Abstract
Since its inception at the Bath Film Festival 2014, the ‘F-Rating’ has been adopted as a yardstick to foster equitable representation of women in film. The rise of a new sub-genre of Hindi ‘Indie’ cinema (Devasundaram, 2016, 2018) has been augmented by an array of bona fide Female-rated independent films. These films fulfil the triune criteria for F-Rating, featuring women both behind and in front of the camera – as directors, actors and scriptwriters. I argue that these distinct female voices in new independent Hindi cinema have engendered discursive filmic spaces of resistance – alternative articulations that transgress India’s patriarchal national master narrative. Indian cinema thus far has been presided over by Bollywood’s hegemonic bastion of male-dominated discourses. The mainstream industry continues to propagate gender-based wage disparity and hypersexualised representations of the female body via the serialised song and dance spectacle of the ‘item number’. The increasing presence of F-Rated Hindi films on the international film festival circuit and through wider releases, gestures towards these films’ melding of the global and local. Drawing on my curation work with the UK Asian Film Festival (UKAFF) and discursive analyses of seminal F-Rated films, this essay highlights the pivotal role played by F-Rated Hindi Indie films in opening up transdiscursive dimensions and creating national and global conversations around issues of gender inequities in India.
Highlights
In my previous research (Devasundaram, 2016, 2018), I chart the emergence and development of an alternative form of contemporary independent or ‘Indie’ Indian cinema since 2010
The superstructure of Bollywood’s dynastic and often nepotistic industry practices can supervene on the independent Hindi cinema space. This overweening symbolic, cultural and economic capital wielded by Bollywood in some measure inflects the affiliations of Bollywood female filmmakers such as Zoya Akhtar, Meghna Gulzar, daughter of eminent Hindi film director, lyricist and poet Gulzar, and to some extent Kiran Rao, who is married to Bollywood superstar Aamir Khan
The intertwining of onscreen and offscreen female representation and farraginous intersectional discourses is an integral component of the F-Rated independent Hindi films cited in this essay
Summary
In my previous research (Devasundaram, 2016, 2018), I chart the emergence and development of an alternative form of contemporary independent or ‘Indie’ Indian cinema since 2010. F-Rating, Hindi films, independent Indian cinema, gender, patriarchy
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