“We are trying to catch a vibration”

Give us a brief history of the Auroville video experiments.

Francis. The first video that presented Auroville to the world was made by Michael Klostermann in the early 1970s. In the early 1980s, Alain and Patricia started a video unit. I got involved with them in the middle 1980s. For a while, Yanne and I had a great time making weekly ‘Newsreals’ with them. These were light-hearted takes on what was happening in the community, primarily for internal consumption. However, at a certain point Alain and Patricia were disturbed by what we were doing that they didn’t want to be part of it any more. Suddenly Yanne and I found ourselves doing everything: writing the scripts, shooting, editing, and we had to come up with a product once a week. That was my introduction to video.

So how did Auroville Video Productions begin?

Doris: It all started with the tsunami. I was participating in the tsunami relief meetings because at that time I was the webmaster of the Auroville website, and I saw all these extraordinary things happening – Uma and Tsunamika, Wellpaper initiatives, people going to the villages to clean up after the destruction. I said, somebody should document all this. At which point Hemant Lamba, who was coordinating the meetings, said, ‘Get a camera and do it’.

So I got a camera and the first thing I did was to make a 10 minute video documenting the making of the Tsunamika project in the villages. It made me realise I had a lot to learn about video-making. So I went and sat by Basile and watched him at work. We didn’t talk much but I began to understand what he was doing when he edited a video, why he rejected one shot or moved another one round.

Then I got a professional camera. One day somebody asked us to film something in the Matrimandir Chamber. Afterwards, I asked John Harper who was documenting the whole Matrimandir project. He said, ‘nobody’. I just couldn’t believe it! So I turned around to Francis and said. ‘We will do it’. I think he said, ‘You must be mad’ because I had no idea what we were letting ourselves in for.

Francis: The whole project took us three years because there was a ten-year gap in the record that we had to fill, and some of the older material was poorly catalogued and in a very bad state. When we went into the Auroville Archives, I couldn’t believe what we found. There were cans of films and the films were covered in mould, there were boxes full of photographs with no names, no dates. It was a total mess. So to find the things that were relevant to what we were doing, and to photograph the photographs, took us a long time.

Doris: I was still “new in Auroville”. So I read every issue of Matrimandir News to find out what had happened in the past and who was who. And we told all the Matrimandir workers to call us whenever they started a new work so that we could document it.

What was really nice is that when we said we were making a film about Matrimandir, everybody gave their help for free. At the end we donated the film to the Matrimandir, and today it is one of the best sellers at the Visitors Centre.

Did this give you the impetus to go on making other films?

Francis: Doris had already decided to upgrade the software and get a better camera, so it was never really a discussion if we were going to go on or not.

Did many people come to you after that and ask you to make films for them?

Francis: Everybody! But nobody understands the work involved. Everybody thinks you just roll the camera and put out the product. But the actual shooting is only 5% of the work.

Do you divide the work between you?

Doris: Yes. We both do filming, but I do all the editing and then he comes in and tells me what works and what doesn’t, what I have to change, and how. He has always been the director!

Francis: I am looking to see if what we are trying to communicate is being communicated smoothly. You have to grasp how unconscious the average viewer is, and if it is too subtle or too confusing then it doesn’t work.

So how do you decide which projects you take up?

Francis: We finance all the films and equipment ourselves; we never got a penny from anyone, because we want the freedom to say ‘no’ if we don’t want to do something. So when people come with an idea for a video, we listen carefully to what they are looking for. But even if we say ‘yes’, we make it clear that we will give them our version of what they want, not theirs.

Doris: Only once we were presented with a script. These people knew exactly what they wanted, but when we tried it, it just didn’t work. It was too long, too wordy. So we rewrote the script and it turned out well.

Do you initiate some projects yourself?

Francis: Yes. The ‘Children of Auroville’ series is one example, ‘Born at the Right Time’, which is a series of beautiful, refreshing images, is another.

What made you initiate those projects?

Francis: Regarding ‘The Children’ series, I was interested in finding out what the youth thinks and does.

Doris: One thing that motivated me was when I heard about ‘Last School’ closing down in the 1970s. I was still fresh from the West and couldn’t believe what I was hearing. So then we interviewed Shraddhavan, who had been a teacher there at the time, and we talked to a lot of the ex-students and got the story. We transcribed everything and then we figured out a script based on certain themes that emerged.

The theme of the first ‘Children of Auroville’ film was the struggle of that generation to get educated. The theme of the second was why some of them returned to Auroville, and what they are contributing to the community now.

Francis: That generation includes some very bright people, but we found out they want nothing to do with the present governance of Auroville. Yet these are exactly the guys we need.

Doris: You could feel their love for Auroville that brought them back, but when they are asked why they don’t participate in governance they said we tried, but we couldn’t get anywhere because the older Aurovilians didn’t want to include us.

Francis: We are documenting Auroville’s happenings for the present and future generations. Now we have about 70 interviews of Aurovilians that could be turned into other history videos.

Doris: There are enough people out there covering Auroville events. We do this as well, but we are more interested in people’s perceptions of what is happening, and how this changes over time as they change.

What are some of the other topics you have covered over the last ten years?

Doris: Among other projects we did Paul’s musical, Sorcery at Sea, the Sacred Groves project and, most recently, the Retreat. I got interested in the Sacred Groves experiment because I thought something interesting was happening there; I’m always on the lookout for things like that. But we stopped when the project started encountering problems.

Does that mean you don’t like to cover negative aspects?

Francis: We only cover them if they turn into something positive. There is a tendency towards negativity in this community and you have to swim upstream against it all the time. If you want to get into the underbelly of Auroville, there is no end to it. So, no, we are not interested in doing exposes of what is wrong here.

What about the technical challenges?

Francis: Our main priority now is upgrading our equipment. Our cameras are eight years old and they use DVD tapes that are getting difficult to obtain: everything is on SD cards now. So we had to buy new cameras, which is a heavy investment, and we had to get the latest software. And now there is the question on how to archive the old DV tapes. This is a work in progress.

To what extent does the technology determine what you can shoot?

Francis: It plays a big role. One of the cameras we have has a fantastic depth of field, the clarity is unbelievable, but it is hard to zoom or pan. Recently I got a ‘Go Pro’ camera. Again, the quality is unbelievable but it is always in focus, and there is no zooming, panning. So we bought a nice Camcorder to cover these missing aspects. We are on a steep learning curve.

Apart from the technical considerations, how did you decide what you were going to shoot during the Retreat? After all, so much was happening.

Doris: We covered the main presentations and summaries. Other than that, you get a feeling for when something interesting is happening but it is difficult to catch those moments.

Is it the same problem when you are doing individual interviews?

Francis: Loosening people up is usually my job. You have to get them to turn off to the presence of the camera if you want them to relax and be honest rather than just giving you rhetoric. I don’t always succeed!

Are their occasions when someone is saying something you are very much out of sympathy with? If so, can you remain objective?

Francis: We had to shoot one interview with an Aurovilian twice because I allowed my personal views to come through too strongly in the questions.

What have been the most moving moments?

Francis: We did an interview with someone who had had a very tough childhood here. She began by saying, ‘Do I get all warm and fuzzy when I think about Auroville? No I don’t’.

Doris: But she had worked on herself so much that she could look back and see certain things very clearly now, and she could express this very well. It was an unbelievable interview. Afterwards she said that talking to us had been very good for her.

Francis: She actually reconnected with Auroville after that.

Doris: These moments make me feel so grateful that we are doing this work.

Francis: The interview with Serge, who knew he was dying, was also unbelievable. All three of us were so tuned in.

Doris: He was looking back over the past and simply speaking the truth; he had nothing to hide. This is what we are looking for.

Francis: In the end, it’s not so much about documenting something as catching a vibration. All the visuals, all the audio, all the technical stuff is just trying to transfer a certain feeling from the screen to the viewer.

Doris: It’s why people watch the Matrimandir or the Sorcery at Sea videos time and time again. The Auroville vibration is there. It’s about people coming together, working together in a certain spirit.

Do you have any dream projects you would like to do in the future?

Francis: If someone tells me he is supramentalised and can levitate and asks me to capture it on video, I’ll certainly do it. Otherwise, I have no dream projects. We simply respond to what is there.

Has this work in any way changed your perspective on Auroville?

Doris: I think coming into contact with that special vibration during the Matrimandir project changed me. It is what is leading me now; I keep looking for those moments.

Francis: When you are doing this work you get to look at Auroville from a little bit of distance and with greater clarity. And what you see is not always pleasant. In the last ten years of doing this work, I have learned that the baseness of human nature is much more extensive than I had conceived of beforehand. In fact, I feel that the project of Auroville has become secondary to individuals’ needs. Perhaps it has always been like that, but I was too immersed in it before; when you see it through the lens, you get a bit more detachment. Again, looking at the unbelievable quality of life that everybody is experiencing here, something that brings tears to the eyes, I wonder why there is not more gratitude.

So it can be tough, intense, sitting in front of these big screens and having to watch certain things time and time again. Having said this, we are both utterly delighted that we can be part of this, that we can do this work for Auroville.