that Mother gave us a very high ideal but she gave it to people who are not really ready yet to live these ideals. That’s why we have to think of Auroville as a very long-term project. The other thing you can’t ignore is our situation. Auroville could have been built somewhere in the mountains, but we are a suburb of Pondicherry surrounded by a few villages. It is interesting that Auroville, which is one of the most daring and experimental places in the world, is located in one of the most conservative of places. This could be the theme of another film. It could illustrate what Sri Aurobindo meant when he wrote ‘All life is yoga’.

Christine: Another idea for a film would be to show how revolutionary Auroville is. Look how revolutionary Mother was even in her own time: the way she spoke about marriage and about there being no essential difference between a woman and a man. This is definitely not for the Visitors Center because it would need to be a film with an ‘edge’, a film that pushes people to consider their deepest beliefs, and I don’t think the ordinary Indian public are ready for this.

I also think it would be great to make a comic film about Auroville, a film that touches real issues but in a comic way. Something like what the Genius Brothers do in their shows.