[ad_1]
Film producer Guneet Monga Kapoor, who has backed the Academy Award-winning documentary short film The Elephant Whisperers and content-rich movies like Kathal, Irrfan Khan’s The Lunchbox, Anurag Kashyap’s Gangs Of Wasseypur 1 and 2, Pagglait, among others, recently reacted to the findings of the Justice Hema Committee report and emphasised on the need to take definitive steps towards ensuring the safety of women in the film industry.
Talking about the MeToo movement that started in India in 2018, Guneet said that it “affected” her deeply as it was a matter concerning her colleagues.
When asked if steps have been taken to make the film industry a safer space for women, Guneet Monga Kapoor said, “I can talk from a Sikhya (her production house Sikhya Entertainment) point of view. I can talk from my point of view, being a woman producer myself. The MeToo movement even affected me deeply because it is so much understanding and internalising. It is so much grief and trauma out there, and for us to be able to be a community. We (at Sikhya) have a POSH (Prevention of Sexual Harassment) committee. I know Producers’ guild set up a POSH committee.”
“We do these POSH workshops for everyone before every film. There is a proper process to report an incident. At Sikhya, there are more women working than men. I also feel like we have built an eco-chamber where we feel we have all of these provisions, but that is not largely the representation of what happens or can happen. Even with the Producers’ guild, they have sent out these tools for the POSH committee to every production house,” she added.
Guneet Monga stressed on the fact that women’s safety at her place of employment is her employer’s responsibility and a basic need. She said, ”I think the safety of women in any business or profession, is the least that the employer needs to provide. A safe environment, clean bathrooms… It is a work place, you expect it to be safe. So it is very important for anybody running any business across any spectrum of employment. Having safety is a basic need. In our films, we shoot outdoors, we have so many dynamics, long shoot days, so we have to build those processes. At Sikhya, we have done that, and many production companies, that I know, have definitely built that as well.”
Guneet then discussed the findings of the Justice Hema Committee and shared what is the learning for people in various film industries in the country.
Lauding the women of WCC (Women in Cinema Collective) for speaking up at a cost of even losing their jobs, she said, “WCC is a collective formed by women which was formed after a horrible incident that happened in 2017. More power to the women there. What they actually did was they set up the collective, but what after that? They went straight to the government, saying that they wanted the government to see what happens there. The government was then involved in filing the report and retired Justice K. Hema looked into the report filing. It didn’t come out for five years. Now with an RTI (Right To Information) that report is out there and people are coming out. Every day more and more reporting is happening. Policy changes and social changes cannot really happen alone. Institutions need to be built, systems need to be built.”
Guneet Monga Kapoor hopes that the report on rampant sexual misconduct in the Malayalam film industry, and the action against it, will set a precedent for other film industries as well.
“A collective that straight away went to the government, it is genius. More power to the women for doing that. Right now, they are all working towards forming a new policy, and that will be amazing to learn from. There are some basic codes of conduct that should be a norm, and that is what this will lead to. That hopefully can be adapted and it becomes easier to articulate. Because how do you explain patriarchy? How do you explain trauma? It can be just one person saying and it becomes one person’s word against the other. It is so complicated and it is generational. So, in this case, I am very proud of the women and their courage because it led to no work. It led to being isolated. But it is the need of the hour, so, more power to the team of WCC. I am glad that the report is out there. I am looking forward to the next steps on it and how that impacts all of us,” the producer concluded.
Click for more updates and latest Bollywood news along with Entertainment updates. Also get latest news and top headlines from India and around the world at The Indian Express.
[ad_2]
