“No More Than You, No Less Than Me.”
This time last summer I traveled to Mumbai, India with a handful of classmates from Seattle University. We were on a study-abroad course studying globalization and mass media. It was the summer after my senior year and the trip dramatically changed my life. (The pictures in this blog posts are ones I took while I was there.)
I owe one of the most raw and unforgettable experiences of that trip to Bishakha Datta, director of In The Flesh and head of Point of View, an Indian NGO dedicated to changing the bitter reality of third-world women through creative use of the media to instigate social change and break common misconceptions and stereotypes around the world.
Our group met Bishakha at the POV headquarters and gathered around on a carpet in the living room to watch In The Flesh. Before she started the movie, Bishakha explained that we were about to see a world closed off to the rest of us – that it took her years to get the footage necessary to complete In The Flesh, and even longer to convince the sex workers featured to appear in it at all.
But once she finished filming, she couldn’t distribute it. Bishakha related horror stories about how an Indian government board screens all films to be approved for distribution. She talked about their stalwart opposition to her film on the basis of its content – sex work doesn’t exist in India, as far as the government is concerned. That’s why Bollywood and feel-good romantic comedies are wildly popular, I came to discover – they take Indians away from the poverty at their doorsteps, even if just for a few hours.
The three sex workers Bishakha interviews in the film make it unforgettable. She chooses to follow an aging sex worker who stopped selling her body but still lives in a brothel and a young woman in her 20s just beginning. She also tells the story of a hijra – neither male nor female, who crosses gender and sexuality lines in India.
The film shows these people as they are – they aren’t acting or hiding from the camera. They have unique personality quirks and they get angry, they get drunk and they fight. They love their children and they fall in love with their clients and dare to hope for a better life. They fight and protest their mistreatment at the hands of police at political rallies and speak frankly about rape and STDs.
They are persecuted for their lifestyles but have no way out.
“No more than you, no less than me,” Bishakha writes in the film description. I feel that’s a wonderful way to describe this film and the message it sends to viewers. I knew when I started working at IndieFlix I wanted to bring In The Flesh to American audiences and support Bishakha and Point of View. A year has past since I’ve seen the film in its entirety. It still haunts me and I am forever changed.
Tags: Bishakha Datta, Documentaries, in the flesh, India
