If you visit the set of a Malayalam film, you would find very few women there: almost all the directors, cinematographers and their assistants would be men. A woman’s job in our cinema, you might feel, is just to look pretty and act.
Yes, an Anjali Menon has directed one of the biggest money-spinners in Malayalam cinema of recent time ( Bangalore Days ) and a Sreebala K. Menon got superstar like Dileep to star in her maiden film Love 24 x 7 , but they are the exceptions. The fact is there are too few women in our films.
In such a scenario, what Vidhu Vincent achieved on Tuesday is remarkable. She won the State Film Award for the Best Director and her directorial debut
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Quite fittingly, the awards were announced on the eve of International Women’s Day. “I felt I probably had a chance for winning the State Award – for the best debutant director; I never imagined that I would get this honour,” Vidhu told
Difficult for women
She said it was difficult for women to find work in Malayalam cinema as a technician. “Ours is a deeply patriarchal society and cinema is no exception,” she said.
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“I have been a regular viewer at the IFFK for the last two decades,” said the journalist-turned-director. “It is watching all those great international films I watched there that I learnt about cinema. But I feel the best recognition for Manhole came at the State Budget when Finance Minister Thomas Isaac referred to it and allocated ₹10 crore for the automation of manual scavenging.”