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Dhriti Gandhi Ranjan
Dhriti Gandhi Ranjan

DOCUMENTARY

Playing with fire: Documenting lives that fizzle away in Sivakasi

firecrackers-diwali-pti-1 (File) Representational image | PTI

Most people burst fireworks to express their jubilation, joy, and celebration. However, the hidden truths behind the production of these fireworks fail to make the headlines. It is these stories that filmmaker K.R. Manoj has documented in his Work of Fire, set in Sivakasi, the biggest fireworks producing city in India.

The film is a narrative about the year-long labour that turns to ashes in a single evening, and how this irrationality gives life to the very idea of festivity. However, the filmmaker raises an important question: Why do we need fireworks for celebrations, when those involved in making them play with their lives?

Work of Fire subtly narrates the horror stories of the adults living in Sivakasi, Tamil Nadu, engaged as labourers in the production of the fireworks. They are employed year-round, but not provided any personal security. The movie comes across as a mix of experiences of the people most closely involved with the industry, as well as the ground reality of labourers.

The filmmaker has beautifully captured the dark silver paint on the bodies of the workers engaged in preparing the base of the firecrackers. It comes as a stark representation of the almost frightening physical intimacy between the labourers and hazardous chemicals. In one particularly poignant scene, an interviewed labourer narrates how he can identify chemicals by mere touch, without even seeing them.

The film, shot over a period of three years, was filmed at one of the fireworks factory. The movie features interviews with the factory owner, as well as first-person accounts of the male and female workers who vividly highlight the dangers of the complete lack of physical security within the premises.

The use of sounds, visuals and poetry add drama to the film. Fire, for the labourers,is a nurturer, protector and destroyer. The film also includes the interview of Chalam Bennurakar, who made the documentary Kutty Japanin Kuzhandaigal (Children of Mini Japan), on child labour in Sivakasi.

The screenplay is effective and takes the viewers through a history of the fireworks, an accidental discovery by the Chinese. The camera work is excellent—whether it is shooting the burning fireworks or capturing Uthralikkavu pooram (festival) in Kerala, or the Diwali celebrations in Bangalore.

The documentary also connects the ancient Indian notions of creation and destruction with the late capitalist ideas of production and consumption, with fireworks emerging as a powerful metaphor, something which carries both creation and destruction within it. The story of the accidental birth of fireworks in China, two thousand years back, provides the backdrop of this inquiry.

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Topics : #movies

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