Early in the documentary film, Women Beyond Bollywood, eminent filmmaker Aruna Raje who made the path–breaking Rihaee, says, “Initially I found, and even today maybe, that men do not like to take orders from women. So I had to avoid giving orders and make requests instead.”
The film discusses how women directors are challenging Bollywood’s gender stereotypes – there are snatches of songs, such as Khambe Jaisi Khadi Hai from Aamir Khan’s Dil, which remain superhits but, for many viewers, will be cringeworthy – and the uphill task they have taken on.
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Women Beyond Bollywood, which will have its India premier at RAAH: A Cultural and Literacy Centre in Pune on May 5, is also a personal story of its filmmaker Rahila Bootwala and other women in cinema.
She begins the documentary with shots of Victory Cinema in Camp where her sisters and she often went to watch films. “I was 4 years old the first time I came here to see my first film ever,” says Bootwala, who attended St Anne’s High School and St Mira’s College for Girls, before leaving for Paris in 1994 to become a Production Accountant in a Merchant Ivory film, Jefferson in Paris.
“In Paris, I thought women might play the roles they chose,” she says. It was when she moved to Montreal to set up her production company that Bootwala realised how difficult it was to be a woman in cinema. She has hung on for more than 12 years, and been a part of a number of international productions.
In 2016, Bootwala took note when the National Film Board of Canada announced that 50 per cent of its production budget would be for projects led by women. “I was curious about what was happening in my home country, which I had left when I was 20 years old,” she says. Women Beyond Bollywood is an investigation into the realities of films in India. In the film, Raje tells her, “Filmmakers never seriously think of the impact of their work on society.”
Casting Director Uma Da Cunha asserts that Bollywood is only a part rather than the whole of Indian cinema.
Playback singer Usha Uthup, screenwriter Urmi Juvekar, writer and director Leena Yadav and production designer Shazia Iqbal and cinematographer Deepti Gupta are among the women filmmakers who talk about working in a field where “the first thing people notice is your gender”.
The film flows easily as it touches different shores, such as the #MeToo movements and scenes with a mainstream Bollywood actor and a director who apologises for objectifying women. “Change is on its way, but it is slow,” says Bootwala.
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