COURTESY HIFF "Still, the Children are Here," a well-made documentary about the Garos of Meghalaya is filled with eloquent scenes such as the one of people bathing, above.

Misery of poor farmers
in India provokes thought

"Still, the Children Are Here," United States, Golden Maile Award-nominated documentary, shows at 4:15 p.m. next Tuesday and Oct. 29 at Dole Cannery cineplex

One cannot help but approach documentaries about poor farmers in obscure corners of the world with a certain degree of trepidation. Let's get real. Such films are about people without two rupees to rub together who work their butts off from dawn to dusk just to grow a handful of nasty-looking food, the sort of stuff you wanted to leave on your plate while your mother warned you that in India people were starving. Such films mostly make you appreciate living where you already are and doing what you're doing.

That's exactly what happens in "Still, the Children Are Here," about the Garos of Meghalaya, who reside in the jungly hills of northeastern India. These people are so poor that their idea of a demand on the government is to ask for water; who work so hard that they are continually exhausted; who, at the end of the day, stagger into their huts to smoke tobacco, drink wine, gossip and pass out; whose big career dreams consist of burning down vegetation ... whose idea of a safe workplace is to build a treehouse where the elephants can't grab you.

The trouble with films like these, about other people, is that they mostly make you think about yourself.

But give "Still, the Children Are Here" a chance. Once you get into the loping, reflective rhythm of the work, you'll discover that it's extraordinarily well made. It appears to be an objective documentary, one that observes without comment as a kind of visual anthropology, but it contains scenes set up as surely as if it were a big-budget film. A simple chat between two women, one on a trail and the other on her elevated lanai, is done in a dozen shots and angles, including cutaways and reactions -- simply too much artifice for a documentary.

Another scene, beautifully lit by guttering candles, shows a farmer rolling out of bed in the middle of the night, complaining of a headache and bemoaning his lack of children. The lighting, framing and sound are perfect. It's a gorgeous, tender scene -- but it's not the sort of thing caught by a doc crew unless they're invisible and hiding in the corner all night.

This area was where rice was first domesticated thousands of years ago, and the film makes several visual references to the denuding of the countryside. A couple of chatty old ladies, who act as a kind of ironic Greek chorus throughout the film, point out that nowadays felled logs are sold as firewood to city folk -- and why not? The folks of Meghalaya could use the coins -- but that also disrupts the cycle of nature on the hillsides, and the fields are less fertile than they used to be.

There are many eloquent scenes throughout, including a wonderful one of people staring goggle-eyed at a Christian missionary film set up in the middle of the jungle. It's all helped tremendously by some frankly terrific music by Nitin Sawhney. See it, and appreciate your meal afterward, you big fat American.

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