BENGALURU: You see old couples running in the park and pregnant women taking a brisk morning walk in the background of advertisements. But do you ever see a person with disability doing such regular, everyday things?
Priyanka Pal, a 26-year-old person with disability, is on her way to Madrid to give a lecture on how a PWD inside the media industry can change this.
A consultant at Enable India, she is currently researching into this.
In 2014, Priyanka helped direct two short films that was featured in the Spain Film Festival last year in December.
A part of her assignment, as a master’s student of Media and Cultural Studies in Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai, she and her team of four directed two, 30-minute films titled Jaat Baaja Baraat and Reimagining Dharavi. When these movies were featured in Spain Film Festival, Priyanka got a call from University of Madrid, inviting her to deliver a lecture.
Her Movies
Jaat Baaja Baraat is a story of a girl who questions the institution of marriage and the plot revolves around a couple who are in an inter-caste marriage.
“Everybody dismisses Mumbai’s Dharavi as a slum area but is an amazing place for small-scale industries,” says Priyanka. “You may even run into academic geniuses, refilling pots at the water pump... we have explored the whole new world of the slum in Reimagining Dharavi.”
Challenges When Shooting
Priyanka had people questioning her why she wanted to be part of the media industry, despite being physically challenged.
At a tender age, Priyanka had undergone an operation to remove a cancerous muscle from her back. In the process, one of her nerves was cut. She uses crutches and caliper to aid her in walking.
“Working in media involves thinking, strategising and reading. I can do all of this and I am a creative person, so I did not understand why they thought I couldn’t,” she says.
While shooting movies, it was difficult to reach inaccessible places. “There were times when my teammates used to do the shooting while I waited outside because the place was not accessible,” she says. Priyanka mostly helped in pre-production, conceptualising the story, preparing questions and editing.
Failure of Pop Favourites
Priyanka’s thesis is on the potrayal of people with disability in mainstream media. Popular movies such as Barfi and Taare Zameen Par, which are Priyanka’s favourites, had so many glitches she thought. For example, in Taare Zameen Par the concept of dyslexia is confused with Dysgrafia and ADHD, or hyperactiveness in children. All these three separate disabilities have been fused into one.
Priyanaka calls Barfi an “excellent” movie for focussing on Barfi’s daily life and not his disability. “(But) The movie does not differentiate between sign and sign language,” she says.