Gurinder Chadha- Inspiring Women series: Finding Your Voice

As patron of Women in Film &TV the great film director Gurinder Chadha last night had an audience of women filmmakers hanging on her every word. Not that she pushes herself as the great Goddess of cinema but rather that she has trodden a path similar to many of us women that follow in her wake. She wasn’t born with the silver screen at her feet, she didn’t know the right people, she didn’t have a cine-camera glued to her face from the age of five, and she didn’t go to film school. In fact she was Asian and a woman, neither of which placed her at an advantage in a primarily white male industry. What she did have was a big mouth and something to say. Door after door slammed in her face, brick walls were constructed across her path, insults hurled as rocks in her direction. But she came out fighting; with a twinkle in her eye and her tongue in her cheek. She lifted the British Asian community out of the realms of pity, shame, abuse and banged it down on the table with a grin and a platform that gave them a voice. She made her protagonists women, and with that suddenly on screen we were seeing women with colour and attitude. And humour.

Continue Reading Add a comment March 4, 2010