THE REVOLUTIONARY ENERGY on university campuses, civil liberty and radical left movements, land right struggles and an overall sense of possibilities and burst of creative activism that came with the emergence of the autonomous women’s movement during the post-Emergency period also sparked the foundation of the Yugantar film collective in 1979/80. The collective’s name carrying the air of radical historical transformation – Yugantar/ Change to a New Era. Abha Bhaiya, Deepa Dhanraj and Meera Rao were driven by the impetus to contribute to feminist movement-building at the time. They also understood that in particular working class women’s crucial participation and leadership in struggles was often invisible and not being documented. The creation of a public memory of women’s courage, strategising, asking new questions and creating new political vocabularies and practices, crucial for movement building, needed diverse platforms. In line with the spirit of inclusivity at the time while acknowledging the challenges of continuously re/creating solidarities and ‘political trust’ across class and caste differences, Yugantar embarked on pioneering collective filmmaking practices that became important learning and political pedagogical moments for everyone involved. Each film produced by the Yugantar collective developed through collaborative processes with an existing or an emerging political constituency that was exemplary to them at the time. Yugantar thus conversed with ongoing processes of politicisation: of domestic workers in Pune for Molkarin (Maid Servant) (25 mins, 16mm, black-and-white, Marathi, 1981), female factory workers in Nipani for Tambaku Chaakila Oob Aali, with members of Stree Shakti Sanghatana (SSS) in Hyderabad for Idi Katha Maatramena (Is this Just a Story?) (25 mins, 16mm, black-and-white, Telugu, 1983) and lastly with members of the Chipko andolan for Sudesha (30 mins, 16mm, colour, Hindi and Garhwali, 1983.)
Films by Yugantar
Molkarin
Tambaku Chaakila Oob Aali
Idi Katha Maatramena
Sudesha
All Yugantar films existed in different language versions and were shown extensively across India between 1980 and 1985, by women’s and other activist groups, sparking energising debates and supporting further organising. Yugantar discontinued producing films, though it was not formally disbanded.
