Abstract
This chapter will try to draw the antecedents and contours of a probable third generation of women documentary practitioners in Indian subcontinent who, provoked by the post-digital condition of proliferation of image production and dissemination, have charted a fresh path in non-fiction film making that reflects their Artistic Self. A figural study of the various disruptive strategies that are mobilised by these woman directors helps us to understand their immanent femininity. The two films that will be discussed—I Am Yet to See Delhi (Humaira Bilkis, 2015) and Bare (Santana Issar, 2006)—are marked by self-inscription of its authors with the implicit desire to articulate the experience of selfhood and embodiment as multiple and fragmented. The chapter takes a long detour to establish a connect between these articulations and the foundational essay by Carol Hanisch, The Personal Is Political.
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Notes
- 1.
The Chipko movement is a non-violent agitation in 1973 for the cause of preservation of forests and to resist government backed logging and mass scale felling of trees. Women collectives were at the centre of this movement thereby changing their status from being mute witnesses to bodies with agency.
- 2.
Dividual as opposed to Individual is essentially divisible, composite and non-atomistic. The term was coined by Gilles Deleuze to explain the mechanisms of ‘control society’ and finds usage in film studies where because of the temporal character of the medium cannot be defined as individual, undivided expressions.
- 3.
Composer and musician Belinda Woods in her doctoral thesis Artistic Identity: Music and the Mirror observes, ‘I have discussed throughout this Chapter that as an experiential construct Artistic Identity is informed through the inter-relationship between the creative processes and interactions that occur between the artist and their cultural setting. In its simplest outward realisation Artistic Identity could be viewed, as Guercio posits, as the “stamp of the artist” discernible in their body of works—the recognisable attributes of the artist’s creative output. As a musician, my Artistic Identity therefore resides in the sounds I create—the way I develop and communicate abstract ideas toward the formation of musical constructs—and my interactions with other musicians (performed or social). It becomes apparent that my sound (as an aesthetic, physical and energetic sonic construct), is the audible stamp of my Artistic Identity—the performed aspect of self that provides a direct link between the energetic impulse that animates my creative existence, and the audible features of my playing or compositional output. The construct of my Artistic Identity therefore lies in the process of cultivating my sound as a Flautist, an improviser and a composer’ (p. 46).
- 4.
Hilsa is a popular fish in the Indian subcontinent and related to the species of herring, in the family Clupeidae.
- 5.
Qawwali is a Sufi Islamic devotional singing originating in the Indian subcontinent and popular across North India. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (1948–97) is one of the most well-known singer of this tradition.
- 6.
Dargah is the tomb of a Muslim saint.
- 7.
Cleric’s dialogues from the film are translated into English by the author.
- 8.
The home video footages of the family during leisure trips away from home have been shot under parental supervision and by the parents themselves. It’s this reassuring environment of protection and safety that allows everyone to break free from the quotidian flow of life, by resorting to singing, dancing and an overall performative presence by acknowledging the camera’s look akin to exhibitionism. Such opening up or baring oneself in home video images being free of all narrative intent has the potential to provoke a voyeuristic engagement when circulated outside of the family and into the public. The absence of a narrative sets the figures in the video in a frontal address with the spectators and thereby risking a scrutiny that is not being controlled by a narrator. However, in this case, the figures are subsumed in a discourse of temporality and thereby averting the structuring male gaze.
- 9.
A large section of media’s representation of women, be it advertising, TV shows or cinema, tend to objectify women and either reduce them to objects of sexual pleasure or stereotype gender relations. Advertisements for apparel, fast food, fashion and a wide range of consumer products usually expose a lot more skin for a female model compared to a male. For home products like dishwashers and detergents, it’s become a norm to have a female model instead of males, confirming to the existing gender stereotypes. In mainstream cinemas like Bollywood, the projection of female lead protagonists undergoes a codification that is visually distinct compared to the male lead. She is always lit with soft lights and filters to make her glow, her skin tone and facial makeup undergoes a fairer transformation, while there is always a backlight to create a halo and the overall effect of all these is it project a sensuous figure on the screen, irrespective of the character being essayed. Such codification has become a normative practice of cinematography in popular Hindi cinema.
- 10.
Refer to the section Shape of Content and the various strategies of disruption which are discussed therein like Against A Single Clock Time, Fractured Self, Against Objectification and Syntactical Choices in Image Making.
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Acharyya, S. (2023). Deeply Personal Is Deeply Political: New Voices in Women’s Documentary Practice in Indian Subcontinent. In: Chakraborty Paunksnis, R., Paunksnis, Š. (eds) Gender, Cinema, Streaming Platforms. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16700-3_10
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