Documentary films to be screened to honour Lenin awardee

Two documentaries will be screened here tomorrow in honour of filmmaker Deepa Dhanraj, who has been chosen for the annual Lenin Award for the year 2016.
The screening has been organised by Konangal Film Society in collaboration with Tamil Studio, Chennai.
The 59-minute Tamil film titled "Invoking Justice" brings together documentary filmmaker Dhanraj's decades-old practice of drawing links between ideology and mobilization, political awareness and social change, the society president Pon Chandran said in a release here.
It follows the decision-making process of the one-of-its-kind in the Tamil Nadu Muslim Women Jamaat,he said.
Set up in 2004 by Daud Sharifa Khanum, the all women organization emerged in response to allegations of chauvinism, corruption and abuse of power in the traditional, and all-male Muslim jamaats.

The female jamaat tackles cases involving women and their families, a possible dowry death, domestic abuse within the framework of the Sharia code, using their knowledge of the Quran, moral superiority when taking on resistant male gatekeepers of religious law, and wiliness during negotiations with potential allies, Chandran said.

The second documentary, "Something like a war", focuses on the coerced sterilizations (done by tubal ligation) of women in India and on the opinions of Indian women of these programs and traditional family life of Indian women.
The film documents the state of reproductive rights for women in India that juxtaposes detachment of science next to a new form of oppression for women.

Dhanraj, who hails from Bengaluru, is also an activist and has been actively involved with the women's movement since 1980.
Over the last few years, she has participated in workshops, seminars and group discussions on various issues related to women's status.