Cinematic Expressions: Gender, Culture and Politics
Center for Women's Studies, JNU (UPE II Project)
We invite you to a one-day event on the question of women in cinema through works produced by women filmmakers. What happens when a woman holds a camera and tells her own story? What is it that the form of cinema makes possible? Does a film have a gender or does the gender of the filmmaker determine the shape of a film? The event is structured in the format of film screenings followed by panel discussions.
Date: March 11, 2018, 10 am- 6 pm
Venue: School of Arts and Aesthetics Auditorium, JNU
Session I : 10 am – 1:30 pm
Documenting the Everyday through a Gendered Lens
Film Screening: Njaval Pazhangal| Jeeva| 23 minutes| 2016
Film Screening: Mod| Pushpa Rawat| 69 minutes| 2016
Film Screening: Gi| Kunjila| 30 minutes| 2017
Panel Discussion (12:30-1:30): Dr. Carmel Christy (Chair and Respondent), Pushpa Rawat, Kunjila
Lunch Break: 1:30-2:30
Session II : 2:30 pm - 6:00 pm
Chronicles of Resistance
Film Screening: Books we Made |Anupama Chandra, Uma Devi Tanuku| 68 minutes| 2015
Film Screening: Ek Inquilab Aur Aaya: Lucknow 1920-1949 | Uma Chakravarti | 66 minutes| 2017
Panel Discussion (5:00-6:00): Veena Hariharan (Chair and Respondent), Uma Chakravarti, Anupama Chandra, Uma Tanuku
List of Films
- Set in Kerala, Njaval Pazhangal explores how appearance, complexion and colour come to be received differently by children through associations linked to social hierarchies. Thus it weaves together memories and interactions to analyze the formative structures of childhood and the everyday pedagogies of caste and gender that shapes it.
- Mod is an attempt by the filmmaker at communicating with the young men who hang out at the ‘notorious’ water tank in her neighbourhood in Pratap Vihar, Ghaziabad. The water tank is a space that is frequented by the so-called ‘no-gooders’ of the locality, a place where they play cricket, play cards, drink and smoke up. When she enters the space with her camera, the boys are curious and at the same time wary of it and her. They sometimes resist, sometimes protest, and at times, open up. As the film unfolds we get a hint of the lives the boys lead and the fragile world they create for themselves at the water tank.
- Gi delves into the conflicted domain of memories, relationships and cultures. This film is a story of a girl and her grandfather who are dealing with different realities. The grandfather is losing some memories and moving into worlds Gi is unfamiliar with. She on the other hand is trying to come to terms with the world around her, her lover and her work which all seem hostile to her.
- Books We Made is inspired by the work of Urvashi Butalia and Ritu Menon, who co-founded the first feminist publishing house in India: Kali for Women. The film is about the joy and pain of surviving in two non-lucrative professions: that of writing for small, discerning audiences, and that of publishing, translating and promoting work barely known outside its own linguistic region in India. It looks back on thirty years in publishing and focuses on the feminist politics and friendships that make this survival possible.
- Ek Inquilab Aur Aaya: Lucknow 1920-1949 is a documentary set in Firanghi Mahal, Lucknow, an institution for rationalist Islamic scholarship founded in the late 17th century. It tells the unknown stories of two women and their struggles to find their own ways of being in a time of dramatic changes. One wrote poetry to express herself and the other became a student activist who went to jail for being a revolutionary. The film is an ode to the indomitable spirit of women who refuse to give up the search for a meaningful life.
