A girl, a Goddess and Unlimited Girls
Parodevi Pictures began as Devi Pictures in 1995. In the last 20 years, it has created a distinctive style that always hits the pleasure buttons – both in your head and your heart.
Founder Paromita Vohra has been a filmmaker, writer, teacher, actor, art curator and relentless Antakshari winner for 25 years. Her distinctive aesthetic has been admired across the world and her films screened at places like film festivals (Women’s Film Festival in Seoul, IFFLA, Festival dei Popoli, Film South Asia Kathmandu) and art spaces (the Tate Modern, London; the Wellcome Art Gallery, London; Bonn Biennale, Bonn, and the National Gallery of Modern Art, Delhi). From her very first film, she created forms that are feminist, that embody the feminist eye turned upon the world.
Parodevi Pictures has consistently broken new ground, in content and form. The production house has presented 10 highly successful documentaries, many of which are considered landmarks in Indian documentary practice. Vohra’s 2002 film Unlimited Girls changed the way documentary cinema was made and imagined in India. Unlimited Girls and the films that followed created a uniquely Indian, characteristically intimate form of filmmaking and seeded important ideas of media, gender, feminism, urban life and equality in public (and private) narratives. Our films addressed issues that have since obsessed the country. We were, for instance, the first to research and discuss the issue of women and public toilets (Q2P, 2006) and the first to bring the phrase ‘love jihad’ into the public domain (Morality TV and the Loving Jihad, 2011).
Parodevi Pictures has since made an extraordinary body of truth-telling, kinetic and intensely sensuous films, online videos, art installations and television programming going effortlessly from the mainstream to the alternative. It also regularly holds media programs and youth, film and media workshops. It has collaborated on cultural productions at three editions of the World Social Forum. Parodevi Pictures’ multimedia work has won several awards (Best Documentary, IFFLA, Los Angeles, 2007; Best Documentary, Bollywood and Beyond, Stuttgart, 2007; Women’s News Award, WFFIS, Seoul, 2006; Best Short Documentary at the International Video Festival of Kerala, 2008; Best Documentary, Ladakh International Film Festival) and is now studied in university syllabi around the world (Brandeis University, NYU, Berkley, Yale, Cambridge).
New beginnings
Parodevi Pictures’ latest collaboration was the pioneering primetime television show Connected Hum Tum (2013), where our creative team worked with UTV & Zee TV.
In the show, six regular (yet oh so irregular) women in Mumbai, each stuck at a personal crossroads, filmed their private lives for one year. Over 65 themed episodes, the six women – the queer activist, the belly-dancing dentist, the radio jockey, the aspiring actor, the young woman on the verge of a second marriage, the middle-aged woman who doesn’t want her ex-husband to be on the verge – arrive at life-altering decisions. The show went to startling, truthful and intimate places Indian television had never gone before, despite the flood of reality television in the last decade.
What are we up to right now?
Parodevi Pictures continues to create films and other media works, which creates a world outside of absolute truths and absolute certitudes. The in-house culture of continuous experimentation with form has continued from cinema into new media. We are working with documentary in a host of new spaces with a full party of other collaborators. We are most excited about a youth media project we are calling *drumroll* Agents of Ishq. Watch this space for more juice.
Documentary Film
We specialize in documentary work where complex concepts are made accessible, relatable and engaging. Our style is innovative, humorous, reflective.
Long form and short form digital film
As much as we enjoy the relaxed expansiveness of feature-length cinema, we must admit a weakness for the short: the lost art of the music video, perfectly-formed short fiction and the quick bite of feminist satire.
Multimedia Content and Media Campaign Production
Text and picture, animation, audio, games – we devise creative communication ideas in every form you have heard of and some you haven’t heard of yet.
Unbox
You have a beautiful, sensational, earth-shattering idea. Or the germ of an idea. But something is just not working. You are now depressed and oppressed. You are, in short, blocked. Whether you need a workshop designed or a special one-on-one session with Paromita, Parodevi Pictures offers consulting services in creative strategies for best communicating your ideas and content.
Non-Fiction Writing
Intelligent, well-researched, lucid, accessible short and long-form writing on culture, politics, gender, popular culture, love and sex.
OUR TEAM
Paromita Vohra
Boss, Etc
Paromita is a filmmaker, writer and generally curious cat who believes in the politics of art, the beauty of intelligence, the poetry of work, and in checking out the cutting edge, creating and growing spaces for honest reflection, fearless experimentation, collaboration and friendship as a way to change the world.
Justin Veliel
Accounts Manager
Justin, a driven Individual with a Graduate Degree in Commerce manages the control of Financial policy, and the formation of planning, helping in the preparation of the Budget, Cost Control, handling Accounting Books, Prevention of Errors and Frauds, including Management Tasks.
Debasmita Das
Creative Associate
Debasmita is the Creative Associate at Parodevi Pictures. Studied to be an animator, became PDP ki designer and loves working with all the stories people trust PDP with. When not doing content and design work, she can be found chasing cats and everything queer.
Anshumaan Sathe
Junior Graphic Designer
Anshumaan, is a Junior Graphic Designer at Parodevi Pictures. They are a queer particle hoping to become a crazy cat lady by age twenty-five. Most of their work looks at the intersection of the personal and the political through the lens of gender and queerness. They do illustration, graphic design, and listen to 90's ke bollywood rom com gaane and obscure drag queen music in their free time.
Hansa Thapliyal
Translation Supervisor
Hansa edits and looks over the Hindi translations for Parodevi Pictures, she occasionally translates some pieces she particularly loves. She is also a film maker, writer, teacher and doll maker.
Shikha Sreenivas
Creative Assistant
Shikha Sreenivas is a Creative Assistant at Parodevi Pictures. She likes to illustrate, design and animate, mostly done while sitting like a frog on her chair. And she loves most of all, bird watching and exchanging ghost stories.
Edgar Fernandes
Production Co-ordinator
Edgar is the Production Co-ordinator at Parodevi Pictures He loves Excels sheets and keeps track of all the work happening at the office. Alongside this, he has an obsession for Fast cars and Football.