6th January 2024: A film festival Gender, Consent & the Law: Films & Conversations was organized on 6th January 2024 in Seminar Hall, Main Building, BSSS College. The event was organized jointly by The Bhopal School of Social Sciences, Partners for Law in Development, Delhi; Department of Women & Child Development, PARIMAL Lab - MP Police and Eka - The Communicators' Collective. The film festival was for two days on 5th & 6th January 2024, with the first day of the event in Shaheed Bhawan and the second in BSSS College.
The motive of the festival was to probe the fault lines between law and lived realities, through accounts and contestations on themes of agency, expression, and desire, as they play out within contexts of hetero-patriarchy, caste, and class hierarchies. It nudges us to go beyond the law in imagining the full realm of transformation, and indeed, social justice. What might the domain of consent be beyond the legal binaries of yes and no; and frames of victim perpetrator? How do we view and explore consent holistically, across different areas of our lives and our public and private worlds, beyond the issues of sexuality and harassment? These are some of the questions that the films hope to address. Spread over two days, we draw on films as a resource to explore themes of consent and choice as they relate to gender expression, sexuality, and intimacies shaped as much by desire and rights claims, as it is by the lived realities of sexual stigma and class.
On the second day of the festival that was organized in BSSS college, there was the screening of several short films and also panel discussions with experts. Day two of the festival commenced with a documentary A Safe Person to Talk To, which has numerous interviews of individuals working in corporates who share their experiences of harassment and consent with their colleagues. It was followed by a panel discussion, which included Dr. Vinay Mishra (HoD, Department of Psychology, BSSS College), Ms. Madhu Mehra (Partners for Law in Development), Ms. Seema Kurup (Eka, The Communicators’ Collective), Ms. Maheen Mirza (Independent Filmmaker) and the audiences which also included a couple of students from The Bhopal School of Social Sciences and Bhopal’s youth present to watch the films. Matters of middle-class family that they try to hide their bad experiences which they feel is wrong as per society, even they do not listen to their children. Even the family decides for their children, which they can’t refuse.
After the panel discussion, there was the screening of Pushpa Rawat’s Nirnay which is inspired by the director’s life and portrays the perspective life of two women in an individualistic and human manner. Another film that was released in 2017, Eka’s Collective collaboratively directed film ‘Turup’ which is also known as Checkmate received an overwhelming response from the audiences. This film ambitiously derives into the social realities surrounding Bhopal’s Chakki Chowk, wherein the daily intersection of caster, religion, gender, and class hover over the lives of the film’s characters.
The last film to be screened was Marjane Satrapi’s animated autobiographical film ‘Persepolis’ depicting Satrapi’s childhood and coming of age in Iran that transitioned from a Shah’s monarchy to a regressive theocracy. During the 2nd day of the film festival in BSSS, there was also an exhibition cum sale from a student entrepreneur Ms. Lavanya Purohit from B.Com Economics 4th Semester, and some others to benefit from the opportunity of the audience visiting to watch the films.
The screened films and documentaries asked viewers to think and reflect upon the viewpoints and contexts of the underprivileged and underrepresented, who are almost always cast out of the mainstream landscape and media. Also, these kinds of events and activities in college, provide opportunities for the student entrepreneurs of the college to exhibit and sell their innovative products and services.