CHENNAI: Tamil cinema does not produce enough feminist movies as it has always faced a severe shortage of women scriptwriters, said director Pa Ranjith, speaking at Dr Renuka Mukerji Somasekar Endowment Lecture organised by Women’s Christian College on Wednesday. “People often ask me why there are no stories in recent day Tamil cinema that addresses women’s issues. This is because, the industry does not have enough women,” he said. While there are many women writers and technicians in the television industry, there are very few in the cinema industry, he said.
“The problem is men can, at best, empathise with women. But, we cannot understand society from their point of view. The women we see and the one women see are different. Women need to tell stories they see with their eyes,” he said. He said in some of the Tamil cinema, women played central role only if they were presented as unglamorous and religious figures like Avvayyar.
Later, Christian women like Rita played villain roles briefly, there were comedians like Manorama and Sachu, he said. “Most intellectual women in Tamil cinema industry are usually killed in the movie or face a bad ending,” he said. Pointing there was a spike in women-centric movies during the peak period of Balachandar and Bharathiraja, Ranjith said the roles these women played were still well within the social standards of the time.
“Many of these roles focused on sexual freedom, women having to prove sexual purity and their ability to wear clothes they want. However, feminism is not just about this. There is a need for a new kind of women-centric stories that represent more nuanced issues,” he said. He appealed to college students and women to enter cinema industry into various roles.