Regrounding in Place, Regrounding in Truth: The Caste Study of Son of a Sweeper

Abstract

This creative media research centers on the lingering discrimination faced by India’s scheduled caste Dalits or “sweepers,” who have been left behind during India’s technological growth and global expansion. The author explores the works of Dirlik and Cresswell to situate Dalits within Global Colonialism. Her collaboration with a Dalit education activist results in a documentary film that highlights his efforts to bring community transformation through academic excellence. As the filmmaker interacted with documentary subject Vimal Kumar in his community, this physical “place within a place” became a small, interpretive world in which she and Kumar worked together to make aesthetic filmmaking choices. Her selection of images and sounds in the editing process created a narrative around Kumar’s activism that became a personal expression of the filmmaker’s presence, grounded in both physical place and social concern. The author suggests collaboration between filmmaker and documentary subject is a negotiation of power that may remedy outsider bias. She asserts that the collaborative space existing between her camera and her documentary subject is transformed into a meaningful place resulting in “collaborative truth.” Such a truth can evoke human emotion and activate the viewer because it expresses a more personal understanding of the human experience.