Traverse City Film Festival - Machines
A kaleidoscopic and censorial meditation on the meaning of labor in an Indian textile sweatshop.
Interview with Writer/Director/Producer Rahul Jain
Watch Machines on Vimeo on demand, Kanopy and Prime Video
Congratulations! Why are you making your film?
I made this film out of a curiosity of never having seen the working classes of India properly represented in a cinematic space time. The media representation in India is solely made for the middle-upper classes. Whereas more than 75% of the Indian populace today stay in the lower working class spaces. I came across the book Workers by Sebastian Salgado and realized the importance of an aesthetic necessity for the representation of labor in a dignified manner.
Imagine I’m a member of the audience. Why should I watch this film?
It is 2017, and our world is connected like never before. When I look at myself and count the things I am wearing, and then think in my head about the origins of all the things on my body. Let’s just take it with the iPhone. It will say designed in California, Made in China. But what about the materials where it comes from? the rare earth minerals? the lithium. The trousers I am wearing, might say “made in Italy” but what about the cotton? what about the buttons?
I think that we might feel we are living in modernity but our lives are edited by those whose products we are enslaved. Perhaps these are not the concerns that most of the world has. But I want to feel engaged with all that I am helping perpetuate. I want to know where the materialist world around me comes from.
How do personal and universal themes work in your film?
When I was 5, I was visiting a distant uncle’s factory, and a factory worker had been found leaving the factory with some of their chemicals. This man was tied to a chair and held by five men, whilst he was being thrashed by other men for stealing. This experience left me a bit baffled. And even in my youth I was made to think “whose side are you on?”
I was also quite confused as a child when I learned about the price of a bottle of wine to be more than the monthly salary of the person who served it to my family.
These simple things were accumulating inside my head the whole time. And I would say this is how the personal and universal are the same in a way.
How have the script and film evolved over the course of their development?
I started making this film as a graduation thesis film in my undergrad film school. During its three year making, I was quite depressed by the end as quite a lot of personal resources had gone into its making and there was expectation around me. I felt it was literally and figuratively “the emperor’s new clothes”. I felt like this because not even once during the whole process did I ever feel the need to curate this film for an audience. I made it for myself, with myself and perhaps the lessons my teachers taught me at school. The only evolution that might have happened was that I kept distilling the film’s aesthetic language cut by cut. Making it leaner and what felt more honest.
What type of feedback have you received so far?
It is interesting to see such a diversified audience participate in the viewing of the film. But honestly enough, it is an Indian film that has only played in the western hemisphere or the global north. Most people in the audiences have felt shocked and asked what can they do? Which is something journalists are never asked. I made the film to generate questions and build curiosity about a universal condition. Development and Capitalism go hand in hand but it is rare to see the under shadow of the worlds that these phenomenon create being portrayed in an honest manner.
The majority of the response, when audiences are left to their own devices, is that “perhaps we should stop buying Indian made clothes”. Of course i have to then interrupt and say “please don’t think of the situation as so simple, if you stop buying these clothes, most of the factory workers will go out of jobs, the situation is not so simple as 50-50, there’s a huge grey line in between”. I think more than anything, people have been opened up to a way of life much more depraved than they had expected, even though more than most of them have probably heard of these levels of depravity, but “seeing is believing” as they say.
Has the feedback surprised or challenged your point of view?
From the intensity of the reactions, sometimes I myself have been forced to think as well more than before about what i am buying and where i am buying it from. I’ve started to buy less in quantity, but higher in quality, coming to the conclusion that most cheap clothing is only possibly made by exploited labor.
What are you looking to achieve by having your film more visible on www.wearemovingstories.com?
A film like Machines is a film to be seen by as many people as possible. And unfortunately so, it is a film that critiques market forces, and it is the market forces that make it difficult for the film to be seen by many. Not being backed by any studios we have a very low budget for publicity and any platform whatsoever, especially one like www.wearemovingstories.com helps spread the word to the world about quality cinema. I am proud that Machines doesn’t end up being a preachy non-fictional film. It also has an aesthetic integrity and hopefully that is an idea given to suspecting and probable audiences.
Who do you need to come on board (producers, sales agents, buyers, distributors, film festival directors, journalists) to amplify this film’s message?
I need journalists, outreach campaigners, buyers and film festival directors to see the film for themselves and see if it is a message they would like to endorse in any which way. A film like Machines can only travel on word of mouth. My desire with it is to spread it out to the world more than anything else, because it is a film that raises questions whose answers i don’t know to, and hopefully somebody in a completely improbable audience might have some answers.
What type of impact and/or reception would you like this film to have?
I would want this film to be shown around the socio-economic class spectrum. But at the end of the day, be it consumers, manufacturers, policy holders, economists, all those responsible for a reality like this to be happening. I would want there to be an engaging debate between people from different spectra.
What’s a key question that will help spark a debate or begin a conversation about this film?
How can this be happening in 2017? is a question i ask myself and was asking myself a few years ago whilst making this film. If one were to meditate on that and peel beneath the layers, a lot of the condition of our world would possibly become evident.
Would you like to add anything else?
Human beings are born with natural empathy. And films are empathy machines. to look at the other raises understanding for something outside ourselves. Even thought it may sound idealist, i sincerely hope the audiences of Machines gives time to thinking about a world where wage inequality between different countries and classes is lessened and perhaps how that change might come about.
What other projects are the key creatives developing or working on now?
I will be working with the film’s photographer Rodrigo Trejo Villanueva on a film about water, land and air pollution looked at through the lens of the Anthropocene and human consumption in New Delhi, India, the world’s most densely populated and polluted city.
Interview: August 2017
_______________________________________________________________________________
We Are Moving Stories embraces new voices in drama, documentary, animation, TV, web series and music video. If you have just made a film - we'd love to hear from you. Or if you know a filmmaker - can you recommend us? More info: Carmela
_______________________________________________________________________________
Machines
A kaleidoscopic and censorial meditation on the meaning of labor in an Indian textile sweatshop.
Length: 72 minutes
Director: Rahul Jain
Producer: Rahul Jain, Thanassis Karathanos, Iikka Vehkalahti
Writer: Rahul Jain
About the writer, director and producer: (25 words each)
Rahul Jain - Born in New Delhi, Rahul Jain grew up in various regions in India, such as Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh. He recently graduated with a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in film and video from the California Institute of the Arts and is presently pursuing a writing MA in aesthetics and politics. He is interested in the ideas of distance, otherness, and the everyday. Machines marks his debut feature.
Looking for (producers, sales agents, buyers, distributors, film festival directors, journalists):
buyers, distributors, film festival directors, journalists
Social media handles:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/machinesmovie/
Other: http://machines-themovie.com
Made in association with:
Where can I see it in the next month?
Serbian Film Festival, Makedox (Macedonia), Cinema Aesthetica Politica (MONTREAL), Los Angeles - Weeklong release at Laemmle’s Santa Monica