I had been intending to spend the solar eclipse of 1999 staring at the Cornish sky through plastic glasses. But over a shoulder on a crowded train one morning I came across an article in the Guardian entitled Villagers in Shadow of Dam Await the End of the World. Six days later I did get to see the eclipse - but sardined in the back of an Indian police truck winding through the Narmada River valley on my way to jail. The 80-odd tribal villagers who had also been arrested were praying intensely - as you would if the world went dark just as your ancestral village was submerged.
Spending the night together in jail, we made our introductions. I'm a documentary maker from London, recently recovered from a three-year epic about the McLibel Trial. They are Adivasis - the original inhabitants of India - who have farmed their land by the Narmada for at least 12 generations. They filled in my sketchy understanding of the story: big dam to displace 250,000 people along river valley, 40m others to get water and electricity. But dam design flawed as river calculations inaccurate. And water really intended for industrialists, agribusiness and three large cities. Worldwide protest and many authoritative reports highlight countless problems. Government goes ahead anyway.
This left the Adivasis with three choices: they could move to a government resettlement site with salty drinking water and inadequate land; they could accept paltry cash compensation and head for a big city slum; or they could stay at home and drown.
Each option would eventually lead to an early grave, they explained. And if they had to die, they would rather it was with dignity and on their own terms. Which is how I came to be filming them standing chest deep in the rising water, until the police waded in and arrested us all.
We were out of jail the next day and the mood back at the village was, surprisingly, jubilant. My camera assistant-cum-sister - last seen disappearing upriver on a log boat just before the police arrived - had managed to get our footage on to Star TV's national news. New supporters were arriving and the immediate threat of submergence was over until next year's monsoon season.
So I headed back to London to get a solar battery charger and a TV commission. Not that I held out much hope for the latter. British TV is no longer interested in poor people in far away places, except as a backdrop to rich people surfing, clubbing or playing survival games. (Recent research by the Third World and Environment Broadcasting Trust showed that the five terrestrial TV channels between them broadcast a total of four programmes on the politics of developing countries in the year 2000/1).
But I did think we had a chance with this one, as Booker-prize winning author Arundhati Roy had recently become the public face of the campaign against the dam: "As a writer, I was drawn towards it like a vulture to a kill. Instinctively I knew that this was the heart of politics, this was the story of modern India." Plenty of TV companies were interested in the beautiful celebrity, but none in how and why the farmers had decided to drown.
Shovelling rejection letters aside, I borrowed a few thousand pounds and headed back to India. Only partly from sour grapes, I also started work on my theory of why documentaries work better without a commission. It starts at Heathrow, where I was whinging about the weight of my single rucksack jammed full of camera, lights and sound kit. Had I been making documentaries for the BBC 15 years ago, I'd have needed six people to carry the equipment and a corporation-sized bank balance to buy it. But those days ended with the arrival of the new breed of cheap, lightweight video equipment.
Two planes, three rickshaws, two buses, a boat, a motorbike and an eight-mile hike later, I'm back in the village and I've found my lead character. Luhariya Sonkariya's house is lowest on the river bank and will be first to be submerged. He is also the healer, holy man, comedian, musician and general centre of attention. He quickly grasps the film-making basics and takes it upon himself to brief everyone else - pretend the camera isn't there, never look into the "eye" (lens) and don't adjust your lungi (sarong) or the radio mic will fall off.
Luhariya first showed me the village's sacred place where 10,000 people used to attend the annual Holi festival until the half-built dam submerged their gods. Next I followed him into the forests surrounding the village. He restocked his supplies and explained how each plant is used - to make plates, rope or cigarettes or to cure stomach cramps, axe wounds or burns. "They really work," he said, noting my bemused expression. Several days later, one of his pastes applied to my forehead eased a raging fever.
There was just one setback with Luhariya: his wife Bulgi was initially too shy to appear on camera. But after several weeks living, sleeping, ploughing fields and rolling chappatis with the family, she trusted me sufficiently to at least watch the rough cut from last year's footage. She pressed her face close against the camera's flip-out screen for a tense 15 minutes, then, fighting back tears, asked: "What do you want me to do?"
Bulgi came to be the emotional centre of the film, nailing many complex arguments with simple soundbites such as: "They only offer us land on paper. But we can't cultivate on paper, can we?" There's no way she would have been persuaded by a big film crew storming in and out on a tight schedule.
Where my low-budget limitations helped achieve greater intimacy with the villagers, they also turned out to be an advantage with the pro-dam contingent. The kind of narrow-minded, old-fashioned politicians who still think big dams are a good idea cannot comprehend that a young, scruffy, female person is making television. They drop their guard completely and allow the condescension to ooze through to the camera. Gujarat's minister for Narmada irrigation, Mr Vyas, even invited me back to his sumptuous house to show off his collection of tribal artwork and to explain why the tribal people should give up their way of life "gladly, willingly, smilingly".
Clearly, films like this appeal only to a limited market here in the UK - people sitting in a house preparing to drown will never get ratings like people sitting in a house hoping to win £75,000. The trick is to combine the limited market here with that in Europe, Asia, America and the rest of the world. And, again, it helps not to have a commission. Well, it helps that the copyright is owned by a small production company obsessed with getting the story out and not too bothered about making money.
Take McLibel. Channel 4 made a three-hour drama, which was screened in the UK and that was it. I made a 50 minute documentary, which myself and our distributors, Journeyman Pictures, have plugged endlessly ever since. So far we've managed five national broadcasts, film festivals, cable and cinema screenings in 23 countries, theatrical release in Australia, 1,000s of VHS copies and 100s of free downloads from our website. Just last weekend, five years after completion, it was broadcast by the WorldLink TV satellite network across America. We were paid only $2,000, but by the end of the weekend another three million people had seen it.
Which is all well and good, but not having a commission does have a drawback - sustaining a three year production on fresh air and favours can grind you down till you forget why you're doing it. But then something reminds you. Filming at the dam one day, I asked my interpreter, Jayesh, for his opinion. Brilliant, he replied. It provides water and electricity to millions of people - and it is soooo big. A week later, we visited the laughable resettlement site Luhariya has been offered. Dam still good Jayesh? Yes, but they should rehabilitate the people properly, this isn't fair. Next, the big city slums, home to most of the 16m people displaced by 50 years of Indian dam building. Jayesh? Nothing can justify this. Then the industrialists eagerly awaiting the Narmada water. Jayesh? Wait a minute, they said it was for the poor people. And finally a village in the drought area that uses simple water-saving and collecting techniques and is now self-sufficient. Jayesh? OK, we can solve our water problems without causing mass destruction.
Jayesh's change of heart beautifully reminded me what the point of all this is. Lay out a well-reasoned argument in front of a thinking person and you might change their mind. Change enough people's minds and you might change the world. Unfashionable, I know, but I just can't stop believing in documentaries.
· Drowned Out will be premiered at the Curzon Soho, London W1 (0871 8710022) on Wednesday, followed by a Q&A session with Franny Armstrong and others. For further information, visit www.spannerfilms.net.
