No gender in the director's chair

Women directors hate to be bracketed as 'women' directors. They believe that gender slotting sends the wrong message to their audience. During the 1980s, considered a benchmark in films by women directors, their films were practically soaked with their uncanny tendency to explore the woman-identity. Vijaya Mehta with Rao Saheb, Prema Karanth with Phaniyamma, Aparna Sen with Parama, Kalpana Lajmi with Ek Pal to Aruna Raje with Rihaee, were labelled 'women' directors distinguished by their individual styles, treatment of and approach to the subjects they chose.

Sai Paranjpye was the only woman whose Sparsh, Disha, Chashme Baddoor and Katha transcended the gender barrier to address larger issues tinged with intelligent humour. With the exception of Aparna Sen, none of these directors are directing any more. They were educated, urban, progressive, and contemporary though distanced in geography, background, training, language and age. Their films reveal a feminine point of view, are expressive of a 'feminine' voice, collectively presenting, consciously or otherwise, a feminine sensibility distanced from what might be called the 'masculine' sensibility.

A new breed of gutsy women have redefined and reconstructed themselves as directors per se, stripping off the 'woman' prefix to tackle issues that have a wider audience base and subjects. Aparna Sen stepped out of the 'women directors' ghetto with films such as The Japanese Wife and Aarshinagar. She has successfully transcended the gender barrier.

Will you call Zoya Akhtar's Luck By Chance or Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara women's films? The first has a male protagonist, ambitious, selfish and diabolic, while the second is a male buddy film spelling entertainment with a capital 'E'. Farah Khan makes brazenly commercial films panned by critics. Films such as Tees Maar Khan are total flops, while Happy New Year with a budget of Rs 150 crore was an aesthetic disaster. But she makes no pretensions about pleading the woman's cause. Reema Kagti's Honeymoon Travels Pvt Limited and Talaash are as different as chalk from cheese, but they can by no means be labelled a 'woman' director's films.

These women work independently. In a world of cut-throat competition, there is no question of 'consulting' other directors, men or women. The scenario has changed.

Can anyone label Kiran Rao Khan's Dhobi Ghat, a touching human document, a 'woman's film'? Shyam Benegal's Zubeidaa, which offers deep insight into the mind of a young girl who wants to live life on her own terms, is as much a 'woman's film' as is Dhobi Ghat, a film minus a woman's agenda. The same applies to Mahesh Manjrekar's Astitva, Mahesh Bhatt's Arth or, Neeraj Ghaywan's Masaan. The male director is as empathetic to a woman-centric subject as much as a woman is in making films on wider issues. Today, there is no difference between a woman and a male director so far as the woman's agenda goes.
At the same time, one must laud Leena Yadav for Parched and Ashwini Iyer Tiwari for Neel Battey Sannata. It is problematic for any creative filmmaker, man or woman, to take positions that might alienate certain sections of a politically heterogeneous audience.

In an environment where certain forms of representation are culturally dominant, such as mainstream and art house cinema directed by men, alternative forms have a tendency to be interpreted as a challenge to dominant forms even if that was not their creators' intention.

Shoma A Chatterji is a Kolkata-based film scholar, author and a National award winning film writer