Why are movies only made for those who can see and hear them? Can we not make movies for the visually impaired or the hearing impaired? Also, why do we shy away from acknowledging that people with disabilities also have sexual needs?
Point of View (POV), a Mumbai-based feminist non-profit organisation, has been working with marginalised women to break the silence on various such issues. They have been organising a series of screenings of short films, feature films, documentaries and having discussions based on disability.
Conversations about relationships, intimacy and rediscovering oneself form the core of what these movies depict.
We, at the Better India, caught up with two women who are helping drive this initiative – Nidhi Goyal who heads the Sexuality and Disability Program at POV and Srinidhi Raghavan, Senior Researcher and Trainer at POV. We spoke to them about the movies that were screened, the discussions that stemmed from that and the role of POV in putting this all together.
When asked why they chose the medium of movies to put their point across, Nidhi said, “We wanted to reach women who don’t speak English, those who do not necessarily have access to research papers and the information that internet provides.
The idea of such initiatives is to extend the reach to the grassroots and start conversations. To do that we conduct offline workshops and showcase movies at all these festivals to ensure we reach more people.”
One aspect of making theatres accessible to the disabled is to address the physical accessibility. However, the kinds of disability that exist are so varying that we need to provide and find solutions to address those as well.
“Do we have captioning (for the hearing impaired) and audio descriptions (for the visually impaired)?” asks Srinidhi. In these screenings, one of the things that POV wanted to achieve was inclusiveness – a platform that recognises all kinds of disabilities.
When asked about how mainstream cinema addresses disability and sexuality, Nidhi says that with the exclusion of Margarita with a Straw, there are hardly any movies made on the topic.
“The reason we need to have these discussions is to break free of the stereotyping that happens. Cinema does not have to think about it as a disability story. It is, after all, a story of love. That mindset needs to change.”