KOCHI: Covid-19 crisis has not deterred a group of film buffs in Kerala to proceed with their new movement in Indian cinema called Community Cinema Collective (CCC) which will make a series of short films with an all-woman crew right from light assistants to directors and producers.The movement is aimed at providing an equal opportunity to women in film industry resisting all forms of discrimination and exploitation including that of gender and caste. The collective, through the medium of cinema, aims to uphold rights of all sections of people.
The work on first season of short films has already started and the CCC is expecting to release a group of short films as an anthology by the beginning of 2021. As part of the initiative, 13 women selected from different strata of society have been working on scripts for the last six months. “The age range of the script writers are from 30 to 60 and they include four Kudumbashree workers. The project is being conceived with the support of Sacred Heart College, Thevara,” said CCC coordinator and dean of SH School of Communications Asha Achy Joseph, who is also a member of Women in Cinema Collective (WCC).
The present project is expected to draw the attention of society closer to the lives of women through a set of short films. The collective has already been working with women from December 2019 to develop content for films based on the vision of CCC. Currently, the movement is scouting for women directors for the short films which are being made as part of the first season of production of CCC.
The women directors have to direct different short films and collaborate to make these films into an anthology. “A lot of like-mined women are supporting us. My colleague Jeeva K J is also working with me in the project. She is a filmmaker whose first film Richter Scale 7.6 was screened in many international film festivals and won award in Noida international film festival 2018,” Asha added.