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Who is a modern woman?

Last Updated 21 November 2016, 18:35 IST
Cinderella was supposed to be home by midnight,” said filmmaker Anandana Kapur. One of the oldest fairy tales is still not obsolete. It is still expected out of most women to be back home by a certain time. There is always a deadline.

Kapur makes cinema that tries to shatter the stereotypical depiction of people. She was talking at the Japanese film festival titled, ‘Modern Japanese Women: Finding the Strength Within’. “Women have been put into certain boxes, and the credit goes to popular depictions in films,” she said.

Talking about the big buck cinema, she said, “There is always a Madonna – whore complex in these films, wich categorises women as absolutely good or bad. Especially in Bollywood, it is the bad woman who sacrifices herself so that the so-called good woman can unite with the man. And despite the time spent with the bad woman, it is the good woman that he chooses.”

But in actuality, the modern woman isn’t situated at the end of these spectrums. “What about women who are a bit of both, Madonna and a whore. The depiction of woman in mainstream cinema has not explored the grey areas.” Kapur’s films explore these different sides to women.

The film festival was dedicated to the modern women of Japan, exploring similar sides to the characters of women. As the world is changing, women are also feeling the change. These films explored the strength of modern Japanese women, who are breaking away from the conventional roles set for her and are finding new paths.

“We have to acknowledge that it is also women who really built up the cities. Migrating from their joint families, they took over some roles that gave them the power to decide. Women who decided to work in one part of the city or the other led to the visibility of  women in a city which is also very interesting. The time of the day matters,” said Kapur.

Sharing an example of how cinema has shaped our mind, she explained, “Once we were shooting with a young female entrepreneur who had started her own boutique. We were to shoot her one evening, post her work hours. She was wearing a green dress and red lipstick that evening. After we set up, my cinematographer came up to me and said that he can’t shoot as the girl with red lipstick on a road will remind audiences of sex workers.”

“It was really the violence of cinematic expression that had imprinted such image in his head. But we did shoot finally, from a low angle, giving her a glorious appeal and the traffic lights in the background looking like stars. She was a woman who dared to say at night that she wanted to make a name for herself and that really means a lot,” she said.

Further talking about the violence of cinema, she referred to the Bechdel test, which investigates if two women characters in a film have a conversation without talking about men or patriarchal privilege. The test was inspired by Virgina Woolf’s writings, where Woolf observes, “It was strange to think that all the great women of fiction were, until Jane Austen’s day, not only seen by the other sex, but seen only in relation to the other sex. And how small a part of a woman’s life is that,” “The only film, across the history of popular mainstream cinema that passed the test was ‘Aliens’, where two women don’t talk about men or the patriarchal privilege for more than two minutes. That film too was not about human beings, such is the sorry state of cinema,” she explained.

“For centuries we have been told what to think and now we are saying that’s not enough. Cinema is one of the nicest ways to show what you are imagining and that imagination also becomes reality many times. For me, shooting a girl with red lipstick at night and yet making her look grand was one such step,” Kapur added.

The film festival was also exploring women similar to Kapur’s characters, real and diverse and screened five Japanese films, Sue, Mai & Sawa: Righting the Girlship; Seventh Code; Round Trip Heart; My Little Sweet Pea; and Au revoir l' été. These films delved into the lives of the women, struggling with their careers and love lives. They also explore heartwarming friendships between women, dealing with anxieties that come with different stages of life. They narrate stories of women in search of meaning of their lives. They also explore relationships women have with their parents and coming of age stories.

“And that is how women are — characters with different sides to them. Another important thing to keep mind is that a modern woman mustn’t be considered to be only the one who is young and working in the city,” Kapur quipped. “Some of the oldest grandmothers are the most modern women I have come across. And the young are yet to match that level of frankness. The face of the modern woman can come in any form. Modern doesn’t necessarily mean young,” she added.

Breaking boxes, these films are creating a very real picture of what it means to be a modern woman, one step at a time, be it in Japan or in India. The film festival was also a prelude to the World Assembly for Women (WAW), to be held in Tokyo in December, 2016.  

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(Published 21 November 2016, 14:46 IST)

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