India's Daughter focus of China film festival

By Satarupa Bhattacharjya | China Daily | Updated: 2015-11-28 07:29

The reception of Leslee Udwin's documentary reveals how violence and discrimination against women is a universal problem

Leslee Udwin's documentary film, India's Daughter, was screened in four Chinese cities in the past few weeks. It was shown nearly a dozen times as part of the ongoing China Women's Film Festival, which is an annual event in its third year, hosting filmmakers from here and abroad.

The documentary is based on the gang rape and subsequent death three years ago of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student in New Delhi. The film is banned in India.

Indian feminists who called for the ban ahead of the film's release in March argued that Udwin's airing of the interview of one of the men convicted of the crime would embolden people with similar attitudes toward women in a country that's already struggling with gender issues.

A New Delhi court sentenced to death five adult men for the crimes. And a teenage boy is in a correctional program for young delinquents for his alleged role in the attack, Indian media reported.

In the documentary, one of the adult men tells Udwin (who isn't visible on screen) that more than men, women were to be blamed for incidences of rape.

Barring India, the film's co-producer BBC broadcast India's Daughter worldwide on Women's Day. Udwin has traveled to 40 countries with the film since March 8, she says.

The British filmmaker, 58, earlier produced feature films such as East is East and West is West, themed on Britain's South Asian communities.

Her appearance in Beijing on Tuesday generated much interest among young Chinese as visible at a screening of her documentary in the city's Wangjing area.

The film festival is organized by Chinese NGO Crossroads, with help from UN Women and backed by a few foreign embassies, mostly European.

The India ban came as a shock to her, she says.

"Audiences (everywhere) have expressed shock and anger ... they have been moved by the issue (the film's subject)," Udwin tells China Daily. "I haven't seen a single person who saw this as an India-centric film."

During her interactions with Chinese audiences, Udwin said that not just violence but gender discrimination was universal.

She cited with examples of Saudi Arabia, where women aren't allowed to drive, Nigeria, where women can't open bank accounts and the United States, where a woman is likely to earn on an average 78 cents to the dollar for one dollar earned by a man doing the same job.

In China, boys were preferred over girls during the one-child policy, she said.

Her hourlong documentary ends with figures for sex crimes in different countries. And whether in developed or underdeveloped countries, liberal or conservative societies, the data she provides is appalling. In the United Kingdom, for instance, one in three girls between ages 13 and 17, has been raped or experienced sexual violence of some form, her film says.

'Global campaign'

On the night of Dec 16, 2012, the five adult men with irregular livelihoods and the juvenile were driving a privately run bus through New Delhi when they chanced upon the victim and her male companion who were returning home after an evening out watching a film.

The woman and her friend boarded the near-empty bus and soon found themselves in an altercation with the gang. This followed the gang beating them with metal bars. The woman was then repeatedly raped before being thrown off the moving bus onto a street along with her friend, the media said.

Following intensive care at a hospital in the city for more than a week after the assault, the woman-with three abdominal surgeries and a cardiac arrest by then - was airlifted to Singapore by the Indian government and admitted to a hospital for specialist treatment. She died there owing to massive damages to her body.

The alleged ringleader of the convicted gang was found hanged from a grill in the ceiling of his prison cell in New Delhi, in an apparent suicide the following spring, the media said.

New Delhi sees the highest number of sex attacks among India's major cities, according to official statistics. A rape is reported every 20 minutes or so.

The brutality of this crime forced a spasm of public protests across India against the treatment of women. The Indian government tightened laws and opened fast-track courts to try such cases. But for the victim's family, their daughter, who fought her attackers hard, was gone.

The dignity of the victim's parents in engaging with the world even after such trauma comes through in Udwin's documentary. They knew their daughter wouldn't make it back from Singapore. The doctors in New Delhi had told the min the early days after the vicious attack that it was only a matter of time.

"It is my tribute to her," says Udwin.

Her film was always "going to be a global campaign", Udwin says. Her objectives for the project were to show how violently a life had been cut short, "what goes on inside the heads of these men (who perpetrate such crimes)" and capturing the public outrage the incident sparked.

Udwin also says that she found her interviewees (men convicted in other rape cases as well) to be ordinary people, not the "monsters" their actions have made them.

In past comments to the media, prominent Indian feminist Kavita Krishnan likened Udwin's documentary to a "rap on the knuckles (of India) from the 'civilized world'".

Gender challenge

The challenge to stem gender inequality is daunting not just for India as the UN World's Women Report for 2015 and other recent national findings suggest.

"Availability of data (worldwide) on violence against women has increased significantly in recent years," the UN report says.

More than 125 million girls and women alive today have been subjected to female genital mutilation across countries in Africa and the Middle East where this specific form of violence against women is concentrated, it adds.

According to the US National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey 2010 Report, nearly one in five women and one in 71 men in that country have been raped at some time in their lives, including attempted and completed rape. And, more than half of the women victims of rape reported being assaulted by an intimate partner.

In China, domestic violence is a serious problem. The All-China Women's Federation, a government agency, says one in four married women faces some sort of violence at home. Last year, China drafted its first law against abuses in the family.

Udwin's film puts the number of female victims of sexual crimes in the United States to 17.7 million, without the mention of a time period.

Organizers of the China Women's Film Festival that opened in Beijing on Sept 19, and will run through the coming months, say this year, the main entries relate to violence and discrimination against women, feminism, women filmmakers and lesbians.

The festival opened with Lotus, a Chinese feature by director Liu Shu that tells the story of a language arts teacher who moves from as mall town to Beijing only to live in a basement, fending off a potential sex attack.

Among other Chinese films is the documentary We Are Here, which reveals how the lesbian movement gathered steam in China - starting from an under ground nightclub.

Other than the British production India's Daughter, the festival's foreign participants include Japan's Lily Festival, a humor-filled take on sexuality among the elderly, with its heroines between the ages of 69 and 91, US documentary Daisy Bates: First Lady of Little Rock, which is about the life and times of a forgotten African-American civil rights activist from Arkansas and Germany's It Happened Just Before, a documentary that sheds light on trafficking in women and girls.

At a glance: World violence against women

How many women suffer from violence?

North America: From 7 to 32 percent.

Asia: 6 -- 67 percent.

Europe: 13 -- 46 percent.

Africa: 6 -- 64 percent.

Oceania: 17 -- 68 percent.

Latin America and the Caribbean: 14 -- 38 percent.

How many seek out help?

In most countries, less than 40 percent of women who experience violence seek help of any sort. Of which, less than 10 percent seek police help.

How prevalent is genital mutilation?

Are women adequately represented in law enforcement?