IFFK 2024: The Absent Presence of Women In The Wake Of The Hema Committee Report

There is a fragile presence of women at the 29th International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK). On the one hand, they are felicitating Hong Kong New Wave filmmaker Ann Hui with the IFFK Lifetime Achievement Award — strangely, the first woman to receive this honour since the festival’s 1996 origins — Payal Kapadia with the Spirit Of Cinema Award, and Shabana Azmi for her contribution to cinema, being in the industry for 50 years. The IFFK jury is chaired by French cinematographer Agnes Godard, and out of the 177 films this year, a total of 52 (around 30 per cent ) are directed by women. 

There is a curation titled Female Gaze — which, really, is a wooly phrase because the Male Gaze is not the gaze of a male, but a structural gaze, that emerges from patriarchy, a thing in the air itself — and 21 actresses from Malayalam cinema across generations were also felicitated, from the early days of Malayalam cinema to the early 1980s. By making the female gaze a thing that can chip away at structures with individual and not collective might, the IFFK felicitation also feels like it is celebrating individual women to convince us that women, as a category, are being celebrated. Even in the daily bulletins, they phrase the feminist win as an accumulation of individual female achievements. The overarching structure under which the accolades are garnered is untouched. 

Ajoy C, the secretary of the Kerala State Chalachitra Academy (KSCA) and executive director of the festival notes further plans to build on these initiatives, “We plan to organise a special training module for women technicians, who will be trained over a period of at least three months, with their projects handheld.” 

Even the one-minute long Signature Film played before every screening at IFFK, pays tribute to the first film J. C . Daniel’s Vigathakumaran, the labourers involved in the making of the New Capitol Theater — this is a Communist state, after all — with the climax centered around PK Rosy (played by Abhirami Bose).

Rosy is the heroine of this film, someone who was forced to escape the theater following attacks by the Nair community angered that Rosy, a Dalit, could have the audacity to play a Nair character on screen. In the Signature Film, she is in the theater, among an audience of men, women, and children — the very theater she was forced to flee. It is a symbolic gesture of return. The IFFK trailer film is directed by K.O. Akhil, a Mumbai-based cinematographer. 

In the aftermath of the Hema Committee Report, all of this can feel like an overdrive, not an overhaul. The lopsided presence of men on stage during the opening ceremony, for example, produces a sour aftertaste — the Festival Director, Chairman, KSCA Executive Director, and Chief Editor, all men, alongside the women on stage — Golda Sellam, the curator of this edition, and others, most of whom were invited to be felicitated.

Especially given the trail of events this year, when filmmaker Ranjith resigned from his post as Chairperson of the Kerala State Chalachitra Academy — who also by default becomes the director of IFFK — following a sexual harassment charge levellled against him by actor Sreelekha Mitra, this feels like a smoke and mirrors gesture. Women organisations across the state wrote petitions to the Chief Minister with a demand to appoint a woman for this position — given that a woman has never held this position since its inception in 1998. Women In Cinema Collective (WCC) put forward the name of Bina Paul, former artistic director at IFFK. 

The petition further notes, “There are any number of capable women who deserve the position in Malayalam Cinema. The government should make the move to appoint a gender-sensitive woman in the post as a first step in eradicating the misogyny and exploitation in Malayalam cinema.” 

C Prem Kumar — who served as Vice Chairman under Ranjith — was selected as an interim Chairperson, noting then that he was not so happy to replace his friend Ranjith, and hoping Ranjith would return to the post after proving his innocence. 

The festival daily bulletins which report on all the panels and open forums discussing women in cinema, do not mention the Hema Committee Report. Its absent presence is palpable. 

The relative absence of women in the decision-making processes of the festival cannot be overwritten by an overwhelming presence of women in the decisions made. The demand for authorship and representation — to be able to make decisions, and to have decisions made about you — must go hand in hand.