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Women at a Distance: Gender Politics and the Past in Bhavani Iyer’s Writings

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Women Filmmakers in Contemporary Hindi Cinema

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Abstract

The past two decades of Hindi cinema have witnessed a renewed interest in heritage cinema. Starting with Lagaan (2001), films, such as Bajirao Mastani (2015), Padmaavat (2018), and Baahubali, the Beginning (2015) and Baahubali 2, the Conclusion (2017), have found commercial success and often critical acclaim. Most of these films have used the aesthetics of period drama (costuming, mise-en-scène, setting) to offer spectacular representations of an imagined past. The act of reconstructing a certain version of the past in a heritage film is also an act of invention connected to cultural memory, which offers commentary on the present and its preoccupations. Relatively new to the Bombay film industry, Bhavani Iyer has already penned screenplays for several significant films and TV series. In contrast to contemporary heritage cinema, Iyer’s adapted scripts for films, such as Black (2005), Lootera (2013), and Raazi (2018), offer a more critical and nuanced mode of approaching past events and historical personages. In my chapter, I explore how Iyer’s “post-heritage” adaptations complicate consumerist and/or ideologically conservative engagements with the past by disrupting the hegemonic and idealized formations of gender that abound in Hindi heritage cinema.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    I interviewed Bhavani Iyer for the purposes of this chapter. All quotes from Iyer unless indicated otherwise are drawn from her interview (unpublished) with the author of this chapter.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Nebraska at Omaha, Omaha, NE, USA

    Tanushree Ghosh

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  1. Tanushree Ghosh
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Correspondence to Tanushree Ghosh .

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  1. Department of HSS, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, India

    Aysha Iqbal Viswamohan

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Ghosh, T. (2023). Women at a Distance: Gender Politics and the Past in Bhavani Iyer’s Writings. In: Iqbal Viswamohan, A. (eds) Women Filmmakers in Contemporary Hindi Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10232-5_14

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