Upcoming!

This Much I Know is showing at the Society for Visual Anthropology's film festival at the 2009 meeting of the American Anthropological Association. For information visit http://societyforvisualanthropology.org/?page_id=566

Shaadi!

Sonum just got married! More photos and updates soon.

Director's Statement

I consider 'This Much I Know' to be an environmental film - despite the fact that it engages very little with the scientific, medical or physical details of environmental contamination in Jaibheem Nagar, the neighborhood where it is set. In fact this project was created in opposition to the perspective of most environmental films, which tend to reduce humans to victims, and places to problems. Sonum's character in 'This Much I Know' is both a verité representation of her experience and her home, and also a performance she gives us of her own struggles and hopes. The environmental contamination that may be causing her illness is just one of many factors structuring her life and impeding her desires.

Environmental documentary as a genre has tended to assume the role of the expert - using the medium to explicate scientific or medical proof of harm, or political proof of wrong. Although that is important and necessary, it misses the most common and frustrating element of environmental illness -- the not knowing what's wrong, not being taken seriously, and not having access to medical expertise that can articulate your problems. It often also sacrifices the person and their space as unique and multifaceted, instead treating them as symbolic of a known set of wrongs and power relations.

The lack of answers, the lack of proof, that plagues most environmental illness is not cinematic -- it is mundane, tragic, and horrible. And it is not a neutral fact -- it is inflected by discrimination, poverty, and the exigencies of capital. In Jaibheem Nagar, as in many other places, you find a neighborhood and a young woman desperately taking irrationally prescribed pharmaceuticals from the only affordable source – the medical college that is the cause of their polluted water.

'This Much I Know' does not exclude political action (nor do I find that conventional environmental documentary regularly succeeds in generating it). Quite the opposite, this project brackets proof and justification outside the film, demanding that the connection to the individual in it extend beyond the viewing to discussions of the issue, of the person, and of the position each of us takes in the world. This documentary is an experiment. But it is an experiment that is grounded in my belief that we cannot truly begin to address chemical harm until we stop seeing 'the environment' as something separate from us; as a 'nature' that we oppose and destroy. Addressing environmental illness adequately will require a paradigm shift in how we see the world, our bodies, and each other -- I hope that this film is a step in that direction.

Update from Meerut

I'm back in Meerut! I've learned that there has been some progress on Jaibheem Nagar (JBN), and laying the main pipes to bring in clean water should be completed in two months. However, since the eventual plan is to provide piped water to each house, it may take many years to complete. JBN as a case study has also attracted some attention -- the Janhit foundation finally published their report on JBN and presented it as a case study to the UN. Hopefully, some of this work will finally result in clean water for Sonum and her family ... but as of yet, not much.

There is a new submersible jet pump near their home, installed as part of a bridge building project, that makes fetching water easier for them, but most of JBN is still without water. The government is providing two small tankers of water per day, but the supply is not enough and the wait is often endless.

Sonum is scheduled to be married in December, and I'm happy to report that she's very much in love with her fiance, Abey. He's a driver, and together they are looking forward to starting a new life. However, her health is still unstable, although there have been some steps towards the diagnosis of a hormonal problem. More on that as it emerges.

Yellow Water

The water in Jaibheem Nagar is dangerously contaminated with heavy metals and biological contaminants -- in the picture above you can see Sonum's mother Madhu comparing the yellow water that comes out of the pump in their house with the water they walk miles every day to fetch from public pumps. A study by Heather Lewis, a volunteer at the Janhit Foundation has shown that the contaminants of the water fit the profile of medical waste coming from the nearby Meerut Medical College, which has been dumping their toxic and laboratory waste in an unlined pit upstream from Jaibheem Nagar since their inception in 1972.

Click here learn more about Jaibheem Nagar.

Upcoming Screening

This Much I Know (Itna Mujhe Pata Hai)

at the Boston International Film Festival
Boston Common Loews/AMC Theater
Saturday June 14th, 1:30 pm (SESSION 38).

Tickets are 10$ for the session and can be purchased online at www.bifilmfestival.com through Ticket Web or by calling BIFF directly at 1-617-482-3900.

Poster