Not just a pinch of skin

It started out as a college project that Priya Goswami, an alumna of National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, worked on in her final year. In March, the 25-minute documentary, A Pinch of Skin, about Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in India, won the National Film Award in the Special Mention category. dna caught up with her for a chat

Why did you choose this topic?
I stumbled upon an article that broached the topic and knew immediately that this would be the subject of my documentary. I had never heard about the practice of Female Genital Mutilation from friends belonging to the Dawoodi Bohra community or otherwise, and wondered why that was. I want to start a conversation. I'm a feminist at heart but I wanted to make an objective film.

How did you convince people to come on record?
I shot in Mumbai, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Surat and Udaipur where people were either on board or not. We worked around their requests to use silhouettes, not shoot faces or simply record audio. I took whatever they gave me.

How does the film manage to capture emotions without any faces?
Everyone we spoke to had a vociferous opinion to be expressed. We let their body language do the talking. So gesticulating hands and tensed toes make up for facial expressions.

How did the practice of FGM begin?
It's a myth. There is actually no mention of it in the Quran. Since the community was predominantly merchants, men travelled a lot. Removing the haraam ki boti, as it is called, was a way to control the sexual urges of women and keep them from infidelity.

How is the procedure carried out?
There was a woman in Mumbai who called herself a mid-wife though she only performed female circumcisions. When she passed away, her daughter-in-law took over. I spoke to her. It's done using a blade.

Girls are made to go under the knife at the age of seven so that they remember the incident but aren't old enough to question or oppose it. There is no standard to follow. In some cases, the hood of the clitoris is cut, while in older women, the entire clitoris is removed. Ek chutki nikal de is the casual way it was described.

How big was your production team?
I travelled alone, shooting with my personal camera and recording voices. On a couple of occasions, a female friend accompanied me. While many were against the practice they did not want to say that in front of the community.

Was the censor board brutal?
I was pleasantly surprised. The film uses words like sex, orgasm, etc., that are untouched. In one scene, where we had only an audio of a woman saying 'society has evil because of the urges of women, if you control them — you control evil'. I added a still image of Lord Krishna sitting on a tree with naked gopis in the river begging for him to return their clothes. The censor board asked me to blur the nakedness and add a disclaimer.

Did you speak to men in the community?
I did but I did not use the footage. The sense of oppression comes through with women talking about women.

Do you think it would have been easier to do the film if you belonged to the community?
I was warned about the possible issue of being a Hindu talking about an issue within the Bohra community. But there is a woman from the community who started a petition against this very practice. She insists on keeping her identity secret and was sceptical against speaking even to me. I don't think it is easier for her at all.

What films can we expect from you in the future?
I'm working on a short fiction film currently. I will make feature films and documentaries but what I want is strong female characters. In film school, we studied the Godfather as a landmark film, but the female subordination is undeniable. That has to change.

(A Pinch of Skin will be screened at the Red Dot Film Festival, August 22-25 in Mumbai)