A Friend Turned Foe

Thirty years and the dynamics between this large animal and rural India have changed enough to prompt an Assamese filmmaker to name his documentary on elephant movement A Friend Turned Foe. Selected for the non-feature section of the Indian Panorama for the forthcoming International Film Festival of India, 2008, A Friend Turned Foe, by Gautam Saikia, is 15 minutes of crushing ground reality captured as realistically as the cinematic medium allows. The film begins with night visuals of villagers trying to hoot away a pair of elephants. Moments later, the two tuskers are on a rampage, destroying paddy, huts and everything that comes in their way. After a minute or two of bone-chilling frenzy, a voice narrates how deforestation and loss of natural habitat have led to the escalating man-animal conflict in Upper Assam.