Through the Lens, Brightly

Does the gender of a director affect your perception of a film or dictate whether or not you watch a certain movie? The Indian film industry, the biggest in the world in terms of quantity, language and culture, produces close to a thousand films a year. Yet, the presence of women in the directorial chair still appears to be a drop in the widening ocean of filmmakers in the country. Very little is known about women directors who stepped into the industry years ago and left their footsteps on the sands of reel-time.

Through the Lens, Brightly: Women in Cinema, Women at Work unearths how the 'working woman' has been presented in films directed by women. Most women directors are 'working women' themselves, with full-fledged careers of their own. Some of them also write scripts and edit their films. The volume attempts to locate whether these celluloid representations depict the empowerment of women because of their financial independence or if these women remain where they began-dependent, oppressed, marginalized and disempowered- despite their professional triumphs. The analyses of nine films by nine women directors raise some significant questions and throw up some answers, each as intriguing as the next.