by Tajender Sagoo
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| A still from the film "When the Tide Goes Out", 2021. |
"When the Tide Goes Out" (117 mins, Punjabi, English 2021) is a documentary film by Canada-based Indian Punjabi filmmaker Ajay Bhardwaj. The film premiered at the Kolkata People’s Film Festival, 2023 and Vancouver South Asian Film Festival, 2022. Although it’s not on general release I was able to watch a preview.
This film is about a period of community activism against racism and for labour rights in the 1980s in British Columbia. A farmworkers' movement led by the Canadian Farm Workers Union (CFU) and supported by left activists is at the centre of the film. This historic movement was captured by Jim Monro and Anand Patwardhan in the documentary "A Time to Rise" (1981). Patwardhan is interviewed in the film. The film expands the frame into another strike by migrant workers on a mushroom farm in 1984. The farm workers, mainly Punjabi women with little or no knowledge of English, were exploited and subject to sexual harassment.
It was only in the 1960s that the white Canada policy officially ended. Economics demanded a migrant labour force.
The film explores three strands of the farmworkers' movement. How left activists, artists and filmmakers worked in solidarity with the farmworkers. The representation of farmworkers in the movement and how gender shaped the engagement. Cinematography is by filmmaker Rajula Shah (and co-writer); editing is by Lavanya Ramaiah, and sound is by Bigyna Dahal.
Bhardwaj has been making documentaries since 1997. I first met him in 2010 in Delhi and in 2011 I organised screenings of his films in London, "Kitte Mil Ve Mahi" (2005) (Where the Twain Shall Meet) and "Rabba Hun Ke Kariye" (2007) (Thus Departed Our Neighbours), and later "Milange Babey Ratan De Mele Te" (2012) (Let's Meet at Babey Ratan's Fair), a trilogy set in his place of birth, West Punjab. In 2013 Bhardwaj travelled to Canada to start his PhD at the University of British Columbia.
In an opening scene, light reflects off the snow, and Bhardwaj sets off on a kind of road trip.
Canada is a Commonwealth country. It sits on the unceded land of the First Nation peoples. Its borders stretch from the Atlantic, Antarctic, and Pacific Oceans and a 243,042 coastline. It is a place I've never been to. I'm curious about the title and learn that the rise and fall of the tide across the planet is caused by the gravitational pull of the Moon and the Sun.
In the film Bhardwaj meets with Harjinder Sangra, a volunteer with the Canadian Farmworkers Union and a member of the artist collective ‘Vancouver Sath’. She is a keeper of memories and brings out folders of papers, newspaper cuttings, and photos of the pioneer migrants. Her grandfather travelled from British-occupied India to Canada in 1907, seven years before the Komagata Maru incident. She holds out the photographs for the camera. I think about those not photographed; does it matter?
"Chalo, bus karo," (ok, enough) she says eventually.
“How to make a film about a place where I was neither born nor lived enough?” asks Bhardwaj.
The camera looks closely at the domestic spaces, the walls, the furniture, the surfaces hard and softly upholstered. The objects collected and displayed. These images frame the conversations and acknowledge the economic reasons behind the strikes. Made up of a series of conversations, the narrative is circular, the ending can also be the beginning. We also see Bhardwaj making roti (bread) or in a book shop or hear his voice. We follow his personal exploration too, as a stranger in Canada.
The film uses the poetry and protest songs of the movement - “Khet Mazdooro” a Punjabi song written by Sukhwant Hundal and performed by Hemi Dhanoa and Nizar Dhamji and Bread and Roses by James Oppenheim. We also see the artwork by activists, the t-shirts and posters produced. Plays are written and performed. What we don’t hear is the first-person voices of the women farm workers, except for Pritam Kaur. Born in 1925 Pritam Kaur sadly passed away in March this year, she was a leading member of the Canadian Farmworkers Union (CFU).
Vancouver Sath is a collective of Punjabi writers, artists and activists. They were involved in supporting striking workers on a mushroom farm in 1984 and campaigned on social issues that affected the community. The farm workers were mostly Punjabi women. Sath members Sadhu Binning and Sukhwant Hundal wrote and staged the play Picket-Line about the strike in 1984.
They meet in Harjinder Sangra’s garden, reunited for the camera. Gathered around a table, they gently laugh and recall the past, wine is served. They all admire the grapes growing in the garden. Bhardwaj sits with them listening. Dusk arrives and they move inside, their voices disappear, and we hear a song by Utah Philips - a friend of Gary Cristall, co-founder of the Vancouver Folk Music Festival. Cristall worked in solidarity with the CFU. A wall is decorated with Mexican art. He quotes his friend the musician Utah Philips ‘the most revolutionary thing in the world is a long memory”.
The film features conversations with several artists /activists including Sukhwant Hundal, Sadhu Binning, Claire Kujundzic, Judy Cavanagh, Nettie Wild, Ajmer Rode and Anand Patwardhan. With each conversation - the gendered experience of the unnamed farmworkers and activists become more visible.
Photographer Craig Berggold was artist in residence at the Canadian Farm Workers Union. His photographs of the Punjabi women mushroom workers protesters are large powerful images. As usual with collectives the individuals become anonymous, we don’t know their names. Berggold couldn’t access the homes of the women workers “the images don’t show the complexity of making these decisions” says Berggold. The decision to strike. But Vanneau Neeshan did visit the women’s homes to teach English. She brings out other photographs of the women strikers. She can’t recall their names but says she remembers each one. ‘They wanted to express themselves.’
Artist Surjeet Kalsey is the co-founder of “Samaanta” (equality) an organisation that helped women subjected to violence in the home and the streets. She talks about her experiences with the women, many of whom would also be farm workers on strike. She recalls that many women were killed by their husbands in the late 70s and early 80’s and describes how the violence in the home spilled onto the streets. She wrote and directed a play “One Girl, One Dream”, to help to break the taboo around violence in the home. This is difficult to watch.
Bhardwaj eventually meets with the indomitable Pritam Kaur, the “bright star” of ‘A Time to Rise’ as said by Nettie Wild the sound recordist on the film. Pritam Kaur features on the poster of the film, her arm in the air, it’s an iconic image. At the age of 95 her charisma is undeniable. She tells a story of ‘thrashing’ a white manager, who was regularly exposing himself to the women farm workers. Pritam Kaur doesn’t conform to conventional narratives on how to be a working class south Asian woman.
We see an excerpt from “A time to rise.” Pritam Kaur is in the kitchen making roti and she turns and looks straight into the camera.
The film doesn’t deeply explore the Sikh context (that would be another film). In the UK South Asian women protested at Grunwick in the late 70’s and Gate Gourmet in the 90’s. Many working - class migrant women like my mother worked at home sewing garments for the fashion industry; they remained unorganised.
Bhardwaj reflects often, in a kind of conversation with us and in the film, we sometimes enter the interior of others through what we see in the photos collected and art made.After the credits have ended it's the women farm workers who stay with me longest.
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Read Punjab in Focus a film review by S. Keita, September 2011.
"When the Tide Goes Out" watch the trailer.
Listen to Ajay Bhardwaj in conversation with Virinder Kalra, recorded at the BFI London in 2012.
Contact Ajay Bhardwaj / twitter @ajayunmukt / IG @ajayunmukt
For further reading on the CFU and activities see the Simon Fraser University digital archive of the CFU newspaper “The Farmworker’
