When Deepa Mehta’s Oscar-nominated film Water, which told of a young widow shunned by Indian society in 1938, raised questions about widowhood in India today, Mehta had to respond.
She and her collaborator Noemi Weis, RIGHT, created The Forgotten Woman, a documentary about the plight of widows in India now.
“Deepa, her brother Dilip [Mehta] and David Hamilton, producer of Water decided to make a documentary, so when she approached me, I thought it was a fascinating topic,” said filmmaker Noemi Weis on the phone from her home in Toronto.
The Forgotten Woman tells of millions of Indian women, some marrying as young as six months old, who become the property of their husband’s family. Ancient religious customs dictate that when her husband dies, the widow is blamed. Rural women are cast aside with no means of food or shelter – leaving many to beg or pray at ashrams to atone for their “sins” for a bowl of rice or a rupee.
Middle-class women are more fortunate, although the stigma remains. One of the men interviewed offered this comparison: “Women are like flowers – once you have a flower you can’t offer that flower again.”
Support groups reach out to some. Weis interviewed Burlington-born activist and widow Ginny Shrivastava, who has lived in India for 36 years, runs a shelter for displaced widows and heads an association that empowers women through education and training, and Dr. Mohini Giri, an advocate of widows’ rights and founder of Amar Bari’s shelter, who came to Toronto for the film’s world premiere at the Hot Docs festival in April.
Weis, an Argentine-Canadian has been in the production business for most of her life. Her international production company, Filmblanc, branched out four years ago to create documentaries that raise awareness.
The first, Gloriously Free, about gay immigrants living in Canada, was made for Omni Television.
“We’ve travelled the world with this film. It’s now playing in Israel. A U.K. lawyer used it as a tool to defend a case in the U.S. That’s the satisfaction I’m getting,” Weis said.
Shortly after making Gloriously Free, Weis began working with Deepa Mehta. “Before Water got accepted into the Toronto International Film Festival, we produced Let’s Talk About It,” an award-winning film on domestic violence seen through the eyes of children. “After creating the concept and researching, I asked Deepa to direct it – she was the perfect ambassador for that film.”
Late in 2005, Weis and Dilip Mehta, the director, cinematographer and editor of The Forgotten Woman, travelled to India. Dilip, a renowned photojournalist, shot his first cover for Time magazine at the age of 24. His work appears in National Geographic, Newsweek and the New York Times.
“Initially we planned to go with a full crew and Dilip was going to direct,” Weis said. “On a research trip, I recommended taking a camera, because in documentaries, you never know what you’ll find. He never used a video camera before. It was a different medium since he had been a photojournalist all his life, so we rented one. He took a crash course of half an hour in a basement in Delhi and off we went.”
After the first day of filming, Weis was amazed at the sensitivity of Mehta’s work. That evening, she suggested that he be the cinematographer, but he declined, since it was his directorial debut and didn’t think he couldn’t do both. But after seeing the outstanding footage, he finally agreed.
As Mehta captured the images, many women with little or no education proudly told their stories. “It was part of the healing process to have the opportunity. They are in a state of poverty, but they got up in the morning with a smile – their strength was incredible. It’s a message to the west, to so many cultures: What is sufficient? What do we need to live happily? When one woman in the shelter sings, ‘I am happiness,’ that’s an inspiration to us all,” Weis said.
The Forgotten Women recently finished its run in Toronto. It is playing in Waterloo, Ont., and Regina this month, and in Montreal in July.
For more information, go to www.filmblanc.com.
