SheWrite: A Documentary Screening and Discussion with the Directors

Monday April 23, 6:30-9:00 p.m. HRN 232

SheWrite: A Documentary Screening and Discussion with the Directors

Anjali Monteiro and K.P. Jayasankar, Center for Media and Cultural Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India

SheWrite weaves together the narratives and work of four Tamil women poets. Salma negotiates subversive expression within the tightly circumscribed space allotted to a woman in the small town of Thuvarankurichi. For Kuttirevathi, a Siddha doctor and researcher based in Chennai, solitude is a crucial creative space from where her work resonates, speaking not just for herself but also for other women who are struggling to find a voice. Her anthology entitled Breasts (2003) became a controversial work that elicited hate mail, obscene calls and threats. Malathy Maitri, who lives in Pondicherry, has been a Dalit and Marxist activist. She is a founder member of Anangu and militantly opposes the attacks on women writers. Her poems attempt express feminine power. Sukirtharani, a schoolteacher in Lalapet, writes of desire and longing, celebrating the body in a way that affirms feminine empowerment and a rejection of male-centered discourse. The film traverses these diverse modes of resistance, through images and sounds that evoke the universal experiences of pain, anger, desire and transcendence. SheWrite has won awards, including Best documentary, IV Three Continents International Documentary Festival, Venezuela, 2005, and the Indian Documentary Producers Association award for sound design and cinematography, 2005. The film has also played at several film festivals including the 12th International Women's Film Festival, Turin, 2005; Film South Asia, Katmandu 2005; Platforma 2005, Athens, and the Ethnographic Film Festival of Montreal, Canada.