Pria Somiah Alva talks about her documentary Silent Screams that has won international acclaim
Director Pria Somaiah Alva is on cloud nine. Her documentary Silent Screams - India's fight against Rape written by Manira A Pinto and produced by Miditech for Channel NewsAsia, has won three awards at the New York Festival of International Television & Film Awards. "We are happy the documentary got recognition at the 57-year-old festival which has over 50 countries competing. Moreso because though it is a statement on the issue specific to India, it has found a certain resilience from across the world," says Pria. The director and her team started working on the film soon after the brutal Delhi gang-rape incident.
"We were talking to commissioning editors but we had to work on what the film would be about. People had come out and started protesting against the horrific attack. It was an important phase and we decided to capture the point in time. There was a lot of conversation around it, a change in the mindset. Rape was no longer talked about in hushed tones or swept under the carpet. Several women started coming out with their own experiences," elaborates Pria who took up three case studies in the film.
Besides the Nirbhaya incident, they focussed on a dalit school girl who was gang-raped before being thrown out of a moving car in Haryana and that of a single mother attacked at gun point in Kolkata. All the people connected to the case including the rape survivors, families, law-makers, enforcers, activists and lawyers were interviewed to understand the politics of rape and the plight of victims in their fight for justice. Says Pria, "The Haryana case exposed that it was caste power play. The perpetrators were Jats and told the girl that she should come back to them in 10 days. If she went to the police they threatened to attack her family. The girl reported to the cops and the gang killed her mother. Her fault was being a dalit girl in a Jat dominated village. Also, most of the times, the Khap panchayat covers up such cases, saying ladki ki galti hai!"
The Kolkata case was poignant for the lackadaisical attitude of the legal and political system. "Most of them questioned what the woman was doing out at midnight? It was only when a women police officer took the initiative that the case went ahead," says Pria who found one aspect common to all the women interviewed. "They are determined fighters. The 16-year-old school girl's father was offered Rs 60 lakhs to withdraw the case but the rape survivor didn't.
For Pria and team, it was a challenge to get the survivors and their families speak on the sensitive subject. "We had to be careful to not sensationalise the shoot or the subject as the survivors have to continue to live in the same village/community. In the Haryana case for instance, two men of the jat community were in police custody for the gang rape of the 16-year-old Dalit girl. The village was tense and we were told not to get out of the car in the area where the two men lived. However, the survivors we met wanted their families and the community to shift the shame to the perpetrator." And Pria's aim was to document what has become an important milestone in the women's movement not just in India but the world over.
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