Female FOCUS

These women, firm in their self-belief, are obviously not looking for any special favours. Leena Yadav, who wrote, directed and edited the Sanjay Dutt-Aishwarya Rai-Zayed Khan starrer, Shabd, two years ago, believes that getting ahead in Bollywood is by no means more difficult for a woman debutant than it is for a man starting out in the business.

8220;Your standing as a filmmaker rests entirely on the quality of the work that you do. Nobody can stop a good idea from reaching the screen,8221; she asserts.nbsp;

So has the film industry begun to change for the better? 8220;It is not so much the industry that has undergone a transformation. Women have changed. They have become more self-assured,8221; says the New Delhi-based National Award-winning documentary filmmaker Sehjo Singh, who has now shifted to Chennai in pursuit of her first feature, which, she reveals, 8220;will be in the Tamil language8221;. Singh intends to eventually make Hindi films out of Chennai. She says: 8220;Mani Ratnam has been doing it with great success for years. Why can8217;t others?8221;

The unusual strategies that these women have adopted are beginning to yield results. 8220;It8217;s infinitely easier today for a woman to find a toehold in the industry. Neither the producers nor the actors make any gender distinction but the fact is that women do bring a different perspective to the art and craft of storytelling,8221; says Reema Kagti, director of Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd., a certified box office hit.nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; nbsp;

But the story is no longer just about material success and failure. It8217;s more about outright acceptance of creative sensibilities that are far removed from the run-of-the-mill. Meghna, for instance, is yet to deliver anything resembling an average hit. But she is already on to her third feature film, which is to be bankrolled by White Feather Films, a company jointly owned by producer-director Sanjay Gupta and star Sanjay Dutt. Says she: 8220;It will be on the lines of a thriller.8221; nbsp;

And before she embarks upon the new feature, Meghna is due to make a 10-minute short fiction film for Gupta8217;s upcoming omnibus venture, Dus Kahaniyan. 8220;Actors, technicians or producers do not treat me any different simply because I am a woman. If they do, it is because of my creative moorings,8221; says Meghna. Clearly, the likes of Meghna, Kagti and Yadav are here to stay. Not only do they possess the skills required to play the game on their own terms, but they also bring to the table a clear sense of what they are out to achieve in the long run. Says Yadav: 8220;I am here to make a certain kind of films. I want to focus on quality, not numbers. I don8217;t want to end up with 50-60 films. I8217;d be happy with six or seven.8221;nbsp;

The current surge by women directors in Bollywood began in the form of gentle inroads at the turn of the millennium, just before the multiplex boom started to gather steam. Back in the late 1990s, Mahesh Bhatt proteacute;geacute; Tanuja Chandra debuted as a director with the commercially successful

Dushman. In less than a decade, Chandra has built up a healthy body of work 8212; seven features in all 8212; although her box office returns have dwindled.nbsp; nbsp;

In 2002, Meghna crafted Filhaal8230;, a full-length feature that addressed the unusual theme of surrogate motherhood. The film had convincing performances by Tabu and Sushmita and moments of great directorial finesse, but it didn8217;t set the box office on fire. It, however, did show the sceptics that there was a way ahead for Bollywood women who had their own stories to tell.nbsp;

Women directors were virtually non-existent in the Mumbai film industry until Sai Paranjape made the sensitive Sparsh and the hilarious Chashme Buddoor in a span of two years in the early 1980s. Kalpana Lajmi debuted with Ek Pal in 1986. Aruna Raje, who began her career in tandem with then husband Vikas Desai with Shaque 1976, went solo in 1988 with Rihaee. But despite their share of critical and commercial success, these women directors remained fringe players.nbsp; nbsp;

In the five years since Filhaal8230;, however, an array of women have debuted as directors in Mumbai: Shona Urvashi with Chupke Se, Pooja Bhatt with Paap, Vinta Nanda with the English language White Noise, Leena Yadav with Shabd, Kanika Verma with Dansh and Ruchi Narain with Kal 8211; Yesterday and Tomorrow. It is quite another matter that none of these films has gone on to top the charts and, as a result, their directors have had to struggle, or are still struggling, to get their second essays off the ground.nbsp;

The tide, however, hasn8217;t stopped. Meghna8217;s Just Married opened in March. A month before that, Kagti made a breakthrough for all filmmakers of her ilk, and gender, by delivering a hit. And if all goes well, Zoya Akhtar, having waited in the wings for her turn, will be off her mark soon with Kismet Talkies even as the NYU-trained Rajshree Ojha looks for a distributor for her debut film, Chaurahen.nbsp;

While most of these women have no reason to be unhappy with their lot, Ojha, who has been in India for a year-and-a-half since her return from the US, believes that Bollywood needs to spruce up its act.

8220;Surviving here is very strenuous, especially if you8217;ve been trained in the West. Being young makes things even more difficult,8221; she says. nbsp;

But Ojha has an option before her. 8220;Mira Nair,8221; she says, 8220;has opened the doors to the international arena for us. I do at times feel that it might be better for me to go back to the West. There is more appreciation out there.8221; Is that why the likes of New Yorker Nair and Torontonian Deepa Mehta have chosen the international route to fame and acclaim? As Mehta admits: 8220;India gives me the stories but it is Canada that gives me the freedom.8221; Ojha feels that actors in Bollywood are far more prepared to take risks than the producers.nbsp;

But that, feel the others, is only natural. After all, they argue, a producer is not in this game for charity. Indeed, it is not so much a filmmaker8217;s gender as the viability of an idea that is the clincher. 8220;I am a woman, I possess a certain sensibility and I am a storyteller and these are not mutually exclusive,8221; says Kagti. nbsp;

If she had difficulties in getting Honeymoon Travels off the ground it was because the idea itself was unconventional and because the film needed a sizeable budget despite being bereft of saleable box office stars.

8220;The initial hiccups that the project encountered had nothing whatsoever to do with my gender,8221; says Kagti, who is currently scripting her second feature in collaboration with Zoya Akhtar. Like they did with her debut film, Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani8217;s Excel Entertainment will produce her second directorial outing. 8220;They came on board even before Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd. happened,8221; reveals Kagti. nbsp;

For Narain, too, being a woman has been no stumbling block. 8220;But if you are westernised, English-speaking, brash, young and attractive to boot and don8217;t look like a non-threatening type, then it becomes that much more difficult to be accepted,8221; she says.nbsp;

Most of the women directors in the thick of the Bollywood action these days cut their teeth in the frenetic world of television.