Director Tanuja Chandra said she has never faced issues in showbiz on the basis of her gender.
Tanuja Chandra, who has directed films like ‘Qarib Qarib Singlle’,’Dushman’, ‘Sangharsh’ and ‘Sur-The Melody of Life’, feels that there aren’t enough female directors in the country.
Talking about she’s difficulty for female directors to function in the industry, tanujs says, “It’s not so much the gender as the type of subject a director chooses to make, which poses a problem most often. I’ve never really faced issues because I’m a woman.”
“It’s the unusual subjects I’ve chosen for my films that have had resistance. So if you want to make anything that doesn’t fit into a certain box or label or genre, you will find the road difficult,” she added.
Tanuja said, “The number has grown since when I started out, but only by a small amount. When there will be many, many more women directing movies, I truly believe storytelling will get better.”
Chandra’s directorial starring acclaimed actor Irrfan Khan comes after nine years.
She helmed ‘Hope and a Little Sugar’ in 2008.
“For a director, the journey is far longer than for an actor or even a writer and producer. One has to work on scripts and then pitch them to potential producers and actors-all this takes longer than people realise. It only catches peoples’ attention at release time.”
“So I was, in fact, working on screenplays throughout the time you call a ‘gap’-and a couple of projects had reached the shooting stage but then were stopped for various reasons,” she concluded.
‘Qarib Qarib Singlle’ fortunately, was not one of those! It reached the production stage and was successfully released.”–CINEWS