Another talented exciting female director! And one just starting out in her career, only two films old which will make writing this post tricky.

I get so mad on behalf of Gauri Shinde. I think her husband is a bad trite storyteller, and she is brilliant, and it is SO unfair that her husband gets all the opportunities that she should be getting. But you can’t, like, say that to someone. Can you? “I think the man you love isn’t as good as you are and you should be getting the chances he is given”?

Gauri Shinde and her husband, R. Balki, started out kind of the same. They were both ad film makers. R. Balki was Gauri’s boss, the creative director at her agency. They got married the year his first feature film came out and, now that I think of it, probably that was also when he quite his job to be a full time director and thus they had no more professional/personally conflict and could be together. Aw, now I am liking R. Balki again because that is kind of sweet. I’m fickle.

Anyway, Gauri Shinde had already made several short ad films and one non-ad short that made it to the Berlin Film Festival. Earlier I talked about Farah who started as a choreographer, and Mira Nair and Gurinder Chadha and Deepa Mehta who all started in documentaries, and Tanuja Chandra who started in TV. And Anjali Menon who, like Gauri, started in short films and then ad work before getting a chance at a feature. One thing that is universal, whether you are in British or Canadian or American or Indian film, is that it is far harder for a new female director to be offered a chance at a full length film than it is for a man. And so women have to come up from the side, be happy with little crumbs they are offered and try to make the most of them. Documentary shorts, song sequences, TV ads, whatever you can get while you smile and make nice and wait for the chances that are dropped in the laps of the men around you.

A little of this frustration comes through in Dear Zindagi. Alia, our heroine, is a cinematographer. She is talented and works hard but has never had the chance to do a whole film start to finish, she is only brought in for little bits and pieces, song videos or fill in an overseas shoot. Dear Zindagi never really addresses this question, instead it is just part of Alia’s overall frustration with her life and is resolved once she changes her mental attitude. But there could have been a different movie about a young talented woman who is angry because she is being denied opportunities she has earned, because her life is controlled by patronizing men around her.

And I suppose a little of it comes through in English/Vinglish as well. Sridevi runs a business and a household and does it beautifully, and yet her husband laughs at her and her family dismisses her. She is doing the best she can with the little allowed to a woman, and instead of seeing that, they think that little is all she can do.

Gauri Shinde was 25 when she got a short film in the Berlin Film Festival. She already had a degree in mass communication and an internship a documentary filmmaker and was working in ad films. She was on her way up, she had talent, she had knowledge. And then she had to wait for 13 years before she had a chance to make her first feature film.

Maybe this was wonderful, maybe this is what she would have chosen, maybe it was nice to work with a variety of people on a variety of projects, have the security offered by advertising, enjoy her young womanhood. Maybe it was a blessing to be a woman with no expectations on you, to not have the pressure to advance to some kind of career goal. But I think if she had been another gender, it would not have been 13 years between her first international notice and her first movie. She was talented, she was likable, she was focused, this is the kind of person who is encouraged to come up with a project and take some meetings and get their work in front of the right people. That is, if they are a man.

Where the gender preference is glaringly obvious is in how her first, and then second, movies were released and received. English/Vinglish tells the story of a middle-aged housewife. Gauri got an amazing gift when Sridevi, the biggest female star India has ever had, selected her script as a come back film. On the other hand, Sridevi received an amazing gift when she was offered this film that let her be a character with depth and conflict and interest while still playing her age. English/Vinglish was a major hit in terms of profit versus budget, and tickets sold per screen. But it wasn’t a notable hit in terms of total money made. Because it didn’t get a mega-wide release, because it didn’t get a mega-sized budget, it could never reach the heights of, for instance, Barfi! which released on 1300 screens in India. English/Vinglish released on 739 screens. Anurag Basu, director of Barfi!, was coming off of a major loss with his last film Kites!. The star of Barfi!, Ranbir Kapoor, was coming from a string of modest hits mixed with flops. But Ranbir is a man, and Anurag is a man, and Barfi! was a male style picture, so it got a big release and English/Vinglish got half as much.

After English/Vinglish, a solid hit with a major star in the lead and loads of critical accolades, Gauri should have been set for her next film. But somehow, it didn’t happen. It took 4 years before she finally got Dear Zindagi together, and only then by managing to bring in a star to support her (Shahrukh Khan). As a Shahrukh fan, it is frustrating that Dear Zindagi tends to be forgotten when his filmography is discussed, when people ask him why he doesn’t take supporting roles, or encourage young actresses. But it is also frustrating as a fan of Gauri Shinde. Why is her film forgotten while the film from Imtiaz Ali or Maneesh Sharma is remembered?

Maybe the reason I feel so defensive about Gauri Shinde’s art is because the art itself is so proudly clearly female. Her two films were not just about female heroines going through life (as for instance Tanuja Chandra’s also tend to be), they were specifically about what it is like to be a woman in the world. Gauri’s two films aren’t about bad men or evil villains, they are about pervasive social practices that wear women down and turn even “good” man into enemies instead of allies. The films themselves feel feminine, female movies alone in a world of male movies that get all the advantages. Watching her films struggle for their piece of the pie is the same as watching a woman at a business meeting, struggling to be heard, struggling to make people see past her gender and to her value as a person.