NOT MUCH CHEER FOR WOMEN IN BOLLYWOOD

India's women filmmakers have little to cheer this International Women's Day Monday as discrimination between sexes on-screen and off it continue to afflict their status in the trade. The best that the so-called new wave cinema could throw up in a week that witnessed a worldwide celebration of womankind was a drama named "Insaaf", inspired by real-life situations, and the typical masala flick "Love in Nepal" where the female actor needs only to look good and dance well.

To be fair to the Hindi film industry, in the last two years the silver screen's portrayal of women has matured from all-sacrificing mothers and wives to exceptionally well-crafted characters like Lady Macbeth. This has been made possible with female filmmakers bringing in their distinctive style to an industry dominated by male directors and leading ladies plunging into direction, production and heading industry associations.

Nevertheless, much is wanting. In the last decade not one film with a strong feminist message or female protagonist has triumphed at the box-office. India has the biggest film industry in the world but we can count the number of women filmmakers on our fingertips. The number of women directors in mainstream cinema, both Hindi and Tamil, can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

Many women are making a name for themselves in the world of documentaries, where budgets are bottom-of-the-barrel, but where there is big money involved, a male has a better chance of getting funding.

Directors like Gurinder Chaddha ("Bend It Like Beckham"), Deepa Mehta ("Bollywood/Hollywood"), Aparna Sen ("Mr & Mrs Iyer"), Tanuja Chandra ("Sur") and Revathi ("Mitr: My Friend") have proved their craft, yet getting finances is an uphill task for them.

To break the glass ceiling, women filmmakers seem to be consciously avoiding making women-oriented films. We have Kalpana Lajmi making "Kyon", Honey Akhtar marking her debut with "Armaan" and Farah Khan debuting with "Main Hoon Na", which seem to be saying that boys will be boys and men will be boys.