Coal news and updates

In The Cost of Coal, a virtual reality (VR) film directed by Faiza Khan, the moment you snap on the headset, you’re transported to a coal mine in Korba, Chhattisgarh. You’re standing next to Nirupabai, who lives on the edge of the mine; she has witnessed its inexorable growth swallow up her neighbours’ ancestral property and homes. The government, unsurprisingly, is doing a miserable job of rehabilitating her. Nirupabai and you look down into the yawning canyon — the second largest coal mine in the world.

Cost of Coal was originally a 3,000 word article written by Aruna Chandrasekhar, the lead researcher on the coal issue at Amnesty International. It was screened at the Toronto and MAMI film festivals, and recently, bought up by the United Nations’ Virtual Reality app, UNVR — the first Indian film to be on the platform. “Virtual reality has gone past being just a toy of cheap thrills. With the acquisition of Cost of Coal by UNVR, we are participating in building a network that transfers people elsewhere, builds empathy and makes the world smaller,” says Zain Memon, co-founder (alongside Anand Gandhi) of Memesys Culture Lab, the organisation that produced the film. The Cost of Coal article-VR collaboration is part of ElseVR (pronounced “elsewhere”), an app Memesys has recently debuted. It has long-form articles, written by authors and journalists, which are then augmented by VR films.

At the Memesys lab in Versova, Mumbai, Memon and his team create VR films that last a maximum of eight minutes — otherwise, it gets too uncomfortable and disorienting. The snap journeys back and forth from two different realities — one’s own and the one in the headset — is jolting; even after the film has ended, one is left with physical symptoms of having been in a different world. “A man watched a VR film from the viewpoint of a camera atop a drone that was flying through a valley. He was left feeling dizzy, weightless, and nauseous,” says Memon. This is certainly not a film to have popcorn with.

A VR film submerges one into a new world; sometimes, it feels voyeuristic. You’re there, but people don’t seem to know you are; except, when someone looks directly at the camera. For a second, you feel like you’ve been caught. Memon calls VR an “empathy machine”. “It’s the most advanced and intuitive way of putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. I could lecture you for hours about what a Syrian refugee is going through. But if you can sit down in a refugee camp, next to a child that’s been wailing for hours because he doesn’t have water to drink, being cradled by his helpless mother, the empathy is more pronounced,” he says.

Source:Indian Express