12th March 2017 10 Am till 3 PM: Short films screening and informal chat with Mr. Harish Sadani.
Mardistan (Macholand) , by Dr. Harjant Gill 28 Minutes
Ozhivu Divasathe Kali / An Off-Day Game (Malayalam) by Sanal Sasidharan, 106 mns.
Yuva Maitri : Young Men Breaking the Moulds, by MAVA, 24 minutes
Sundar, by Rohan Kanawade, 27 minutes
Why Loiter? - A Bombay Film Factory Special, 18 minutes
Broken Image by Aravind VK, 18 minutes,
Raising Men by Gauri Adelkar, 33 minutes
Short Films produced by School of Media and Cultural Studies, TISS, Mumbai
Synposes of Films that would be screened :
Mardistan / Macholand
A frequently asked question leaves filmmaker Harjant Gill fumbling. An Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Towson University in Maryland, USA, he often finds himself standing in front of a frowning face that wants to know, “What is wrong with Indian men, why are they raping their women?” To give an answer, one would have to wade through a quagmire of socio-cultural history that informs, and complicates, what being a man in India means. Gill decided on a more direct approach — he had four men face the camera and describe their ideas of masculinity.
Mardistan is an exploration of Indian manhood articulated through the voices of 4 men from different generations and backgrounds. A middle-aged writer trying to make sense of the physical and sexual abuse he witnessed studying in an elite military academy, a Sikh father of twin daughters resisting the pressure to produce a son, a 20-year old college student looking for a girlfriend with whom he can lose his virginity and a working-class gay activist coming out to his wife after 20 years of marriage. Together, their stories make up different dimensions of what it means to be a man in India today. The film starts a conversation on critical issues including patriarchy, son-preference, sexual violence and homophobia in a nation increasingly defined by social inequalities.
Ozhivudivasathe Kali ( ‘Off-day game’)
Ozhivudivasathe Kali is based on the best seller short story with the same name by Unni R. and has won the Best Film and the Best Sound Recordist Award at the 46th Kerala State Film Awards. The movie was also selected as the best Malayalam film at the International Film Festival of Kerala in 2015.
‘Ozhivudivasathe Kali’ narrates the story of five friends from varied backgrounds, who on a rain-soaked assembly election day in Kerala escape their usual routine for a booze party in a guest house deep in the jungles. Their only intention is fun and merriment. During the course of the day, they start to open up the hidden wildness of their real nature. Tired and bored in arguments, they plan to play a game they used to play in their childhood. The Director has powerfully portrayed the direct and subtle layers of gender-caste-class biases and their inter-sectionality in the film. The film reflects the social realities in both its microcosm and macrocosm.
Yuva Maitri : Young Men Breaking the Moulds
MAVA has been running an innovative Program among young men in 9 districts of Maharashtra state. The Youth Program - Gender Sensitization and Mentoring Initiative among college-going young men is first of its kind in India. Using out-of-the box methods, hundreds of youths are engaged and mentored on a wide range of gender and sexual health matters, promoting gender-sensitive behaviour. The Program began in August 2006 as 'Yuva Maitri '(meaning Friendship Amongst Youths') in Pune district with 33 mentees and has been gradually up-scaled to 8 newer districts of Maharashtra, mentoring hundreds of young men in their twentees.. This documentary highlights the innovative tools used at the Youth Program and its impact.
Sundar
Sundar (meaning Beautiful) speaks about freedom of expression and freedom of living in a society the way one wants! It talks about Indian taboos that suppress a person and snatch away his basic right of choosing his own path to live.
And this is what our film’s protagonist faces after he cross-dresses on Navaratri. The story is about a person who wants to just express his feelings that wouldn’t hurt anyone ever! It’s about him living his happiness. It’s about letting people be the way they want to be. And finally it’s about appreciating people for what they are, and not for what you want them to be. It’s a story, born in our own land; and then re-written many times in lives of uncountable cross-dressers.
Why Loiter? - A Bombay Film Factory Special
Imagine our streets full of women talking, strolling, laughing and gesticulating. Imagine parks and beaches dotted with young women sitting alone contemplating the setting sun. Imagine street corners taken over by older women reflecting over the state of the world. Imagine maidans occupied by women domestic workers planning their next strike for a raise in minimum wage. If one can imagine all of this, one can imagine a radically altered city. Shilpa Phadke, Sameera Khan and Shilpa Ranade present an original take on the meaning and implications of women’s safety in twenty-first century India.
The authors argue that though political and economic visibility has brought women increased access to urban public space, this has not automatically translated into greater claim to public space for them.
Based on more than three years of research in Bombay, this book not only maps women’s exclusion from several public spaces, but also attempts to understand how women from different localities, classes and communities negotiate with real and implied risks of being in public everyday. It further suggests that women’s access to public space cannot be seen in isolation from the access available to other marginal groups.
Inspired by this book, Neha Singh a Bombay based actor decided to loiter with her friends to reclaim public spaces in the city.
Broken Image
When in front of a tragedy, would you rather film it or prevent the tragedy from happening? There is a thin fine line that separates basic humanity and a material value for certain people. This line is blurred and unclear to many. A photographer is placed in a moral choice between stopping a tragedy or rather shooting it, at those certain moments certain moral values seem to become blurred when in need for a material raises as a greater priority.
Raising Men
The film covers the notable work done with adolescent boys and young men, on issues of Gender and Masculinity, by Men Against Violence and Abuse (MAVA). A glimpse of the work gives the viewer the hope and reassurance that Men can be part of the solution to end gender-based discrimination and violence against women.
Harish Sadani has been passionately running multi-sector developmental programs on gender and health, for over 26 years. He is a founder-member and Chief Functionary of Men Against Violence and Abuse (MAVA), India’s first organization of sensitive and concerned men working since 1993 to stop and prevent gender-based violence on women. Harish, who has done his Masters in Social Work from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, has been engaging and mentoring thousands of adolescent boys and young men across Maharashtra state to communicate with peers on healthy relationships, masculinity and sexuality-related matters, using out-of- the-box methods.
Currently, he is also a Consultant and Trainer to Corporates, Universities and NGOs on anti-sexual harassment at workplace and other gender matters. In recognition of his pioneering and significant work in India on gender and masculinity, Harish has been awarded with the Ashoka Changemakers’ Award, Maharashtra Foundation Award, Civil Society Karmaveer Puraskar and the Muktaa Sanman Award by IBN Lokmat newschannel. He has been invited by national and international bodies like UN Women and UNFPA to share insights and build capacities of various stakeholders on addressing issues of gender-based violence against women.