Bhopali – Narrating Disasters
by Jeanny Gering
Bhopali is a stirring piece of “fiction that can go under the skin of facts”, to borrow novelist Meaghan Delahunt’s phrase. Van Maximillian Carlson’s documentary certainly gets under your skin and is an important documentation of one of the worst industrial disasters in human history.
The documentary achieves a rare balance in representing the victims of Union Carbide’s gas leak in Bhopal as individuals with agency, rather than passive, suffering victims. Carlson allows his protagonists to demonstrate just how they continue to live in a contaminated environment 25 years after the disaster; living with and at risk from illness, physical deformations and psychological handicaps.
Viewers are afforded an insight into the tragic event as it played out on 3 December 1984 as well as today’s lived realities for people in Bhopal. Little has been done for the affected community and no one has been brought to justice. The film also explores how Union Carbide – today owned by DOW – denies any responsibility towards the enduring suffering caused by the factory.
After the screening, Mick Brown led a discussion that considered Bhopal as a striking example of how media narratives influence events. Tim Edwards added to the discussion with his many years of experience about the struggle for justice in Bhopal, while Pawas Bisht commented on the development of remembering a catastrophe like Bhopal and how different levels of remembering (whether factual, historical and personal) contribute to different narratives.
Together the film and discussion left a powerful impression on the audience and revealed fiction and media as potentially powerful tools highlighting issues of injustice.
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