A film festival on Carleton’s campus is pushing audience members to look beyond Bollywood.
“Through a Woman’s Lens” showcases a wide range of Indian films directed by women. The speakers discussed how the festival pushed aside the Bollywood barrier of Indian cinema and instead explores a wide range of social and cultural themes throughout India.
“These films, as a group, bring up very important social and political issues including gender, caste and communalism in India today,” said Mayurika Chakravorty, a Carleton English professor who introduced the first film Oct. 19.
And it seemed as if the event is off to a good start with its opening film, Amu. The film focuses on the anti-Sikh riots of 1984.
But Chakravorty said the movie deals with issues beyond those events. She said she thinks viewers can find themes common to any culture or country.
“For Amu particularly, I feel that beyond its immediate context of the [riots], the movie also leads to broader questions about how to deal with the past that’s uncomfortable.”
The movie showcases the desire of the Indian population to cover up something that was seen as a terrible part of their history. As a young Indian-American girl struggles to find the truth about her birth parents, she is met with many obstacles and a desire to forget her past — and India’s past — ever happened.
But Chakravorty said director Shonali Bose refuses to let this happen.
“I think Amu makes a powerful case against such enforced silence and points out the need to tell the story, however disquieting,” she said.
And it seems the rest of the films will take on similarly challenging stances.
Malini Guha, a Carleton film studies professor, introduced the second film, Mr. and Mrs. Iyer. She said she thinks that, because these films were directed by women, they may focus on different and more challenging perspectives.
“It is important to feature films made by female directors that foreground women’s issues, as both these filmmakers and films tend to take on a marginalized position with respect to popular understandings of Indian cinema,” Guha said via email.
Mythili Rajiva, an associate professor at the Institute of Women’s Studies at the University of Ottawa will introduce the fourth film, Devrai, on Oct. 26.
“It’s an existential film set in an Indian setting,” Rajiva said.
But Devrai also seems to deal with universal issues. Rajiva said the film deals with questions about the environment and identity as a schizophrenic man tries to negotiate his reality.
And looking for these commonalities between cultures is perhaps one of the most important parts of this event, Rajiva said.
“I think the more exposure we get to other cultures and ways of thinking reminds us that even though there are differences there are also a lot of shared similarities,” she said.
“All of these things are what you’d call struggles of humanity.”
This event was put together by the High Commission of India to Canada, in collaboration with the university and the Canada-India Centre for Excellence.
There will be another three screenings Oct. 26-28.
