The Unseeing Gaze

An exclusive interview with film-maker Leena Manimekalai, whose first work of fiction, ‘Maadathy – An Unfairy Tale’, remains true to the grammar of her stellar documentary work: it continues to skip across man-made lines, unmaking them in the process

- Praveena Shivram

You know that insatiable urge to tell horror stories when you are around a campfire within the arms of darkness? The urge that spooks and tempts, sending a different kind of thrill down your spine, of something forbidden, something unbidden, of something that mimics an echo in a forest, ricocheting off so many surfaces that you remember its timbre, its tenor, its pitch in different ways at different times? Like a haunting, a distant beautiful haunting that is disturbing as much as it is riveting? While watching film-maker Leena Manimekalai’s newest work, Maadathy – An Unfairy Tale, her first work of fiction, I felt exactly that – like Leena and I were sitting across each other, with a candlelight for company, and she is telling me this story, with all its visual heft and narrative splendour, and I am becoming impossibly drawn into its world so that when the film is over and the candle flame no more casts its spell, I scarcely feel the daylight that has sneaked up on me.

Over the years, I have seen a lot of Leena’s documentary film work and known of her as a passionate filmmaker, but there was something about Maadathy that left behind an impression of not a fiery voice – one I was familiar with – but of quiet resonance, born of an injustice ringing a bell that no one hears. ‘I was possessed by the idea of Maadathy when I was researching and reading on the ‘unseeables’ – the