06 Feb An interview with ASIS SETHI, director of “A Bloody Mess”
Asis Sethi
“Cinema is a powerful medium which fuses art and passion into important and necessary dialogue. It has the ability to transcend borders, cultures and identities to bring everyone together and bring change into society.”
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I find women generally have less of a voice in society. We do not speak about our periods out loud (typically), unless we are with a group of women we trust and respect. When I looked around me and saw the number of girls/women who still could not speak openly about menstruation, I realized it was a mechanism through which our voices, as females, were being suppressed. We were told to say we are sick, we are not well, told not to participate in certain cultural activities. As a result of a natural bodily function, we were lessened to feel impure. I wanted to bring our voices forward to not only talk about menstruation, but normalize conversations around it. In fact, to this day, many females cannot openly say even the word “period” in front of their families. I wanted to normalize the conversation surrounding menstruation, to liberate women within their own families and worlds. |
| – Cinema and society are experiencing a period of profound renewal, and women, with great courage, have been able to still affirm a civil and necessary gender equality. As a woman and director, do you feel part of a community? Do you think the fight against hypocrisy is still far from over?
The biggest problem today is still that we are relying on female perspectives to be told from a male lens. What I mean is this: so many technical aspects of filmmaking are still being handled by males. As educated and informed and sensitive males can be, females need to use their own voices to speak out. While I feel a part of a small community of filmmakers, I do not believe we are where we could be. More women need to support each other. Festivals and programmers need to be more courageous with promoting commentary that advances the narrative of a female director, however controversial her messaging may be. After all, one of the most celebrated films of the past year, Joker, had the most iconic yet damaged male character blow everyone’s minds. I still question whether we would have the same response if the same character was a female.
Having said that, males within cinema are more at liberty to be flexible with their schedules, even if they have children at home. Women, regardless of where we are in time right now, are just not. So, we need to encourage more female filmmakers to come into this line of work, working with flexible work schedules and our own voices, to bring about a change so that ten or twenty years from now, we will all just be filmmakers in our own rights. |
My advice would be to never give up. Despite rejections, failures, people criticizing your voice and your intention, despite the odds stacked against you with all of the societal pressures that come with being a female…despite all that, be persistent. Let your voice come out, regardless of people trying to shut it down. That shutting down may come from females too – carry on, believe in your own dreams. |