NEW DELHI: Terrified for her safety, Indian actress Sreelekha Mitra remembers pushing chairs and a sofa against her hotel door after she said an award-winning veteran director sexually harassed her.
Mitra waited 15 years to speak out about the incident, one of several cases exposing the dark underbelly of India’s Malayalam-language “Mollywood” film industry that has won awards at Cannes.
Her revelation was spurred by an explosive government report documenting widespread sexual harassment in an industry dominated by powerful and wealthy men who believe that an actress willing to kiss on screen would do the same in real life.
“That entire night I stayed awake,” Mitra, 51, told AFP.
Mitra was invited to a gathering at the director’s house, where she said he lured her into his room for a phone call with a cinematographer.
“He started playing with my hair and neck... I knew if I did not say anything then, his hand would roam around other parts of my body,” she said, describing events from 2009, when she was 36.
She left and returned to her hotel.
“The intentions behind his moves were pretty clear to me... I was petrified.”
Her case and close to a dozen others have triggered a MeToo reckoning in the industry, with at least 10 prominent figures accused, according to Indian media.
Kerala-based Mollywood is known for critically acclaimed movies with strong and progressive themes, a change from the big dance and song numbers of India’s giant Hindi-language Bollywood in Mumbai.
The industry is prolific, producing up to 200 films a year, loved not only by southern India’s 37 million Malayalam speakers, but also dubbed and streamed across the rest of India and abroad.
Internationally, its films have won awards, including the 1999 satire Marana Simhasanam (“Throne of Death“), winner of the Camera d’Or at Cannes.
This year’s “Manjummel Boys,” a survival thriller, took $29 million at the box office, the highest-grossing Malayalam movie ever and the fifth-most successful in India this year.
The industry report, released August 19, said women actors faced the widespread “worst evil” of sexual harassment.
The report was released by the Hema Committee, headed by a former high court judge, set up after a leading Malayalam actress reported she was sexually assaulted in 2017.
Gopalakrishnan Padmanabhan, a prominent Malayalam actor better known by his stage name Dileep, was arrested for allegedly orchestrating the assault.
He was imprisoned for three months before being released on bail. The case continues.
But the release of the report has opened discussion on the far wider issue of chronic violence against women, encouraging people like Mitra to speak out in public for the first time.
It said that women who considered speaking out about sexual assault were silenced by threats to their life, and to their families.
Award-winning actress Parvathy Thiruvothu, 36, called the investigation a “game changer” and a “historic moment.”
“There was this idea that women working in the industry should feel grateful for having been given an opportunity by the men who were hiring them,” said Thiruvothu, a member of the campaign group Women in Cinema Collective.
Allegations of abuse in Indian cinema are not new.
It witnessed a wave in 2018, shortly after the 2017 MeToo movement erupted in Hollywood against disgraced US movie producer Harvey Weinstein.
But Thiruvothu called the latest allegations more than “MeToo Part Two.”
“It’s shaking everything,” she told AFP. “It isn’t an individual-to-individual complaint anymore. It’s about a systemic structure that has continued to fail women.”
Since the report, several top actors have been accused.
The Association of Malayalam Movie Artists was dissolved following the resignation of its chief on “moral grounds” with some members among the accused.
Ranjith Balakrishnan, 59, chairman of the state’s film academy, has also quit.
Balakrishnan, who denies any wrongdoing, was the man Mitra accused of sexual harassment.
Police have filed a case against him for outraging a woman’s modesty, a non-bailable offense.
Mitra, who until the release of the report had only mentioned the incident to an industry colleague, told AFP that Balakrishnan had misused “his power.”
Thiruvothu offered a message to all women in the film industry who have survived sexual assault.
“You are a skilled artist... do not listen to anyone who tells you to find another job if it is so difficult for you,” she said.
“This is your industry, as much as it is anybody else’s. Speak up, so that we are taking the space that is rightfully ours.”
India’s ‘Mollywood’ cinema rocked by MeToo abuse claims
https://arab.news/zg8eu
India’s ‘Mollywood’ cinema rocked by MeToo abuse claims
- Explosive government report has documented widespread sexual harassment in an industry dominated by powerful and wealthy men
- Case of Sreelekha Mitra and close to a dozen others have triggered a MeToo reckoning in the industry, with 10 prominent figures accused
Sister act: Saudi sibling filmmakers Raneem and Dana Almohandes talk musicals, inspiration and telepathy
JEDDAH: A trip to Saudi Arabia’s AlUla, a chance encounter with a persistent mosquito on the streets of New York and an enduring love for musicals inspired Saudi filmmaking sisters Dana and Raneem Almohandes to create their animated short film “A Mosquito,” which screened at the recently concluded Red Sea International Film Festival in Jeddah.
“We were walking in New York, having a good time, and there was this mosquito who kept coming back to me,” explained older sister Raneem. “This is how it all started, with one question: ‘What does this mosquito want?’ We thought, ‘She wants to talk to us, but we’re not giving her the chance.’ So, that’s where the story was born.”
Set in 1969, “A Mosquito” follows Zozo — a tiny mosquito with big dreams. While her peers are content with ordinary life in the majestic landscapes of AlUla, Zozo dares to dream of becoming a famous singer — heading to Egypt to sing before the legendary Umm Kulthum.
“A Mosquito” began life as a two-minute short — part of Raneem’s university project. It turned into its fully realized version after they took their idea to the AlUla Creates program, a local initiative that provides funding, mentorship and networking opportunities for Saudi filmmakers and fashion designers.
“When AlUla invited us to apply, we had this idea already, and we wanted to expand on it, because, you know, university projects are victims of time and resources. We developed the story with the AlUla Creates team,” said Raneem.
“We went to AlUla earlier, and we captured the aesthetics from there. The frames that you see in the film are identical to the pictures we took during our trip,” added Dana.
Raneem graduated from New York University in musical theater writing (Dana, the younger of the two, is studying filmmaking at Princess Nourah Bint Abdul Rahman University in Riyadh). “We grew up watching musicals, but we felt like we don’t have any that are in the Saudi dialect, so we wanted to create (them),” said Raneem. “That’s why I studied musical theater writing.
“We’ve always loved expressing ourselves through art. For example, Dana will do a dance whenever she wants to express how she feels about someone. Like, for my birthday, she would do a choreographed dance. I used to do small videos for our family — sometimes they’re music videos, sometimes short films … this is how we started. And then I started an Instagram page for DIY videos, and we worked together on it. It was one of the first (Instagram accounts) to reach 1 million followers in the Middle East,” said Raneem. “Dana was, like, 10 years old back then.”
Before they had received any formal training, the duo were chosen as For Change Ambassadors of Saudi Arabia. The screenplay for their first musical feature (“Dandana”) was shortlisted in the second round of Sundance’s Screenwriters Lab 2020. Their first short, “A Human,” was funded by Google and premiered in Riyadh.
The sisters reiterate that their filmmaking career is closely tied to the history of cinema in the Kingdom.
“We put ‘A Human’ up on YouTube in parallel with Saudi Arabia opening its cinemas again,” Raneem said. It went on to become one of the first 100 films to be shown in cinemas after they reopened in the country and, according to Raneem, the very first short film.
In 2022, the pair wrote and directed the musical short “A Swing,” which was selected for the official competition at the Saudi Film Festival and was screened as part of the Kingdom’s participation at Cannes in 2022.
Despite the eight-year age gap between the two sisters, the duo say they have a seamless working relationship.
“We sometimes fight, as all sisters do, but we have telepathy most of the time,” said Raneem. “We are in sync in terms of ideas. Filmmaking is all about communication.”
Working as two young women in the Saudi film industry is, Dana said, “magical.” Raneem agreed.
“It’s overwhelmingly beautiful, because the support is magnificent,” she said. “Each and every project and idea that we’ve had, we knew for a fact that if we approached the right decision maker, it would happen.”
British historian explores Nabateans’ ‘cool culture’ in documentary
- Bettany Hughes’ series ‘Lost Worlds’ travels through AlUla, Europe and Petra
JEDDAH: For British historian Bettany Hughes, the story of the Nabateans is as vital as those of the ancient Greeks, Romans or Egyptians.
In a new three-part series, “Bettany Hughes' Lost Worlds: The Nabataeans,” Hughes traces the titular civilization’s incense trade routes from the Arabian Peninsula to the Mediterranean, accessing newly revealed research across Saudi Arabia’s Al Ula, Jordan, Greece, Italy and Oman.
“For me, you can’t understand the classical world unless you understand the Nabataeans — they are the missing link in the story of society, because, in many ways, they were the engine that drove many other civilizations. They connected the far edges of the Arabian Peninsula with the center of Europe, and without them, that line of connection wouldn’t have happened,” Hughes told Arab News on the sidelines of this month’s Red Sea International Film Festival, where the show’s first episode was screened.
Her decades of research have revealed that Petra, the Nabateans’ iconic capital, was just a small part of a vast empire that is only now revealing its secrets.
“When you say, ‘These are the guys that built Petra,’ then people go, ‘Oh, yeah. I always wondered.’ But that’s why we’re doing this series; to remind the world that they have this whole other story, whole other centers of operation. And to try to write them back into history. They’re a very cool culture. I’m very impressed by them.
“They love happiness. They love liberty. Women seem to have a really strong role in their society. They’re all about trade and communication — and therefore understanding people beyond borders and boundaries. So, I think there’s a lot that we can learn from them as a culture,” she continued.
Hughes’ entry point to the Nabateans came almost three decades ago.
“It was initially through trying to do detective work on the trade network,” she explained. “I knew that the Romans were obsessed with incense. I knew that Tutankhamun was buried with incense balls in his tomb. And I thought, ‘So, who’s delivering that?’ Because I also knew that incense came from that southern edge of the Arabian Peninsula. So, who was in charge?
“And then I saw this coin of Aretas IV, who was probably the most powerful of all the Nabatean kings. And Huldu, his queen, was also on the coin. And I just thought that that doesn’t happen often. That’s really interesting, so I needed to get to the bottom of their story,” Hughes added.
And since Saudi Arabia’s AlUla has been opened up to the outside world over the past few years, Hughes jumped on the opportunity to learn more about the civilization that’s recurrently appeared on the edges of her research efforts.
She first travelled to the historic site in 2022, heading deep into the deserts of AlUla, even spending time with the still-existing Bedouin communities there, tracing how the Nabateans traversed the harsh landscape with their camels and the stars as guides.
The first episode of “Lost Worlds” is dedicated entirely to AlUla, in the second episode they visit Europe, before heading to Petra in the third and final episode.
Hughes credited her love for history to one of her schoolteachers.
“When I was growing up, history wasn’t fashionable. People would say, ‘Oh, it’s irrelevant. All the answers lie in the future.’ And I just knew that couldn’t be true — that there was this reservoir of ideas and inspiration and understanding that came in the past,” she said. “And then I had a brilliant teacher who said, ‘Go for it. Even if you’re unpopular, even if people are saying no, make it happen.’ That kind of gave me the confidence to plow ahead.
“I then went to Oxford to study history, and I was very aware that in the official stories of the world that I was reading as a student, women didn’t feature very much. Even though I knew, obviously, we’d been 50 percent of the human population forever, we only occupied a tiny percentage of recorded history. So I felt that was something I could help with,” she continued. “I don’t just write about women’s history, but I’m always looking for the gaps — and the story of the female role in history is one of those gaps that needs filling.”
Review: ‘Carry-On’ fails to deliver on its festive promise
- Netflix thriller with Taron Egerton and Jason Bateman starts strong, but fizzles
LONDON: Netflix has absolutely missed a trick with the marketing for new thriller “Carry-On”. Instead of billing it as a slick, tense action-adjacent movie starring Taron Egerton and Jason Bateman, the bosses at the streaming giant should have pitched it as a modern interpretation of the greatest Christmas movie of all time — because for the first 45 minutes or so, “Carry-On” feels like the spiritual successor to “Die Hard” (or maybe “Die Harder,” given the airport setting).
Egerton is Ethan, a disenfranchised TSA agent who dreams of being an LA cop. When monitoring bags at a packed Los Angeles airport on Christmas Eve, he is contacted by a mysterious traveler (Bateman) who gives him a simple choice: let a specific suitcase through the scanners, or the traveler will have Ethan’s pregnant girlfriend killed. What follows is a cat-and-mouse couple of hours with Ethan surreptitiously trying to raise the alarm and find out what’s in the bag, while his boss, colleagues, girlfriend and LAPD detective (Danielle Deadwyler) try to figure out why he’s acting so strangely.
And for that first 45 minutes, it’s an absolute riot – the sparky back-and-forth between Egerton and Bateman sizzles, and the sense of futility is palpable as Ethan realizes that the traveler has predicted his every move. Then, there follows one of the most ludicrously staged highway set pieces in recent movie history which, rather than upping the ante, turns “Carry -On” from a cagey, sweaty thrill ride into a zany, cartoony mess. Ethan goes from terrified everyman to buff action hero in a way that worked for Bruce Willis in 1988, but simply falls flat here. The plot, such as it is, just sort of gives up — Bateman’s villain insists that he doesn’t know the reasons for the bag caper because he doesn’t need to know, which feels a little lazy, given the effort put into the convoluted web of blackmail.
There is a positive though: despite coming off the rails in its second half, “Carry-On” is inarguably a Christmas movie. And as a result, it’s at least 10 times better than the majority of holiday dross currently cluttering up the streaming platforms. It’s just a shame that this isn’t going to be one of the best movies of the entire year— which seems like a possibility at one stage— rather than just the festive season.
Saudi singer Fulana: ‘Music is my way to understand the world’
- The Saudi singer-songwriter discusses her debut album
DUBAI: “I’m a nervous wreck, but I’m very excited,” admits singer, songwriter, and producer Nadine Lingawi. “I mean, I know that I need to sound like I’m poised and I have everything together, but look, it’s my first. This is my first bulk of work. It’s definitely not something that’s super commercial and one always wonders whether or not it’s going to succeed. But I think in the very bottom of my emotional cortex, I have this very strange sense of calmness and almost a sense of being undoubtful that this will do really well, because I love it.”
Lingawi, better known by her stage name Fulana, is discussing her debut album, the collaborative project “ground:from.” Created with the electronic music duo Input/Output, it is the first of the conceptual album’s two musical chapters, and is described, rather morbidly, as a ‘letter to death’.
For the Vancouver-born, Jeddah-raised songstress, it’s a moment of truth, having spent the past three years pushing outs tracks such as “Minarets,” “Lore,” “Trouble,” and “Reprobate” through the indie label Wall of Sound. Singing primarily in English, she inhabits a world of self-reflection and existentialism, yet has performed at some of Saudi Arabia’s biggest musical events, including the inaugural Riyadh International Jazz Festival earlier this year and MDLBeast XP.
“I don’t think I ever had that idea — or want — to perform on stage; it was treated as more of a hobby growing up,” says Lingawi, whose family hail from Jeddah’s historic Al-Balad. “Music was just something that I did to express certain feelings or emotions. I was never really good with words or confrontation, and around people my age I felt things a little more deeply, and I struggled to express that. So music is more of my safe haven, or my way to understand the world.”
Initially, “ground:from” was little more than a collection of songs written by Lingawi, who asked Abdulmajeed Alwazna (one half of Input/Output) to produce a single track for a partially-written album. Alwazna then reached out to Husam Al-Sayed, the second half of Input/Output and a friend of Lingawi’s, and together the three of them reviewed everything while Lingawi outlined her vision for the album.
“I think of it as quite a magical moment, because it’s one thing when people want to help you create something,” says Lingawi. “It’s another thing when people want to have a sense of ownership, because then they come in with their full hearts.”
The three worked together for two-and-a-half months, with Lingawi moving from Jeddah to Riyadh for the recording sessions. Meeting two or three times a week, sometimes simply to discuss the album’s direction, they dissected every single sound she had brought to the studio, deciding what would stay and what would go.
“We looked at the anatomy of songs, and we decided together: ‘This doesn’t work here, we should shift it.’ Or ‘This sound does not work here, let’s recreate another sound,’” recalls Lingawi. “We wrote together, we produced together, we experimented together, and so we gave birth to this project.”
The result is an atmospheric, contemplative exploration of mortality. In essence, a dialogue with death, the first chapter takes listeners on a journey above ground, incorporating audio elements such as the sounds of crickets, birds, thunder, and other natural sonic occurrences. Together, these sounds contribute to a sense of the “beginning of decomposition,” with Lingawi “speaking to death herself” in her trademark introspective, lyrical style.
“I’ve always enjoyed the dichotomy of life,” she admits. “I’ve always enjoyed creating sounds that sound really cheerful, but what I’m saying is quite dreadful, or vice versa. I think it creates that sense of balance that we try to achieve while we’re alive. I think from a very young age I was very fascinated by the idea of endings and beginnings. It’s always been a part of how I view the world, or the things that I tend to think a little too much about.
“But death, in this album, is not just the idea of decay or our souls leaving us. It also translates into the death of causes, the death of humanity, the death of feelings, the death of chapters. It’s more about endings and romanticizing those endings. In a sense, it is a reflection of me because I tend to romanticize endings a lot more than I enjoy the good parts of things. So, in chapter one, it’s about that longing for tension, that longing for the one thing I can never reach. And in chapter two, we’re kind of taking a step back and realizing the aftermath of that. Of not enjoying a moment for what it is when it is alive.”
Lingawi’s vocals, sometimes mesmerizing in their emotional clarity, fuse beautifully with the deep synths and ambient guitar of Input/Output, whose fondness for rhythmic structure and cinematic soundscapes help to create a sonic environment rooted in the intensity of its subject matter. In the first chapter, that largely relates to the melancholy of love, the fleeting nature of life, and the cycles of loss and rebirth. In the second — due early next year — the trio head below ground, where the conversation with death will be darker and far more honest.
Lingawi’s musical journey began as a child, listening to the radio on car journeys with her mother. Around the age of 17, she began to put her own music online, having experimented with GarageBand and having nurtured a love of slam poetry since the age of 14.
To retain her anonymity, she chose the name Fulana, which means ‘anonymous female’ in Arabic.
“Fulana was just my very cheeky way of saying, ‘I’m going to put my music online, and no one’s going to tell that it’s me.’ And I wanted to stick with it because through the name I was able to, I wouldn’t say dissociate, but to have people focus more on what I’m saying and the stories I’m telling, rather than on me as a person. And that remains a big part of who I am as a musician. I don’t really want people to care about me as a person. I’m not that interested really,” she says. “It’s the music itself, so if we could just focus on that and not me as a person, that would be amazing.”
Review: ‘Maria’ rests on the shoulders of the superb Angelina Jolie
JEDDAH: One of the most fascinating movies I watched at the recent Red Sea International Film Festival in Jeddah, “Maria” may not have inched up to reach its great height had it not been for lead star Angelina Jolie. Jolie superbly plays the legendary Maria Callas, a Greek soprano who made Paris her home. The audience is introduced to her a week before her death on Sept. 16, 1977. Frail and pacing up and down her living room, she collapses, and the movie is rewound seven days before her end.
Like so many celebrities, who came before and after her, Maria leads a wretched life of excesses and miserable loneliness. Director Pablo Larrain’s third biopic after “Jackie” (on Jacquline Kennedy) and “Spencer” (on Princess Diana), the film hardly takes us outside her palatial mansion in the French capital that soon begins to feel like a golden cage. Imprisoned of her own will, Maria’s life spirals towards an anticipated end.
We are told how she had travelled a torturous journey from the slums of Nazi-occupied Athens to the European and American concert halls in a narrative that is interspersed with an affair with the Greek magnate Aristotle Onassis.
Though Larrain makes his film seem almost eventless — we follow along as Maria navigates her apartment or wanders through the bourgeoisie neighborhoods of Paris — we sense a storm gathering in a distance as she sinks into self-destruction.
The Chilean work may not have been so compelling had it not been for the exceptional portrayal of Maria by Jolie, who disappears into the character with ease and conviction. She is faultless as an epitome of tragedy and sorrow and this makes the movie eminently watchable.
