Unrecorded

  

 

 

 Year 2020

 

 

Introduction to the script:  The structural inequality being the most visible, this film is on the sidestepping of the cases and faces of Isolation, the different frequencies of the same.

 

Writer/about me: This comes from me who is a drug resistant tb patient and trying to cope with the continuing isolation and traumatizing medication. Two years of isolation now, many more months to go and an experience with tuberculosis from 2015, a onetime intestinal tuberculosis survivor, now a drug resistant tuberculosis patient.

 

Purpose: An attempt to make drug resistant tuberculosis to be a subject to be talked about, at least now when we are trying to correlate with the covid19 pandemic. No concern is given to deadly illnesses like tuberculosis it opens doors to social and economic justice, political attention. This film is to remind that we were here this entire time too, we are still here, keep this memory and overwhelm the system to tackle killers like tuberculosis and others. Isolation is not new to us; to drug resistant tuberculosis patients like me.

 

 

Description of the topic and script: 

 

In India on an annual basis, there are over 1, 00,000 new cases of Drug Resistant tuberculosis cases. Drug-resistant TB is caused by TB bacteria that are resistant to at least one first-line antiTB drug. Multidrug-resistant TB (MDR TB) is resistant to more than one anti-TB drug and at least isoniazid (INH) and rifampin (RIF).

Patients are put through toxic drugs with long regimens and painful daily injectables causing severe sideffects, including disabilities like hearing loss. Tuberculosis is airborne; I have the bacteria inside me while typing this, the tb survivor who helped me cope with this, whom I connected online, lost her hearing from the medication. Other survivors, to whom I am connected to also have stories of survival and losses, never ending, yet unrecorded. Isolation is not cozying up in safe homes; because if it were, then where would the homeless isolate during a pandemic?  It’s not about eating healthy during a global health crisis, because then what would the ones with no food at all do? What would the already struggling do?  Who is recording their isolation? There is no record of this isolation, because the invisible are never recorded for the very truth that they are just not visible to you. The privileged spaces do not find this a convenient story, this could go unrecorded forever.

 

SCRIPT

 

Title: Unrecorded

Theme: Isolation and survival

Genre: Medical/Health themed

Storytelling mode: Narrative                  

Duration: 3 minutes; or more if detailing and deep into issue is taken.               

                         

Title tagline:    "Busy preparing death notes I forgot to die"

 

< A Montage portraying row of short events showcasing the masked faces in a tb isolation ward, monochrome in black and blue. The hospital isolation ward with blue is highlighted, the walls, white pillows, black floors, black IV stands, black injection medicine bottles, packed up daily meds covered and hid away far from the patient bed, the congestion, no music involved, raw footage sounds only

- second title/Chapter appears: MASKED TB CHRONICLES>

 

Narration one:  To watch me have my medicine is the worst sight you will ever see if I allow. its visibly intolerable and painful, you are going to take your eyes off soon, the projectile vomiting will force you run from the scene, you cannot see me getting injected with all those toxic medicines, Kanamycin, capreomycin all those goes straight into my body, I am then falling out of senses every day, like I fall out of love, academia, work, friendships, relationships and people. Yet now, Sure I am of the fact that tuberculosis is not the harshest thing that happened to me, after all don’t you know we live in this world where hatred, shame, stigma, inequalities dance in all audacity. Is that why this is difficult, is that why they let a killer bacteria roam free and get into us easily? Inhaling of a killer.  You and I breathe the same air and it ain’t so romantic here.

 

<<<<The combination shots of the above said narration, where the protagonist’s face isn’t revealed but the cut away and cut in shots of the actions and the scenes as descried goes with close ups and extreme close-ups. The ambience could be the room but not a grim one, but by showing the display board on the wall, the politics, the character and the statements fulfilling the lead's nature is shown, not on a sad note here, but simply introducing the matter, The movie narration changes here, there is light on screen now, Sunlight and bright, a sleepy cat with its two front legs placed tight on its eyes crisscross trying to have uninterrupted sleep. With the end of it comes the next sub title/Chapter: TENTACLES >>>>> >>>>

 

 

-The sound of crawling worms, coldness and numbness, the scene shows the girl in the mask describing something to the doctor. This scene has an unrelated backdrop noise as said. The clothing coats of the mask are thick and more than two layers and there is fear in the eyes, in the tb centre, the scene is a chaos with disturbances.-

 

-The next scene is a sudden shift, a switch to the laughers in a room, there is a sense of peace and calmness, there is energy and people cheering, the camera moves in haste to show the scene only to reveal that the talking and cheering comes from the phone handed in the protagonist, under the mask comes big wide smile.  The change in scene goes to evening shot, there is a bucket near the head position  of the bed, sanitisers grabbed tight in hand of the masked protagonist and there is stillness as contrary to the beginning of this scene.-

 

-The shot of the journal which is worn out from rough use, says 'notes', . There are pages flipping shot of the disappointing letters,  lines and unfinished writings in a really unrecognizable handwriting, there is a perfectly aligned portion titled ‘drug resistant tb’ notes and testimonies, death notes stating aversion to living and happy notes wanting to live all aligned in one.-

 

Next sub title/Chapter : appears : FEEDING SHAME : here  includes the shots of countless fast slideshow of faces in mask, in diff looks and ethnicity and distinctive in outlooks, with a backdrop are questions that are asked by people, all in stigmatizing tones. Some of them include: does tb still exist? How hard it is to take some medicines? Stop pretending to be sick. You are not sick and a lot more (will be added) taking account to the actual questions that tb patients hear every day.

 

Sub title appears : CACTI CATEYE

A close up and switch to a scene of blood in the sink and the protagonist opening the tap to let water pour and clean the sink, with the draining of the sink, the character comes out of a door, to an open ground, the open ground is endless with massive green and active cats, who the protagonist is already familiar with, the character seems happy but not sure with the masked people, there are a large number of people in masks and she couldn’t give look into all of them at once, all seems to be engaged in watering the cacti garden and petting the cats, there is an enormously large sized page from her journal on the ground, she isn’t even bothered to see why it’s that big, there are comfortable loud noises which she seems to like. The ground is busy, she couldn’t contain the energy and register it to her head all at once, she wants to write them down and finding words to describe this was tough yet she attempts to do it.

Busy in actions she forgot the evening and the rain. The cold and the anger were bygone. The cacti looked strong and reminded her reading about how hard to kill survivors the cacti were.  Glued to the sight she forgot to breakdown.

 

Narration two:  Run not away. With the diseased, the invisible; the inconvenience it offers, here reality chokes. Yet if you want this to just be a poem of the dying, this is not one, these are stories of the ones preparing death notes and forget to die.

 

End sub title: breathe in /out.

 

 

 

Note:  This is the storyline sketch script. An elaborative one could be added if necessary.  -ATHIRA ELSSA JOHNSON