Simulation at Wars’ End: A “Documentary” in the Field of Evidence Quest

Abstract

The release of Muktir Gaan in 1995 ended a long, politically induced drought in films about the 1971 war that created Bangladesh. Built by Tareque and Catherine Masud from repurposed “found footage” shot by Lear Levin, the film was received by most Bangladeshi audiences as an exact documentary. The film crew’s explicit discussion of simulations and the inclusion of a “making of” section in the digital versatile disc (DVD) release a decade later have done little to change audience perceptions. This believing audience derives from a willing suspension of a skeptical eye, due to an absence of a moving image record of the war. The rewriting of story has been a crucial aspect of the documentation of, and debates around, national liberation wars. An initially declarative, and oral, culture around Bangladeshi war memories in the 1970s has been replaced by the search for evidence in the context of recent high stakes war crimes trials. What I want to suggest is that audiences have different modes of viewing specific to narratives that have become sacrosanct. They may be skeptical, rational, and evidentiary audiences for other objects, but with such sacred narratives they transform themselves, again, into a believing public.

Agami (The Time Ahead, 1984), the First “Short Film” of Bangladesh: Toward a New Cinematic Aesthetic of Imaging Time and Nation

“…“During this time (1982–1990), there was a further de-emphasis on war narrative in the cinema. A rare intervention came from the short film movement […]” (Mohaiemen, 2016, p. 37). As a film that emerged from the short film movement, Agami resists the state’s efforts to eradicate the memory of the history of the Liberation War.…”

From Villain to Hero: Masculinity and Political Aesthetics in the Films of Bangladeshi Action Star Joshim

“…This was not the first time Bangladesh's history was being edited. With the sovereignty of Bangladesh in 1971, the nation went through a complex process of decolonisation, 11 which included deleting historical documents and deciding on a grand narrative of Bangladesh's nationalism (Mohaiemen, 2012). Lotte Hoek observes that although there is insufficient proof available to support the claim, public memory and rumour has it that the film industry too was deleting traces of its colonial past on celluloid (2014).…”

“…10.Naeem Mohaiemen notes a similar absence of war films and comments that the ‘politics of compromise and forgetting’ of post-1975 has affected the way viewers approach war films like Muktir Gaan (1995) as authentic documentation of Bangladesh’s War of Liberation. For more on Mohaiemen’s take on the remembering and forgetting of history and its relation to cinema read ‘Simulation at wars’ end: A ‘documentary’ in the field of evidence quest’ (2016). …”

Witness statements and the technologies of memory: A conversation between Heba Y. Amin, Anthony Downey, Helene Kazan, Naeem Mohaiemen, and Susan Schuppli

“…The question is, what does that material-based evidence actually mean? I want to quote from Naeem Mohaiemen's essay here on the film Muktir Gaan (1995), which he describes through the following terms: “Built by Tareque and Catherine Masud from repurposed found footage shot by Lear Levin, the film Muktir Gaan was received by most Bangladeshi audiences as an exact documentary” (Mohaiemen 2016). I was very taken by this term “built” because it proposes in and of itself an argument – that the images are not appropriated, they are neither factual nor documented, they are “built.” It is a structured evidentiary context that we are being invited to engage with throughout the film, not just to peruse or contemplate, but to actively investigate what that “built” environment means.…”