Women On The March: Environmental Filmmaker Rita Banerji Spotlights Storytelling For Change

Leveraging the power of visuals and conservation-based storytelling, environmental filmmaker Rita Banerji has been using her craft to put the focus on social change, especially among the youth of India’s indigenous communities and remote areas. Travel+Leisure India & South Asia finds out more about her documentaries, challenges, and the push for responsible tourism through film. 

For filmmaker Rita Banerji, impactful storytelling is means for social change. Not only did her documentaries clinch the coveted Panda award or the Green Oscar, but they have also been instrumental in banning the killing of whale sharks in India. In her latest stint with The Green Hub (a community fellowship training the youth in environmental video documentation, of which she is the founder and project director), the visual storyteller — along with the support of Royal Enfield — has rolled out The Responsible Tourism Fellowship, an initiative working towards supporting responsible travel in Northeast India.

Excerpts from the interview with Rita Banerji:

T+L India: Tell us about The Green Hub Fellowship and how it all began?

Rita Banerji: Green Hub Fellowship started in 2015 with the idea of leveraging the power of youth — especially from indigenous communities and remote areas, across northeast India — in conservation action and social change, using the visual medium. It started as a collaborative project between North East Network and Dusty Foot Foundation to bring the synergy of women and youth into a combined vision.

Green Hub is a one-year residential fellowship where 20 youth get selected every year through an application process. They train in video storytelling, and through that understand the connection between biodiversity conservation, sustainable agriculture, natural resources, livelihood and the value of traditional knowledge in the current context. Post the fellowship, we work with the alumni to help them strengthen their trajectory, depending on which direction they want to take.

After eight years, we now have a network of 110 fellows across the eight states of the region. There is a cohort that is working directly with their community on conservation and livelihood projects. There are other fellows who are now emerging as local filmmakers from the region, some of whom are working with NGOs. In some sense, the network of Green Hub fellows are now forming a network of solidarity and conservation work in the northeast of India.

T+L India: You’ve been using videography as a means to empower communities. How did you foray into filmmaking, especially as a voice for the people?

Rita Banerji: My own learning about environment conservation has been through filmmaking. I started my journey in this direction when my father gave me an old Agfa film camera. Then, I worked with Mike Pandey at Riverbank Studios for 10 years where we worked primarily on environment and wildlife films. While my first love was camera, travelling across India and working on stories helped build an understanding about the diverse issues connected to people and nature.

I continued this journey under my own production house, Dusty Foot Productions. Through the films we made–and the people we met on the ground–it was quite clear that video is a strong tool for conservation. At the same time, in video documentation, there is value beyond the film. Multiple outputs can be created from the footage that maybe useful for training, education, research.

At that time, there were no platforms for youth to get into conservation films apart from joining a production house or working with a filmmaker. The video footage that we gathered, beyond the films we made, stayed stocked up. The idea of Green Hub was a combination of these two: to create an opportunity for youth to engage in conservation through the medium of filmmaking, and to also enable video documentation for people working on the ground and build stories around local narratives.

T+L India: Was there any specific instance that inspired you to speak for the marginalised?

Rita Banerji: I think growing up in India, at every moment of your life, you are reminded of your own privilege and blessings. Every day, you see poverty and the struggles of different communities – whether it is on the city’s street, in rural areas or through what you watch online. And despite travelling across India for more than 30 years, there are new aspects of marginalisation that I come across or am not aware of. You keep learning about the layers of poverty. According to my father, where you are born in India is your initial capital and you have to pay back.

T+L India: Why did you choose to centre The Green Hub Fellowship and its works around the remote regions of the North East (as compared to any other part of India)?

Rita Banerji: When we started Dusty Foot Productions in 2003, one of the first projects was on the rehabilitation of Himalayan Black Bears back into the forests of Arunachal Pradesh. Since then, we continued filming for several years and started getting an understanding of the relationship between people, wildlife and their natural resources. Our film, The Wild Meat Trail on hunting of wildlife in the northeast, pushed us to think of working beyond making films.

In 2009, we started Under the Canopy, a conservation education program for local teachers in Nagaland and Assam. This was our first collaboration with North East Network. This period also helped us understand the challenges faced by the youth and the lack of opportunities. Nothing in the education system reinforced the idea of looking at your own natural resources as a sustainable future. Northeast is still one of India’s richest areas in terms of biodiversity, and most of the forests belong to the community. Youth from these communities are the future, especially if we want to explore a paradigm of development that is founded on ecological security. Therefore we decided to start the Green Hub Project here.

Also my mother is from Assam, so my roots are here!

T+L India: You’ve also initiated an additional fellowship for Responsible Travel with The Green Hub. Could you tell us more about what it is and how it started?

Rita Banerji: In 2022, we had our first meetings with the Royal Enfield team, where the idea of integrating Responsible Tourism in the Green Hub fellowship was seeded. Initially the idea was to see if we could have some of the fellows doing stories around Responsible Tourism. But as we went deeper into it, we felt that it was an area which needed a more intense engagement. Working with youth through the Green Hub Fellowship gave us the confidence to create this new fellowship. This led to starting the Responsible Tourism Fellowship – a six-month fellowship with 16 fellows being selected every year across the northeast of India. This is open to all youth. The course is very practical with field visits to travel practitioners, understanding the ground realities, absorbing the idea of responsible tourism and the various parameters linked to it. And finally, working in teams of four across four selected project sites and developing a Responsible Tourism Proposal, for further support.

T+L India: Your work, Shores of Silence, has been instrumental in the ban on killing whale sharks in India. What were some hurdles you had to overcome while bringing about this monumental change — from the filmmaking process to the final ruling?

Rita Banerji: We worked on Shores of Silence when I was in Riverbank Studios with Mike. We worked on the film for over three-four years. At that time, there was not much information about whale sharks or even the killing of it.

Whenever you are making a film in India about wildlife and people, as filmmakers you are constantly trying to understand the space between people’s livelihood and conservation, and making sure your story has a clear direction. It took us time to get the footage and see the scale at which the whale sharks were being hunted. It is not easy to film something being killed and cut in front of you. Whale sharks are huge, and the ones we were filming were at least 20 -25 feet in length. You could see them being slaughtered on the beach, even while still alive.

Once the film was done, I think it had an immediate impact by winning the Panda award or the Green Oscar at Wildscreen in 2000. Post that, the issue got picked up by various NGOs and the film became an important tool for them to put the whale shark under the Wildlife Protection Act.

T+L India: You’re also the recipient of the coveted Green Oscar. Do you feel that adds to the pressure of your storytelling?

Rita Banerji: I think we are in this field for the love of it. More than the final film, it is the process which becomes your teacher. It is the learning on the ground, the moments that you witness — both magical and heart wrenching –that shape your mind, your thoughts, your life course. Awards are great in terms of acknowledgement of what you do, and in some cases help in raising support for your projects, but our work is not driven by that.

T+L India: In an age when short-form videos are taking centre-stage, how do you see documentary filmmaking and storytelling evolving?

Rita Banerji: Storytelling is key to any form of film. I think there is always space for longer documentaries. You can see the Oscar winners – My Octopus Teacher, as well The Elephant Whisperer – reaching a mass global audience. Since last year, Indian documentaries are breaking ground at the Oscars with Writing with Fire, the first Indian film to make it to the finals in the feature length category; followed by All that breathes and The Elephant Whisperer this year. Every year at DocEdge Kolkata, one of the best pitching platforms for documentary filmmakers in India, you can see incredible stories being incubated.

Short films are popular online and have their purpose. They are great for communication, especially on social media platforms. But documentaries are always going to be a strong medium. What is required is more pitching, story development and distribution avenues for documentary filmmakers, and availability of documentaries for the audience.

T+L India: What are some of the must-visit places/must-experience activities in each of the eight states?

Rita Banerji: Each of the northeast states has amazing destinations. What you need is time here. Any visit to the northeast, you should plan with time in hand. Instead of doing several destinations, it’s good to immerse in one site. It is rich in terms of culture, as well as biodiversity. Eaglenest is one of the best birding destinations, and at the same time you can meet the people from the Bugun, Sherdukpen and Monpa tribe. There is the living root bridge in Meghalaya, as well as some good destinations in South Garo hills. Difficult to pick one or two places, but worth exploring areas beyond the national parks and sanctuaries.

T+L India: Are you looking to expand The Green Hub Fellowship to other parts of the country, and eventually abroad? If so, where would you like to take it next?

Rita Banerji: We started the Green Hub Central India chapter in 2021. It covers Madhya Pradesh , Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Orissa and parts of West Bengal. There is a possibility of starting in the Western Himalayas. At this point the focus is on geographies across India.

T+L India: Any tips for budding filmmakers?

Rita Banerji: We already have a great set of young filmmakers who are making their mark in India and abroad, and a large number of them are women. That itself is amazing. I guess it remains a tough field, but very enriching and constantly evolving. So if you really are passionate about it, just keep at it. Persistence and patience pays, and take up any work that comes your way. That’s the best way to learn and grow.

Related: Women On The March: Artist Janavi Mahimtura Folmsbee Talks About Marine Conservation & Art