Stills from SheWrite (K.P. Jayasankar)

As part of a series of events planned to help spark discussion about women and gender roles in the South Asian community, [1] Narika’s student group at UC Berkeley screens [2] SheWrite, an award-winning documentary about four female Tamil poets exploring themes of desire and sexuality, on [3] Tuesday, March 20. The film’s directors will be guest speakers. Anjali Monteiro, currently a Fulbright visiting lecturer at Berkeley, and her husband K.P. Jayasankar, Chair of the Centre for Media and Culture Studies at [4] TISS, have made 25 documentaries over the last 15 years. SheWrite recently [5] premiered in the U.S. at the 2007 [6] New York Arab and South Asian Film Festival.

Criticism of the poets in the press for writing “obscenely” caught the attention of the film’s directors. One male writer urged people: “If you see them on the road, slap them.” ([7] The Week).

SheWrite weaves together the narratives and work of the four young writers. Salma, a mother in the small town of Thuvarankurichi who runs the local panchayat, Kuttirevathi, a Chennai doctor who authored an anthology entitled Breasts, Malathi Maitri, a Dalit and Marxist activist from Pondicherry, and Sukirtharani, a Lalapet schoolteacher, formed a collective called Anangu to stand up for their right to speak out boldly.

More:
[8] “Documenting concerns”—profile of the directors
[9] Poems in the Film—translated by Pritham Chakravarthy