Three Women and a Camera

Original Language:
ENGLISH

Direction:
Sabeena Gadihoke.

1998. 56 min. India.

AWARD: Second Prize

For portraying through the lives and work of three women photographers a social history that spans generations and different political eras; for being a well structured film; for asking important questions for the feminist movement.

This film is about Homai Vyarawalla, India's first professional woman photographer, whose career spanned nearly three decades from the 1930s and two contemporary photographers, Sheba Chhachhi and Dayanita Singh, who started work in the 1980s. Vyarawalla's work underscores the optimism and euphoria of the birth of a nation, while Chhachhi and Singh attempt to grapple with the various complexities and undelivered promises of the post independence era. This film debates the major shifts in their concerns regarding representation, subject-camera relationships and the limits and possibilities of still photography in India today. Using narratives of the photographers, the film seeks to contextualise their work through their photographs and explores how their identity and visibility as women shapes this work in turn.

About the Director ...

Sabeena Gadihoke teaches Video and Television Production at the Mass Communication Research Center, Jamia University in New Delhi and is currently working on her Ph.D. dissertation on Gender and Technology, with special emphasis on women and the camera. She has over 10 years of production experience in both non-fiction film and educational programming. She is also a founder-member of an independent women's video collective called Mediastorm which has made several films on socio-political issues such as the Muslim's women's bill, sati and communalism in India.