The Ladies Finger and Godrej India Culture Lab present a feminist film festival in Mumbai, and we’d love to have you there with us! Read on for all the juicy deets.
Did feminism in India start in December 2012 in reaction to the Delhi gang-rape? Though sometimes it feels so, we know it isn’t true. Does feminism begin and end with responses to sexual violence? That’s another thing we know isn’t true.
This Independence Day, why not come together to celebrate a terrific arc of desi feminist activity? The world of feminist documentary filmmaking is fearless in its range of subjects. Fearless in its experimenting with forms of filmmaking and storytelling. Fearless in how it lovingly embraces all the different ways to be an Indian woman.
On the Independence Day weekend, August 15-16, The Ladies Finger and the experimental space Godrej India Culture Lab come together to present Wandering Women: The Feminist Docu Film Festival of India. The weekend will be a selection of this fantastic oeuvre that celebrates wandering women, women who cross the line, women who frankly don’t care that there is a line.
Come hang out at the Godrej India Culture Lab in Vikhroli, Mumbai and watch awesome films: from a warm 1992 film about one of India’s earliest woman actors to a 2002 film that embraced online culture a decade before it happened to a fantastic ‘YouTube Party’ – a slew of videos made by very young filmmakers who were born with a splash into a feminism-loving Internet.
Enjoy a big, dashing film about the big, dashing founder of the Pink Sari vigilantes. Or the stories of a group of daring women journalists in rural Uttar Pradesh, a butch female truck-driver in Gujarat, a young photographer who records the aftermath of a painful break-up and the lives of other bright, young women like her in Ghaziabad.
Wit. Truth-telling. Courage. What else do you want this August 15th weekend?
This exciting event is the happy result of some of the conversations that took place when we published our Feminist Documentary List: A Starter Kit (you’ll find Part 1 here, and Part 2 here) — when people asked, wouldn’t it be great if we could watch some of these all in one place? So with the good folks at Godrej India Culture Lab, we’re presenting a festival very, very close to our hearts.
Updated Schedule:
Venue: Auditorium (first floor), Godrej ONE, Vikhroli (East). (Entry from Eastern Express Highway.)
This event is free and open to all.
Check our Facebook event page for the latest updates and don’t forget to RSVP here!
Here’s more about the panel discussions.
DAY 1: Saturday, 15th August, 2015
HOW HAS INDIAN FEMINISM CHANGED DOCUMENTARIES?
Panelists:
Bishakha Datta (@busydot) works on gender and sexuality in the digital age, runs the non-profit Point of View in Mumbai, writes and films non-fiction, and is perennially interested in what’s not freely expressed. Bishakha has edited two anthologies around women’s lives in India, 9 Degrees of Justice (Zubaan, 2010) and And Who Will Make the Chapatis? (Stree, 1998). Films she’s made include In The Flesh (2001), Taza Khabar (2005) Zinda Laash (2007), Out of the Closet (2009). She’s currently working on #Selling Sex, a non-fiction book on the lives and realities of sex workers in India – and is half of the duo behind the online imprint Deep Dives.
Moderator:
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DAY 2: Sunday, 16th August, 2015
ARE VIRAL VIDEOS JUICING UP FEMINISM OR DILUTING IT?
Panelists:
Moderator:
Here’s more about the films we’ll be showing.
DAY 1: Saturday, 15th August, 2015
11:15 am Gulabi Gang by Nishtha Jain (2012), 96 min
This documentary came to Indian theatres around the same time as Gulab Gang, a Bollywood feature film about the same eponymous women’s group in rural Uttar Pradesh and its iconic leader Sampat Pal. Unlike the feature, this film is fearless about exploring the grim everyday of women’s lives in Bundelkhand, a grimness against which the Gulabi Gang’s purposeful interventions seem well, the stuff of fiction. One critic pointed out that in parts “Gulabi Gang has the texture of a busy investigative thriller, driven by Sampat’s determination to see justice done.” But there are no easy solutions in this movie.
Nishtha Jain is a graduate from Jamia Mass Communication Centre in New Delhi. She started her career as an editor and correspondent for video newsmagazines before joining the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), specializing in film direction. She works as an independent filmmaker in Bombay.
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2:00 pm Manjuben Truckdriver by Sherna Dastur (2012), 50 min
She goes by the name Manjuben but constructs her identity as a male, macho truck driver. The film, which played at Queer film festivals around the world, spends a few days on the road with Manjuben. She is ‘one of the boys’ but she neither smokes nor drinks, as other truckers do. She has created an identity for herself against social, cultural and economic norms, yet has no stories of victimhood, commanding complete respect from her peers. To watch the film is to be endeared to its protagonist.
Sherna Dastur, born in 1971, is a graduate of the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. Some of her documentary work includes ‘Safdar Hashmi – 2000’, a film on India’s most prolific street theatre activist; ‘Rah Bahari’ (Those Outside the Path) – 1997, a film on the nomadic lives of the Rabaris and their resistance to government models of development; ‘Latur – An Epilogue’ – 1996, on the so-called rehabilitation of people three years after an earthquake struck Latur; ‘Jungle Bolta Hai’ (Voices of the Jungle) – 1994, a film on the tribal people of Dangs, their struggle for jungle rights, and their increasing marginalisation.
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3:00 pm Taza Khabar by Bishaka Datta (2008), 31 min
An eight-page fortnightly paper run by a group of women in Bundelkhand, Uttar Pradesh. This is what Khabar Lahariya was when this film was made. Today, it is a weekly run by 40 rural women journalists and sells over 6,000 copies across UP and Bihar, grown past the wildest dreams of Nirantar, the NGO that nurtured Khabar Lahariya. To see where this fearless publication came from, watch Bishakha Datta’s documentary and enjoy the thrill of what community-driven, public-interest journalism really looks like.
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4:30 pm Dream Girls by Afrah Shafiq and Deepika Sharma (2013), 14 min
Dream Girls was made as response to the December 16, 2012 Delhi gang rape and the year that followed it. Two young filmmakers in Mumbai, Afrah Shafiq and Deepika Sharma, look at the ways in which women navigate their lives and the ways in which they would like to live it. Their reality is full of protest, fear, vigor, paranoia, chances and victories. But women are also dreaming all the time, and what is it that they dream about?
Deepika Sharma is a freelance documentary filmmaker and a Line Producer. ‘Dream Girls’ is her first independent film. She has been assisting before this on various documentary, art and ad projects. Stories about city, gender and love interests her the most.
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5:00 pm Kamlabai by Reena Mohan (1992), 47 min
This film tells the awesome story of Kamlabai Gokhale, a pioneering actress of the Marathi stage and one of the first actors in Indian cinema. Born in 1900, Kamlabai was 92 and confined to her bed when the film was made. This is by no means a morose watch. The film is full of playful exchanges, memories, old photographs, music and Kamlabai’s reenactments of her favourite plays — and through them the fascinating history of early 20th century Indian cinema and theatre. Don’t miss the bits when Gokhale talks of taking on male roles in Shakespeare and desi epics. Filmmaker Mohan once said of this film. ““The film wasn’t meant to be documentation or a film that had to inform in a stodgy way. The film was her, she was the film.”
DAY 2: Sunday, 16th August, 2015
10:00 am Scribbles on Akka by Madhusree Datta (2000), 60 min
“You can confiscate/money in hand;/can you confiscate/the body’s glory?”
These lines were written by Akka Mahadevi, the 12th century ascetic saint-poet. Scribbles On Akka gives contemporary musical life to her radical poems. One of the film’s central questions is, excitingly enough, did Akka wear clothes? The imaginative film is, as someone succinctly put it, “a celebration of rebellion.”
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11:00 am Nirnay by Pushpa Rawat and Anupama Srinivasan (2012), 56 min
Pushpa Rawat, a feisty freelance still photographer, first met co-director Anupama Srinivasan, at a filmmaking workshop conducted by Srinivasan. Nirnay, which was made over three years, follows some of Rawat’s friends, who like her come from small-towns, now live in Ghaziabad and negotiate being a young woman and making hard choices. This startlingly honest film also tells the story of Rawat’s own breakup. No intimate space is left sacred and untouched by the film – we see them all – boyfriends, husbands and fathers. The film is dedicated to Rawat’s friends, and we see the utterly moving friendship of these young women with each other. Nirnay will remind you that sometimes unvarnished biography makes for the most powerful political art.
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2:00 pm UnLimited Girls (2002) by Paromita Vohra, 92 min
Ever in the mood for a big, juicy, funny, endlessly curious film about the ideas of feminism? What is it that you say? Always? Oh, then it’s time to watch this epic documentary. At the time it came out, it caused some old-school eyes to roll, given its ahem *fearless* attitude (inside joke which we will explain in one second) to both content and form. The film goes between encounters with feminists young and old as well as conversations in a chat room among characters such as Marxist Usha, Chamki Girl, Atilla the Nun, Anarchist Ann and (ta-dah!) Fearless. For pure voyeuristic pleasure it is wonderful to just watch the interviews of some badass ladies such as Urvashi Butalia, Vina Mazumdar, Meena Menon, Sonal Shukla, Satyarani Chaddha, Shahjehan Begum. Then there are all manner of memorable vignettes such as the Superman School for Ladies.
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4:30 pm Naach by Saba Dewan (2008), 84 min
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6:00 pm Ladies Special by Nidhi Tuli (2003), 28 min
Ladies Special, a warm, crackling film, places us in a local train compartment in Bombay, with working commuting women in a train reserved for ladies. We hear snippets of the everyday lives and battles of the women who travel, but we also share in the explosive fun they have together. As this description puts it, “The film and its makers join in the fun as religious ceremonies and birthdays are celebrated by women commuters who have been traveling companions for years. It would appear that each compartment has its own (sub)community, the women careful about boarding the same bogey each day. Lives are shared, gossip is exchanged, vegetables are chopped, manicures are had and clothes are bought as the 50km distance between Virar and Churchgate becomes a space suspended, unto itself.”
Check our Facebook event page for the latest updates and don’t forget to RSVP here!
August 5, 2015 at 6:40 am
theladiesfinger IndiaCultureLab Please do this in Calcutta too…:)