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Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Anand Patwardhan sees no clean boundary between art and politics. In a 2025 interview with Nandini Ramnath for Scroll.in, the documentary filmmaker said: “It perplexes me, as I don’t see how you can take the art out of politics or the politics out of art.” His films make that idea concrete: they document political struggles while using filming, editing and structure to shape how viewers encounter them.
Why Patwardhan rejects a division between art and politics
Patwardhan’s answer challenges the idea that a documentary can be politically engaged but not artistic. A film’s subject may be a movement, an injustice or a conflict, but the filmmaker still makes choices about what to record, how to arrange it and what relationships to draw between images and events. Politics and form are not separate layers that can simply be peeled apart.
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In the Scroll interview published September 30, 2025, Patwardhan’s work is framed around documenting injustice, exploring its roots and considering how people might counter it. Across his career, his subjects have included human rights, majoritarianism, hyper-nationalism, casteism, ecological damage, labour, housing and protest.
How he makes documentaries without a fixed script
Patwardhan describes a responsive process rather than a predetermined screenplay. The subject leads: he films, reviews what he has captured to understand where it is going, then returns to shoot more that develops the material already in hand.
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He distinguishes recording what is in front of the camera from creating the event itself. But a documentary is not therefore a neutral transcript. Editing and juxtaposition build a narrative from recorded material, making the filmmaker’s formal decisions part of the work.
Why a finished film can need an epilogue
For Patwardhan, completion is provisional because life continues after a film is finished. Later events can change how an earlier story is understood, which is why some of his films have epilogues.
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Ram Ke Naam offers an example described in the interview. After the main film was completed, an epilogue incorporated the demolition of the Babri mosque and the later killing of the film’s protagonist, priest Lal Das. The additions connect the film’s initial account to developments that followed it.
What his films reveal about the range of his subjects
The films named in the interview show how his documentary practice moves among movements, institutions and lived experience. They are not a single-issue catalogue: together, they trace concerns from state repression and labour organizing to caste, housing and personal history.
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| Film | Subject or context described in the interview |
|---|---|
| Waves of Revolution (1974) | Patwardhan’s first full-length documentary, linked to the Bihar Movement led by Jayaprakash Narayan. Its production used borrowed or old cameras and outdated stock; circulation was disrupted by the Emergency and censorship disputes. |
| Prisoners of Conscience (1978) | Activists detained during the Emergency. |
| A Time To Rise (1981) | Made with Jim Monro, following Punjabi farm labourers organizing in Canada. |
| Bombay: Our City | People facing demolition and homelessness. |
| In Memory of Friends | The interview names the film but does not specify its subject in the passage summarized. |
| Ram Ke Naam | Includes an epilogue addressing later events, including the demolition of the Babri mosque and the killing of priest Lal Das. |
| Father, Son and Holy War | The interview names the film as part of his body of work. |
| Jai Bhim Comrade (2011) | Dalit identity and activism. |
| The World is Family (Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, 2023) | A personal look back at Patwardhan’s family and values. |
What “battle scars” say about making films with limited resources
Patwardhan’s early filmmaking also informs his view of craft. The interview recounts that Waves of Revolution was made with borrowed or old cameras and outdated stock. He describes zero budgets, soft focus, shaky cameras and scratched frames as “battle scars,” and argues that a filmmaker should not let perfection become a censor.
This is not a case for poor technique as an artistic goal. It is an argument against allowing the lack of ideal equipment or flawless images to prevent a film from being made. In this account, material limits are part of the history of producing the work, not a reason to abandon the subject.
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The 2025 retrospective and the scale of the career
Scroll published its interview ahead of a retrospective at Mumbai’s G5A cultural centre, held October 2–5, 2025. The programme featured 10 of Patwardhan’s 13 documentaries and two short films, covering five decades of work. Scroll described him as 75 at the time of publication; that is a dated description, not a statement of his age today.
The selection offered a view across the varied concerns that define his filmmaking: movements and protest, labour and housing, caste and political power, as well as questions of memory and family. The retrospective has passed, but its programme figures provide a snapshot of the breadth of work presented in 2025.
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Source
Nandini Ramnath, “Anand Patwardhan interview: ‘You can’t take the art out of politics or the politics out of art’”, Scroll.in, September 30, 2025.
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