A group of legal professionals and advocates from the Bidhannagar Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate (ACJM) Court in Mayukh Bhavan as well as other courts have turned filmmakers, actors and scriptwriters in order to produce a short film on violence against women.
The short film titled A-Bibartan (The Non-Evolution) has been made in order to raise awareness about the challenges women face at home as well as their professional spaces, and how some of them can be traced back to the days gone by and has remained unchanged despite marked societal and demographically changes taking place.
The film has been produced by advocate Soumyajit Raha — a noted criminal lawyer who practises at the Bidhannagar ACJM Court who is also the special public prosecutor in cyber crime cases— and the storyline and the script have been written by advocate Sanjukta Sen.
Raha told The Telegraph Salt Lake that the film was meant to raise awareness levels about the various forms of violence, intimidation and challenges that are faced by women on a day-to-day basis.
Raha however said that this was not a one-off attempt but would be a year-round effort where multiple subjects, including violence against men, mental health of men and women as well as domestic issues faced by both the sexes, will be portrayed in multiple short format films.
Advocate Sanjukta Sen, who penned the script as well as the story, said that they decided to embark on making this film as they felt that people need to be made aware of various forms of abuse and intimidation women face everyday.
“As lawyers we have to deal with such cases on a daily basis. It is sad but such cases are actually on the rise and I really don’t want to get into the nitty gritties of true or false cases but we decided to showcase how things have actually remained pretty much similar in terms of women being intimidated or being tormented In their own homes since time immemorial,” said Sen.
Sen, who has also played a lead part in the film directed by another lawyer Shubhabrata Chakraborty, said that one of the biggest challenges that they faced was fixing up the dates for the shooting.
“Since nearly all the characters and everybody involved in making the film are lawyers we have to had to plan our schedules meticulously,” said Sen.
The short film traces the stories of four women of varying ages who are faced with different challenges at home and how people who they consider to be their guardians somehow end up being their tormentors.
Director Shubhabrata Chakraborty said that the challenges they faced while making the film were immense as none of the actors had any prior experience in terms of on-screen acting.
“None of us are trained and yet somehow we have managed to pull this off. Our only objective is to educate people and to raise their awareness levels in terms of the subjects that we make the films on,” said Chakraborty.
The film is already out on YouTube and has garnered quite a bit of online traction.
