Art as Resistance to Gender-Based Violence through the Films of Iran, India, and the United States ​

In our collage, we aimed to educate our peers about the unique feminist issues that extend beyond western perspectives, as well as underscore the role of film in shaping foreign audiences’ perspectives on these issues.

We watched, analyzed, and placed into conversation the films: The Seed of the Sacred Fig and Holy Spider from Iran, Pebbles, The Great Indian Kitchen, and Sleelatahanir Pore from India, and The Hunting Ground and The Invisible War from the United States.

The issues of religious fundamentalism, protests against autocratic governance, and the voices of survivors of gender-based violence frequently exist in isolation from one another. Because our project highlights the ways in which women across the world empower themselves against unique forms of violent oppression, we are able to foster a greater appreciation for feminisms beyond the United States as well as appreciation for the artistic outputs of diverse filmmakers.

By focusing on the most emotionally impactful frames of each of our films (i.e. artful cinematography, expressive acting/interviews), we demonstrate the empathetic power of film that supersedes short-form media and extends beyond political divisions. We found that through our focus on visuals, we could express the feelings of women across India, Iran, and the United States and promote empathy and open-mindedness that could be the start of research pursuits for many individuals. Placing issues that are unknown to many of the students of the Claremont Consortium in conversation with one another through collage helped us to better understand the similarities of both patriarchies and feminist movements across the world. Beyond understanding the similarities between these nations’ feminist issues to foster greater empathy, our highlighting of the legacies of colonialism and its consequences in Iran and India helps bring in a new anti-colonial perspective on feminism. Conflicts between colonial hierarchies in India and Iran and traditional social norms (i.e. colorism, rejection of secular social structures) are foreign to many western audiences, and film can be the empathetic medium that sparks greater understanding and curiosity about these issues.

Our hope is that students of the Claremont Consortium from various areas of study (i.e. media studies, international relations, politics) can grow from our synthesis of global feminist issues. In an era of rising global conservatism and the use of social media for promoting activist pursuits, we hoped to highlight the importance of film analysis, starting with ourselves.