A Filmmaker's Guide to Decoding Social Division
Reema Sengupta |
TEDxYouth@NMS
• August 2018
Reema Sengupta is a writer-director known for her award winning film Counterfeit Kunkoo which was featured at the Sundance film festival. Her films present the naked human condition with has characters that break the socio-cultural bounds of Indian films. She spoke to us about social divisions, and how coercive media make us more divisive. She asked us the question - do we create divisions because of real reasons or do we look for arbitrary reasons to justify social divisions? Divisions are made in the search of power, and as social animals, we're naturally prejudiced against those of other groups. She encouraged us to recognise propaganda and ask questions about representation - why is this protagonist male and not female? Why are villains mostly dark skinned? As a director, she recognised her responsibility and our ability to define 'us’ as all of us, rather than using media to feed into more divisions.