Year: 2005 Language: Tamil Subtitles: English Duration: 55 mins
SheWrite weaves together the narratives and work of four Tamil women poets. Salma negotiates subversive expression within the tightly circumscribed space allotted to a woman in a small town. For Kuttirevathi, solitude is a crucial creative space from where her work resonates. Her anthology entitled Breasts (2003) elicited hate mail, obscene calls and threats. The fact that women poets are exploring themes such as desire and sexuality been opposed by some Tamil film lyricists, who have gone on record with threats of death and violence. This has been resisted by a collective of poets and artists called Anangu (Woman). Malathy Maitri is a founder member of Anangu. Her poems explore feminine power and spaces. Sukirtharani writes of desire and longing, celebrating the body and feminine empowerment. The film traverses these diverse modes of resistance, through images and sounds that evoke the universal experiences of pain, anger, desire and transcendence.
Awards
Best documentary Prize, IV Three Continents International Documentary Festival, Venezuela, 2005
Gold for Sound Design and Silver for Cinematography, Indian Documentary Producers Association Awards, 2005
Festival Selection
12th International Women’s Film Festival, Turin, 2005
Film South Asia, Kathmandu, 2005
Kara Film Festival, Karachi, 2005
Platforma, Athens, 2005
Madurai Film Festival, 2005
Ethnographic Film Festival of Montreal, Canada, 2005
Vibgyor Film Festival, Trichur, Kerala, 2006
Panithirai International Documentary Film Festival, Chennai, 2006
IAWRT Film Festival, New Delhi, 2006
Beyond Bollywood, Stuttgart, 2006
Ethnofest, Berlin, 2006
Festival of Visual Culture, Joensuu, Finland, 2006