 "Photo: Courtesy of “Seven Islands and Metro")
Transmitting reality's crudest aspects is the challenge and driving force many of the greatest filmmakers and playwrights. Moreover, succeeding women in this field, dominated largely by men - especially in countries where women are still considered the weaker sex - is a laudable feat.
Filmmakers Beena Sarwar and Madhushree Dutta exemplify this brand of creativity. UT's South Asia Institute's outreach program hosts screenings tonight of Sarwar's and Dutta's movies for a workshop about documentary film and the women's movement in India and Pakistan.
"We decided to organize the workshop, because we had the opportunity to bring two accomplished activists and award-winning filmmakers from India and Pakistan to speak about their experiences working with the women's movements of their countries and of their challenges in documenting different issues," said Kamala Visweswaran, an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology.
The screenings relate directly to the Women's Movements. "Muktar Mai: The Struggle for Justice" and "Forced Marriage Abroad," by Sarwar, vocalize the injustice doled out to women in Pakistan, both in the rural areas of the country and in the families of orthodox immigrants who hail from it. Her films show the ways in which local conditions in Pakistan or Bangladesh are reflected in diasporic communities in Britain and, in turn, how diaspora communities can play a role in publicizing women's issues, as in the case of Muktar Mai.
"Saheli, for Asian women, an Austin-based women's organization, is co-sponsoring the screening of these films, because it has found, in its work with immigrant communities, that it is important to understand how conditions in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh shape women's experience of state or domestic violence in the U.S.," Visweswaran said.
Dutta's "Memories of Fear" deals with the social conditioning that makes women in India accustomed to fear violence, both in the public and private setting.
The screenings will give audiences a chance to question the filmmakers about their work and gain a deeper understanding of their delicate issues. A film workshop on campus today will focus on thematic issues explored in each of the films.
"The workshop will be primarily focused on understanding the filmmakers' challenges in documenting these issues," Visweswaran said. "It will try to understand the historic emergence of central campaigns, such as rape, dowry harassment and honor killings, in relation to the struggle for economic justice in South Asia and the history of U.S. foreign policy in the region."
The film workshop is today at ACES 2.402 from 2:30-5 p.m. and film screenings run tonight at ACES 2.402 from 7-9 p.m.
Beena Sarwar, a Pakistani filmmaker and journalist, is giving a seminar dubbed "Re-claiming Spaces: A Personal Political View of Media, Politics and the Women's Movement in Pakistan" in relation to the screenings. She believes that films and events vocalizing this issue help counter the more simplistic us-and-them stereotypes. "In the seminar, I take a personal political view of issues related to gender in personal and public space in Pakistan and how all this ties in with politics, the media and human rights," Sarwar said. "'Personal Political' was the title of the newspaper column I used to write for, and it is derived from the old feminist principle that the personal is political."
The seminar is Thursday at 3:30pm at Meyerson Conference Room, WCH 4.118.
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