ABOUT
‚India lives in many times at the same time. And so are Indian women’ says Vatsala, a journalist from Bangalore and opens the documentary WOMEN’S VOICE – INDIA’S CHOICE by Shammi Singh. And this quote says more about this vast, chaotic and growing country than all of the statistics and news stories that reach us about India in the West.
This huge contrasts between old traditions and Western modernizations, religion and digitalization, rural and urban, men and women makes India what it is now: a super fast developing country with an immense cultural superstructure which affects everyone’s lives.
Especially women are affected by the many cultural traditions. In the West, we have a very pessimistic view on how things are for women in India. We only ever hear those horrible stories and nobody tells us of women having an independent and unconcerned life. Of course, a lot of bad things are happening to women – but is there more to that? And is there something changing?
Shammi Singh is looking for answers to these questions but found so much more. He searches for ‚the image of women‘ in India, wants to know who they are, let them tell their stories and opinions. To capture a more holistic view and to listen to them without prejudice.
In over 15 interviews in 2018 Singh tries to capture a lot of India’s reality and wants to show Indian women on an eye to eye level. How is it to be a woman in India? How is their life compared to those of their mothers and grandmothers? And is there something as ‚one India‘?
In the documentary Singh also tries to carve out more factors which enable independency for women such as education, economics and urbanity. In conversations with different NGOs all around India, the viewer furthermore gets more insights on how the organizations try to help women in need.
This all gives us another piece of the puzzle to actually really understand what’s going on in the country and especially with the Indian women.
Facts
Release: 2019
Runtime: 70 Min
Director: Shammi Singh
Language: English or English/German
Subtitles: English or German
About the Director
Shammi Singh (31) is the son of a German mother and an Indian father. He lived his whole life in Germany, grew up there, went to school and worked in online marketing agencies until the end of 2017.
But in the last years he felt that something inside him is dragging him to the Indian subcontinent. He has been to India several times and back home he has always been exposed to the question of how women are treated there.
To find out how women can live their lives in India he started shooting WOMEN’S VOICE – INDIA’S CHOICE, his first documentary in January 2018.
Shammi Singh did everything on his own from creating a concept to directing, filming, interviewing, cutting, producing, writing and recording the music. He is not a professional filmmaker and taught himself all these skills during the whole process of the movie which took exactly one year.
You can find out more about him and his other projects here:
www.shamminski.com
