A Masterclass on Gender Participation in Hindi Cinema was held at the ongoing 53rd International Film Festival of India along with Tata Institute of Social Sciences today in Panaji, Goa wherein a presentation on “Breaking the Screen Ceiling: Gender and Work in Hindi Cinema” was held.
Key insights from a quantitative research study on gender and work both on and off screen in Hindi cinema were presented during the masterclass. A total of 1930 characters from 35 films were analysed for their gender representation on screen, types of roles played by characters in various genders, their occupations and other parameters.
Prof Lakshmi Lingam, Dean of School for media and cultural studies, highlighted the fact that the nation has had only 4 women Union Ministers of Information and Broadcasting in the last 75 years, only 4 female chairpersons of Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) in last 72 years and only 29% female board members in the last 13 years”.
She further added that post ‘Nirbhaya’ lot of legislations have changed and a big shift has happened and films need to acknowledge these big shifts.
Mr. Pushan Kripalani, noted Director of film GoldFish, talked about the increasing percentage of women on his sets being a happy accident and how the presence of women on the sets has changed the behaviour of men in a positive way.
He said “when we are communicating with the film crew we use a lot of words as punctuation and it has become the lexicon of communication. Swearing on the sets become part of the game and it shows camaraderie in a way but with women of the sets, this changes”.
Prof Shilpa Phadke, co-author of book ‘Why Loiter’ and co-director of the documentary film ‘Under the Open Sky’, said “Women in power act exactly like men. Just having them there will make a huge difference. Even in public space, women make other people more comfortable.”
Ms Rashmi Lamba, talked about the importance of providing woman role models in movies. Ms. Lamba further added that “In US, by using data, they have found that they have achieved gender neutrality with family films because people can identify with all the characters and our study will also help in making such changes in India”.
She exhorted that “bringing about gender rights has to do with carrying out conversations and putting out guidelines to follow. Young professions should look at these concerns including cinematic language of the camera which is sexist”.
Ms. Meenakshi Shedde, who is the national award winner of Best film critique talked about the actress assault case in Kerala. She mentioned that the women collective in the Kerala film industry has punished the accused by not giving them roles.
