2nd Women’s Film Festival, Chennai
It is an effort to forge identities. It is an attempt to place things in perspective. When movies attempt to speak sense to power positions, they need to be heard.
They speak of multiple identities, their multiple positions; some forced; some consciously embraced; some consciously rejected. Be it communal violence, identity politics, farmers suicides, bar dancers or moral policing; when every form of conflict and contest becomes engendered, lives of women get caught in mindless mayhem. And, when movies explore these themes, it becomes a shared experience for those of us, couched in our comfortable worlds.
An eight day women’s movie fest is reclamation of a woman’s space through the cinematic lens. When gender transcends every possible faultline, it makes a statement, charting out a pattern through a kaleidoscope of experiences.
For the willing, it offers a feminist world view, one that tries to map out women’s experiences across borders. For the uninitiated, it offers an understanding that there is a world outside of our own experiences. Feminist discourse believes that women’s struggles are not unique. Struggles of the past form the recurring themes for the struggles of the future. When the word ‘feminism’ makes a woman squirm and man recoil, the idea of a women’s film festival is another moment to pause and look back at the traversed path and its struggles.
Somewhere in the alleys, questions will be raised about the futility or the utility of a women’s film festival. Are they mere symbolisms? Is it an othering project or is it mainstreaming an idea of women’s films? Do we attribute meanings to movies unintended by their creators?
Every time cinema becomes a tool for discourse building, it also walks the tight rope. Not all women film makers see themselves as a single category. There are faultlines of ideology, schools of thought, positions and perspectives. Sometimes, meanings are generated and attributed.
But every unique experience and its ideology that has been visually captured needs a space for debate, at times like these, when women’s sexualities are sought to be contained. Symbolisms evoke meanings. A woman’s film festival evokes a certain meaning. They chronicle critical positions. Their vantage point makes them voices of dissent and assertion. When movies reflect upon the anxieties of womanhood in times of conflict and peace, it strikes a resonance with our privileged positions.
Sandwiched between capitalist commercial machinations that seek to hijack the significance of the woman’s day through candy floss symbols and those that critique it as yet another elite construct, the movie fest culminating on March 8, can function as a potential tool of inquiry. An array of 137 movies, spread over eight days, can help build bonds by universalising women’s experiences.
Every exercise need not consummate into making a ‘difference’. Where it can make a ‘statement’, it would mean we have arrived.
A week down, when the curtains fall and the carpets are rolled back, perhaps questions would have been raised, debates would have been spurred, experiences would be demolished or embraced; they can become a part of the collective understanding of the traversed path, the rugged terrain of the present and challenges of the future.
(Written for the 2nd Women’s Film Festival in Chennai, March 1 to March 8, 2009)
They speak of multiple identities, their multiple positions; some forced; some consciously embraced; some consciously rejected. Be it communal violence, identity politics, farmers suicides, bar dancers or moral policing; when every form of conflict and contest becomes engendered, lives of women get caught in mindless mayhem. And, when movies explore these themes, it becomes a shared experience for those of us, couched in our comfortable worlds.
An eight day women’s movie fest is reclamation of a woman’s space through the cinematic lens. When gender transcends every possible faultline, it makes a statement, charting out a pattern through a kaleidoscope of experiences.
For the willing, it offers a feminist world view, one that tries to map out women’s experiences across borders. For the uninitiated, it offers an understanding that there is a world outside of our own experiences. Feminist discourse believes that women’s struggles are not unique. Struggles of the past form the recurring themes for the struggles of the future. When the word ‘feminism’ makes a woman squirm and man recoil, the idea of a women’s film festival is another moment to pause and look back at the traversed path and its struggles.
Somewhere in the alleys, questions will be raised about the futility or the utility of a women’s film festival. Are they mere symbolisms? Is it an othering project or is it mainstreaming an idea of women’s films? Do we attribute meanings to movies unintended by their creators?
Every time cinema becomes a tool for discourse building, it also walks the tight rope. Not all women film makers see themselves as a single category. There are faultlines of ideology, schools of thought, positions and perspectives. Sometimes, meanings are generated and attributed.
But every unique experience and its ideology that has been visually captured needs a space for debate, at times like these, when women’s sexualities are sought to be contained. Symbolisms evoke meanings. A woman’s film festival evokes a certain meaning. They chronicle critical positions. Their vantage point makes them voices of dissent and assertion. When movies reflect upon the anxieties of womanhood in times of conflict and peace, it strikes a resonance with our privileged positions.
Sandwiched between capitalist commercial machinations that seek to hijack the significance of the woman’s day through candy floss symbols and those that critique it as yet another elite construct, the movie fest culminating on March 8, can function as a potential tool of inquiry. An array of 137 movies, spread over eight days, can help build bonds by universalising women’s experiences.
Every exercise need not consummate into making a ‘difference’. Where it can make a ‘statement’, it would mean we have arrived.
A week down, when the curtains fall and the carpets are rolled back, perhaps questions would have been raised, debates would have been spurred, experiences would be demolished or embraced; they can become a part of the collective understanding of the traversed path, the rugged terrain of the present and challenges of the future.
(Written for the 2nd Women’s Film Festival in Chennai, March 1 to March 8, 2009)
posted by P.V.Srividya at 9:45 AM
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