Gurinder Chadha- Inspiring Women series: Finding Your Voice

March 4, 2010 louhamilton
Tags: Bend it Like Beckham, Create Lab, film, Gurinder Chadha, Lou Hamilton, TV, Women, Women in Film & TV

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.

Trusting her intuition she developed work that was an extension of her own psychology and her own views which deftly skewed the general population’s attitude away from what they had previously thought it was to be British and Asian and Female. She became the only woman director amongst a handful of male directors to proudly make British ‘commercial’ movies; that is films that lots of people want to see. She honed her voice through her first few films because she was manic about what it was she wanted to say and the people she wanted to hear that message. She made films about women who previously weren’t being seen or heard- the ones who weren’t goddesses but the girls and grannies, the ones who wouldn’t take prejudice lying down. She preached ‘girl power’ and she wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer.

But her audiences are not just women or Asian; she touches a chord across the board. That is because she takes you on an emotional journey, one that resonates with us all at some level. She reminds us what it is to be human, the strength of the human spirit that timelessly resists being crushed. She is absolutely clear about what she wants to say, and that is about telling the truth.

In the meantime she juggles babies and work, helps young children learn about making films, and encourages women to go trail-blaze their own visions. “Don’t go out there and make another Bend it Like Beckham” she says. She wants us to grab what we believe in with every ounce of who we are, get out there and rugby tackle anyone who tries to get in our way. Woohoo here we come!

Gurinder Chadha was speaking at a special edition of Women in Film and TV’s Show Us Your Shorts series. To find out more about WFTV, visit www.wftv.org.uk

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