Wish for better workspace resulted in forming WCC: Asha Achi Joseph

Thiruvananthapuram: Filmmaker Asha Achi Joseph, one of the founding members of Women in Cinema Collective (WCC), was asked if she had faced issues because of patriarchy. “Haven’t you?” she asked the DC reporter, a woman. She wanted to emphasize the fact that every woman had to go through varying degrees of discrimination and harassment. She grew up in a family, where both her parents believed in equal opportunities for all genders.

“Mine was an egalitarian household. My mother was a political worker and my father was also socially committed. But when you come out of the house, you realise you were never in an equal situation. Then you need to come up with formulas, to tackle issues,” she said. In 2015, her short film Ore Udal got selected in the Indian Panorama section of IFFI, the only non-feature film from South India to make it. The film was about a nun who was sexually harassed. “I choose subjects with which I have a certain personal connection. Cases of harassment of nuns have been reported before in the media. I happened to see a play, directed by a friend with the title Njayarazhcha (Sunday), with this as the theme, and was extremely moved. I decided to make a short film based on this,” she said.

The film has been shown to nuns, but Asha says it was not meant to pass on a social message. “The film was intended to be an activity of personal expression,” she said. She was asked if WCC already had some impact on the attitude of people. “WCC was formed as a response to an incident in which an actor was harassed. It was an emergency situation. WCC was born out of the wish that cinema should be a good working place for everyone. It is aimed at creating a better work atmosphere for ordinary women in cinema, through rooted activities,” she said.