Our Manifesto
The streak of dissent… isn’t something many can sustain…
We at Jan Madhyam would rather go to jail than give in to the powers of the state, the corporations or the politics of lies.
Since 1992 we are using the medium of documentaries as an instrument for social transformation. In our little-big ways we have journeyed using video and every other audio-visual resource possible to demystify the myths that are sold every day in the name of development, nationalism, peace, justice, environment, human rights, information etc.
We endeavor to craft the “unheard voices” into our stories….and hope it will make sense in the long history of resistance against destruction that the human race continues to inflict upon itself and the planet.
We have sustained the lathi’s of the police, been to jails; our cameras and bones broken, rendered homeless for want of resources and most of all – for asking difficult question.
At Jan Madhyam our effort is to advance “a truly alternative language” in documentary film-making and recording the voices emerging from people’s struggles.
We work with the humility to believe that even if we cannot change the course of history, we can at least make little dents in the way each of us think, feel n live, while the design of greed, consumption, power and wealth perpetuates it’s hegemony.
Even if we unravel every little fact and help simplify the complex web that corporations, nations and the powerful races manufacture, voices of dissent will be silenced, unless we fight for what we believe as just.
Our documentaries vary in content and duration, some have taken more than a decade to be made and other only a few weeks depending on the need and resources. We endeavor to make sure that they are extensively used against the tied of popular mediums such as Commercial Television and Institutionally Funded/Commissioned documentaries. Our films are not only used by various campaigns but by cable networks, universities, schools, policy makers and at times at film festival. Surprisingly some are screened on Television and at street corners in villages and small towns.
We hope our videos are sold on the streets and at pan /porn shops…with enthusiasm.
our eyes always look for the inconsistency in the “design”.
India, is a bloating post-colonial patriarchal civilization,world’s largest democracy where everyone and everything is divided into a bloody war. Wars over wives, land, water, labor, corrupt state administration, caste and race could lead to riots within seconds… We believe democracy ought not to be about majority rule and the number game. Issues of ethics should not be humored back and forth at the cost of human, environmental, cultural, family or individual life…
we @ Jan Madhyam consider ourselves at the edge of this civilizational boom.
Be it…
The struggle in the interior villages of Santhal homeland in the Subernarekha basin of Bihar, the long-drawn heroic effort of the industrial workers in the Chattisgarh region in Central India, the women’s movement for literacy and empowerment in North Bihar, the battle for peace by the Burmese students in exile, the lives of hand-pulled rickshaw-pullers in the scenic hill station on the foothills of the Himalayas, the two decade long struggle by tribal & dalit farmers against the destructive model of development in the Narmada valley or the marvelous campaign for the right to information, transparency and accountability in rural Rajasthan; the grit of the homeless living on the streets of the capital, the bonded labor n child labor in the cities & the hinterland, state repression and political rally’s, the laws and corporations and even the NGO’s apathy towards those they claim to support…; issues of racism, globalization n Indo-Pak relations; we have also documented travelogues of bohemian artist, the marginal people with extra-ordinary skills “who opt out of the system…” You will find us everywhere.
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