The Hindu : Women behind the camera
The Indian Women Cinematographers’ Collective (IWCC) was launched recently
With the launch of the Indian Women Cinematographers’ Collective (IWCC) on March 8, a dream of a generation of women cinematographers bears fruit. The Collective seeks to showcase, encourage, and support each other in their work. Initiated by senior cinematographer, Fowzia Fathima, it now has close to 62 members, with new members joining everyday.
“Each of us until we connected to the other women cinematographers experienced an isolation. Each of us is looked at as an exception. We need to change this perception. The time has come for the idea of the Collective to manifest itself now,” says Fowzia. The collective intends to be proactive, driven to trigger changes in their industry.
Deepti Gupta of IWCC says, “Most of the seniors when we started out did not have godfathers to get us jobs. We would like to mentor youngsters passing out of film institutes, and we hope to do so through this venture.” Once the website is up, it will be a database of women cinematographers to showcase their work besides being a platform for members to exchange ideas via blogs, podcast and discussions. Through this platform they hope to encourage women to take up cinematography as a career, as also allied fields such as gaffing, grips and assistant cinematographers. An important aspect that the Collective hopes to address is how women are portrayed in films. “We want to start a discourse on how women are represented in cinema, after all it is the eye behind the camera that shows the story. The gaze, when it is a woman behind the camera, is female and we can bring about a change, we hope,” Deepti says.
