Champ of the Camp

While someone who is familiar with Hindi movies, like me, might still enjoy to some extent this feature, just because of the songs, it will certainly be a harder take for those not steeped in that context: for the documentary is not very well made, and in fact there rise several questions if it could be called a documentary or just a promotional video. This is a major sore point in watching Champ of the Camp, and all the more so since many viewers decide to watch a film after going through its (official) trailer: the much-interviewed organisers of the singing competition, which in itself has not been questioned at all in the film, are missing completely from the trailer, leaving a very different picture in the mind of the viewer to what the film in reality is. The reality is that the questioning of the gimmick of having a singing competition to market products is not even in the frame of the film: how so? Are the workers of the "labor camps" not the naive, innocent or willingly participating exploited ones, exploited by those who organise this singing competition itself? There is a lack of voices in the film: we have those who are participating, who are willing to gain some notoriety, some fame, some money, some gifts, and we have those who are selling the event, but none of this is questioned. Where are the questioners? Where are the voices of those not getting sold, not selling?

The film reminds me of those ads in newspapers which are not that visible as ads: the ones which counsel you on your falling hair, give some history of traditional methods of falling hair, give you some statistics and some testimonies, and during all that also sell some particular brand of shampoo. Is that an ad or an article? Is this a film or a promotional video? There is also little context, little work done in the background: labor migrants are even in India. A labourer of Uttar Pradesh working in Bangalore is in a much worse condition than those who are working in the Gulf: and as much far from his family, or even more, for with hardly any money, how frequently can he go to his hometown? Nor can he often call his family, living the life of a nomad and in rough company. So why this story and not that? Why not the thousand other stories?

Of course, each story is worthy to be told: but it is the writer, the director, the narrator who tells us why. It is a privilege when an audience seeks your story, hears your story: it is not a right to be assumed with no responsibility, it is not an access to be trifled with. I had not watched the film with high expectations, for the trailer itself gives a clue in that respect: however, I had not expected the film to be such a brazenly made promotional film. It is possible that the director may not have had other means of accessing the story: but, then, if no other way is there, why not wait till a way is found?