The Girls Media Group was a media education project of A Woman’s Place – a collective of women around the world using media for social change. It ran in Mumbai and New York from 2003-2005.
The project focused on media education with teen girls – between 14-18. It was run in parallel in two cities: New York and Bombay. It was designed with a view to helping girls build a framework that would enable them to:
- Analyse and interpret messages in the mass media
- Understand various criticques of popular culture
- Create personal narratives, express through various multi-media formats (music, poetry, diary and narrative, photography, collage, radio and video)
- Work with the group in a way that opened them to peer support as well as criticque and a habit of discussion
The workshops in New York and Bombay were designed differently, depending on local specificities. But both groups were encouraged to use ALL forms of media — collage, poetry, fiction, song-writing, reversioning popular myths and fairy tales in written or drama form, building a family tree that focuses on the women in their families. The project discouraged the fixation on “video as a tool for empowerment” which tends to make such workshops product oriented rather than process rich. In fact one of the things we did learn through this process was that the use of radio/audio was a much truer tool – it’s technical ease and cheapness made it possible for the girls to experiment and search for an indivual voice, while working in a group. So, although we did produce a video in the first year, in the second year we focused on writing and radio.
At points the two groups in Bombay and New York exchanged audio tape diaries and pictures and loosely collaborated on a video on sexual harassment/Eve Teasing. At the end of the two year project the groups had produced one collaborative video and several audio documentaries. Many groups working with young people have found these very helpful in their workshops.
- Producer – A Woman’s Place Project
- Executive Producer – Paromita Vohra
- Script, Camera, Sound, Direction – Divya Sharma, Anita Atgamkar, Richa Dudani, Angela Nagarajan
- Edit – Gauri Patwardhan, Sadaf Siddique
DO YOU KNOW HOW WE FEEL? AAAAAAARGH!
What is common to girls walking out on the street, waiting at a bus stop and standing in their balconies?
Choose one of the following:
a) Leers
b) Catcalls
c) A hand brushing your bottom
d) All of the above
Made by junior college students from Bombay, the film that looks at sexual harassment squarely in the face and questions – why should girls be held responsible if ‘boys-will-be-boys’?
Through conversations with a range of people, the film asks so why do boys harass girls? What is the difference between eve-teasing and sexual harassment? Who is responsible? And what can be done to stop this? While the film explores how sexual harassment constricts girls’ freedom and makes them aware of how to dress, walk and behave, it also looks at living your life without fear, not having to think twice about the choices that you make and demonstrates that you too can dance at a bus-stop and live to tell the tale.
- Producer – A Woman’s Place Project, Girls Media Group
- Executive Producer – Paromita Vohra
- Research, Script, Direction – Divya Sharma, Richa Dudani, Anita Atgamkar, Angela Nagarajan, Tanvi Joshi, Rochelle , Tina
- Editing – Sadaf Siddique, Vipin Bhati
“On Being Cool”
Things change when you go to college – and suddenly being cool becomes important in more ways than are visible to the naked eye. Who is cool, who is not? How important is it to be cool? What do you need to be cool? Who decides this? And then what happens to the uncool people? How do cool groups form in college and what does it mean to be be in or be out of them? This 15 minute audio documentary explores these questions to look at the politics of chilling out, hanging out and being cool.
The Girls Media Group Audio Documentaries
Four audio documentaries by Four teenaged girls as they identify the possibilities and complexities of life in the city as a young woman, the search for meaning, the excitement and difficulty of making choices – told with humour, reflectiveness and creative abandon.
Producer: Girls Media Group, A Woman’s Place Project,
Executive Producer: Paromita Vohra
Editor: Rikhav Desai
Script Consultant: Hansa Thapliyal
Project Assistant: Sadaf Siddique
THE SICK GIRL by ANITA ATGAMKAR
An interior, reflective narrative about Anita who recounts the experience of getting a rare, near fatal disease and fighting back, only to find that she now has to fight being always treated as “the sick girl.”
ANGELA AND HER DEVIL by ANGELA NAGARAJAN
A road documentary set in the streets of Bandra, about a girl and her bicycle.
CAREER GIRL by SHABNAM BADSHAH
A wondering aloud piece about the importance of success. Shabnam Badshah has her head in the clouds, and her eyes full of stars – namely Salman Khan – but she thinks maybe, she ought to be a “career girl”.
IF SHREK WERE AN OGRE by DIVYA SHARMA
A poetic, stream of consciousness collection of 6 short pieces meandering through many thoughts, many selves,many truths – while all around, people telling you, don’t think so much, nice girls keep it to themselves.