Director: Anjali Monteiro & K. P. Jayasankar

English (subtitled), 55 min, 2005, India

SheWrite weaves together the narratives and work of four Tamil women poets, Salma, Kuttirevathi, Malathy Maitri and Sukirtharani.

Synopsis:

'SheWrite' weaves together the narratives and work of four Tamil women poets. Salma negotiates subversive expression within the tightly circumscribed space allotted to a woman in a small town. For Kuttirevathi, solitude is a crucial creative space from where her work resonates. Her anthology entitled 'Breasts' (2003) became a controversial work that elicited hate mail, obscene calls and threats. Malathy Maitri’s poems attempt to explore and express feminine power and spaces. Sukirtharani writes of desire and longing, celebrating the body in a way that affirms feminine empowerment. The film traverses these diverse modes of resistance, through images and sounds that evoke the universal experiences of pain, anger, desire and transcendence.

Producer: School of Media and Cultural Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences

Director: Anjali Monteiro & K. P. Jayasankar

Camera: K. P. Jayasankar

Editing: Anjali Monteiro, K. P. Jayasankar

Sound: Elangovan R., Sound (additional): K. P. Jayasankar, Anjali Monteiro

Music: S. L. Vaidyanathan

About the Director:

Dr. Anjali Monteiro is professor, Centre for Media and Cultural Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. Dr. Monteiro has a Masters Degree in Economics and a PHD in Sociology. She is involved in media production, teaching and research. Vibgyor Film Festival, Kerala organised a retrospective of her work with Dr. K. P. Jayasankar in 2006. Dr. Monteiro is a recipient of the Howard Thomas Memorial Fellowship in Media Studies and was attached to the University of Western Sydney in 2000. She was a Fulbright visiting lecturer for 2006-07, attached to the University of California, Berkeley.

Dr. K. P. Jayasankar, is professor and Chair, Centre for Media and Cultural Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. Dr. Jayasankar has an M.A. in German language and a Ph. D in Humanities and Social Sciences. He is involved in media production, teaching and research. Vibgyor Film Festival, Kerala organised a retrospective of his work with Dr. Anjali Monteiro in 2006. Dr. Jayasankar was a Howard Memorial Fellow in Media Studies, attached to Goldsmith’s College, London and a DAAD visiting scholar at the University of Heidelberg.