Panorama Documentary: A decades-long love affair with Bangladesh and its people
In 1997, Masud Chowdhury Pitu made his first documentary, and eventually created a documentary team which continues to create with a mission: spread love for the country and its people
The thumbnail shows a still of the beautiful Madhumati River. A lone boatman is sailing a dinghy in the middle of the river.
As you press play, a drone shot comes alive, with rustic flute music playing in the background. A warm female voice provides the voice over. The poetic script transports you to the bank of Madhumati – a river flowing slowly to the rhythm of the whistling wind.
Sitting in the concrete jungle of Dhaka city or somewhere outside the country, you will lose yourself in some villages along the Madhumati for 15 minutes.
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Most of the uploads of Panorama Documentary – a YouTube channel of Panorama Creators – offer this kind of escape.
Coupled with well-researched scripts, their videos promptly remind you of Bangladesh's villages, and the images, frame by frame, take you inside their beauty. And of course, with immaculate background music.
If you go through the comment section on each video, it becomes evident people love these documentaries. It seems as though the videos have a remarkable impact on the audience.
For example, a viewer named Tamanna wrote in the Madhumati River documentary's comment box that she doesn't feel like staying in Bangladesh for "price hikes and suffering," but "when I watch your videos, I feel where will I get such a beautiful country! I love this country, Panorama documentaries and the presentation."
The man who formed Panorama Creators three decades ago remains behind the camera, and as elusive as possible from public attention. His name is Masud Chowdhury Pitu, a prominent documentary filmmaker in Bangladesh.
Pitu, however, is not a YouTuber only, although they have a popular YouTube channel with one and a half million subscribers. In fact, they have several other popular channels on YouTube. Yet, calling Pitu a YouTuber is understating his lifelong efforts and achievements as a documentary filmmaker.
Pitu started his journey back in the 1990s, long before Youtube or streaming became a thing, and most Bangladeshi TV channels have been airing Pitu's documentaries ever since.
In the early 2000s for example, BTV used to air Dekha – Audekha, Protidin Bangladesh, Amar Bangladesh and many other daily and weekly documentary programmes – to name just a few - among many other programmes Panorama Creators made for multiple television channels.
However, despite such close proximity to the media, Pitu is least interested in media exposure for himself because he believes in work. And the work is to spread love for the nation.
"I make documentaries to create love among people for the country and its citizens," Masud Chowdhury Pitu told The Business Standard at his Kalabagan office during a recent interview.
His right hand was wrapped in medical tape. The decades-long heavy weight of the camera had taken a toll. The bandage helps subside the pain.
A video encyclopaedia
Panorama Creators have created a video encyclopaedia over the decades, focusing on the history, heritage, people's lifestyle and beauty of Bangladesh, with a common theme of positive and rustic vibes running through them.
Think of a remote bazaar with a rich tradition, or a unique village. Search it on their YouTube channel, and chances are you will find they have a documentary on it.
For example, did you know there is a village called Daha Para on the bank of the Sameswari River near the Indian border?
They made a video on the lives of the Hajong community as well as Bangalis in the border village and uploaded it on their YouTube channel a few weeks ago. Along with its scenic beauty captured on camera, the documentary dives deep into the lifestyle of these people.
You will see how these people manage their households. The documentary depicts how the Hajong and Garo women take significant leadership in family affairs, their sources of livelihood, how they cook, what they eat etc.
In combination with extremely rich camera work, music, script, narration; and tireless work of an editing pool, the result is captivating. By the end of 20 minutes, you will realise this is not a loosely made YouTube vlog that we are used to watching these days.
The technical prowess, efficiency and research the team is capable of are reflected in their work. "Unlike news stories, we extract the news beneath the surface in our documentaries," Masud Chowdhury Pitu said. "The idea is to explore in detail and bring out the positive stuff."
Creating love, but at a cost
If you want to make a documentary to create awareness against harming migratory birds, the usual approach is to illustrate and preach why migratory birds are important, and why we shouldn't harm them.
"But Pitu bhai taught us that we don't have to say out aloud, don't harm these birds. Bring out the beauty of the migratory birds. Some beautiful birds perched on trees or flying on the field gracefully is a loving spectacle," one of his team members told The Business Standard.
"When such a beautiful spectacle captivates you, you really don't need to be told not to harm the birds. You will not harm them out of love," the team member added.
If you start watching their videos one by one, you are likely to agree with this team's mission of enriching the audience with the idea of love for the country.
When their income from television started to deplete, their business shifted to making audiovisuals for various government agencies, international organisations and multinational companies for revenue. It was a strategic decision to stay afloat. However, they never really stopped pursuing their dreams: making documentaries out of sheer passion.
"We don't go places with an action camera like YouTubers these days do. We go with a bigger team, and bigger cameras, and spend several days on a documentary. For example, the latest video that we made on the Dhaka-Sylhet train journey took us nine days of shooting," Pitu said.
"It costs around three lakh takas to make such a documentary, but YouTube often doesn't bring us proportionate returns," he added.
In the past, when the country had fewer television channels, they earned better as advertisement earnings were concentrated within a few TV stations, unlike the present-day surge in the online advertisement world, alongside a huge number of television channels.
Now TV channels often cannot pay them enough to cover their expenses. So they started uploading their documentaries on YouTube. But sometimes YouTube videos make little money, unless a million views are reached, and every video does not reach that threshold.
"It is the passion to create love, for the country and its people, among the new generation that keeps us going," Pitu said, expressing his disappointment at how the bigger corporate houses could sponsor such unique projects, but which rarely happens.
Eyes of a photographer
Masud Chowdhury Pitu belongs to a traditionally wealthy family in Dhaka. We asked him how he ended up being a documentary filmmaker. "It was my mother. She always wanted me to never leave the country," replied Pitu, now a man in his 60s.
In his youth, he wanted to settle abroad. But his mother was adamant that her children, Pitu, his elder brother Ekushey award-winning writer Bulbul Chowdhury, and photographer A.R. Chowdhury Litu, stayed in Bangladesh.
In 1991, his mother sold a piece of land in Gazipur and bought a Sony 8mm Professional Camera for Pitu, which cost Tk120,000 at the time.
"Once my brother sent me to take a video for him at an Orosh Sharif in Bikrampur. While shooting, I spotted a little girl in a yellow saree. Her eyes were like that of a cat's, dazzling. I took several shots of the girl," Pitu said. "When I returned, my mother played them on VCR to see my work. When she saw that girl's video footage, she said I had the eyes of a photographer."
While this encouraged his mother to buy such an expensive camera for her son, it effectively ended his desire to settle abroad.
Pitu founded Panorama Creators in 1995. They ran it on a large scale – primarily editing videos and pictures for others. But Pitu had this connection with nature that needed only a spark to evolve. "Nature draws me in very strongly," he said.
One day when journalist Fauzul Karim Tara brought him some clips of Saint Martin's Island, taken by an Australian scientist who came to research its coral, to edit, Pitu found himself in awe of the blue beauty of the island. He had to go there.
It was in 1997.
"I went to visit St Martin's on Eid day with a camera and team and made a documentary of the island and its life," Pitu said. "It was the first documentary I ever made."
The same year, Bangladesh Television bought the documentary at an A rating price. This was the first professional documentary on Bangladesh's only coral island that was aired on television.
Pitu's documentary was not only praised in Bangladesh but was aired in the seven SAARC nations as well, simultaneously, through the SAARC Audio Visual Exchange (SAVE) programme.
Panorama Creators never had to look back again. They made numerous programmes for BTV thereafter and for almost all top-rated private channels in Bangladesh.
The thin line between optimism and despair
Masud Chowdhury Pitu has achieved a lot.
He has created an encyclopaedia of documentaries on Bangladesh. He is a legend in his sector. But as our conversation progressed, he couldn't hide his despair.
While repeatedly mentioning his motto to create love for Bangladesh and her people, Pitu told TBS, "There is no love. Otherwise, why would people commit crimes, why would people be corrupted?"
"Sometimes I feel like nothing has worked. Sometimes I feel, let's leave behind everything and make dramas for profit instead," Pitu said.
When asked if he is optimistic about infusing love among the people of this country, he paused.
"Of course I'm optimistic. That is why we survived despite losses," Pitu said. "A song [of hope] always keeps playing in my mind."
