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Welcome to TISS

SheWrite
55 mins, Tamil with English subtitles, 2005, Directed by Anjali Monteiro and K.P. Jayasankar

SheWrite weaves together the narratives and work of four Tamil women poets. Salma negotiates subversive expression within the tightly circumscribed space allotted to a woman in a small town. For Kuttirevathi, solitude is a crucial creative space from where her work resonates. Her anthology entitled Breasts (2003) became a controversial work that elicited hate mail, obscene calls and threats. In various ways, the dominant culture has tried to threaten and rubbish the poets and their work. This has been resisted by a group of poets and other artists who have formed an organization called Anangu (Woman).

Malathy Maitri is a founder member of Anangu. Her poems attempt to explore and express feminine power. Sukirtharani writes of desire and longing, celebrating the body in a way that affirms feminine empowerment and a rejection of male -centred discourse. The film traverses these diverse modes of resistance, through images and sounds that evoke the universal experiences of pain, anger, desire and transcendence.