A young woman, raised in a conservative but loving family in India's capital city New Delhi, is left at the altar by her fiancé, who finds her boring after his stint working overseas. Regaining her composure, she takes off on the planned honeymoon to Europe, solo. It's the first time she has stepped out of her home without a chaperone, and through serendipitous adventures, she discovers her own joy, and her wings.
This is the premise of “Queen”, a Hindi movie released in India in 2014 and soon deemed a hit. For many, this was a “feminist moment” in Hindi cinema – Bollywood – even as the vast majority of movies continue to represent women as a singular homogenised species. On the other hand are movies that glorify violence at the hands of women, and are equally cheered.
So where could an appropriate representation of the living experience of a woman in India be found? It was towards addressing this question – and towards wondering the textures of feminism – that a two-day feminist documentary film festival called “Wandering Women” was held in Mumbai on August 15th, even as rest of the country marked the 69th year of independence.
