Nandita Das: Taking a social conscience to the screen
With a master's degree in social work, Indian actress Nandita Das is keen to talk about women's empowerment and human rights than participate in the glamour of Bollywood.
Das is featured in Talk Asia on CNN where she talks about her directorial movie debut In Such Times.
She talked about her new film project, her controversial choice of film roles in Fire and Bawandar, an emotional visit to Sri Lanka in the aftermath of the Tsunami, and the honour of being a juror at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival.
For an actress who "kind of stumbled upon acting" and "didn't ever want to be an actor to begin with," Das' talents are well-recognised, most recently winning the French award of "Ordre Des Arts Et Des Lettres" for her contribution to cinema.
Das said that she acts because "there are stories to tell...wonderful stories," and she explains how the lack of realism in typical Bollywood fare never attracted her: "There's a certain kind of cinema that I don't relate to...I didn't even grow up watching them."
Das brushes off the controversy stirred up by her role in the film Fire: "The bigger evil was that how can you talk about homosexuality in a society that would rather not talk about it."
And of her role in Bawandar playing a woman who is gang raped: "I often tell women that you've got to be strong, why do you feel humiliated when you go through sexual abuse?"
But she feels: "I don't think women's empowerment is ever going to be possible without a society overall wanting to change things."
About her film, In Such Times -- a movie about how acts of violence affects its characters' life -- Das said, "I think it's a universal story, I think we are all concerned about violence...at some level, there is a collective desire for peace and it's good to examine yourself."
Besides telling stories on screen, Das also shared the experience of visiting Sri Lanka and seeing the children in the aftermath of the Tsunami, she says: "They subconsciously get stored somewhere in your mind and form your overall thinking, or they help you to be a little more sensitive than one was."
She also talked about a very special experience, being selected to be a member of the Cannes Film Festival jury: "The best part of being in Cannes was not just to see great films or to walk the red carpet and all the hype that is around it, but to have those sessions with 8 other brilliant minds..."
Source: CNN
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