‘Great time and era for women in films’

Actor Madhuri Dixit, who is all set to make her OTT debut with the web series ‘The Fame Game’, says it’s a great time and era to for women to be in film, and finds it wonderful that women are taking charge not just in front of the camera but even behind the scenes, reports Hindustan Times.

Madhuri started working in Bollywood (debut with ‘Abodh’; 1984) when there were only a handful of filmmakers making movies centered around women, and only a few writers came up with scripts that had a fleshed-out part for its heroine. Switch to 2022, and the actor says it’s a “great time and era for women in films”.

She elaborates, “Today, when you say a female-centric film, it’s no longer just about a woman who’s taking revenge or is a victim and in the end, she rises above all odds. Now, women are characters in movies. They’re everyday people and aren’t being seeing through glasses of who’s a male or who’s a female. They’re portraying what women today actually do — go to work, be housewives, taking up different professions, shining in sports and so on. While the portrayal of women on screen has undergone a drastic change over the decades, what Madhuri feels absolutely thrilled about is the fact that women are taking charge even behind the scenes.

“It’s wonderful to see women not just in front of the camera, but even in other departments on a film set,” says Madhuri, and recounts, “I remember I had started working and used to go on the sets, the only females would be me, other co-stars and the hairdresser. That’s it. There was no female in any other department. But today, when I go to a set, females are everywhere — assistant directors, camerapersons, writers, director and photographers. Earlier, there was this hirearchy that only men can do makeup and the women will only do hair, all that is broken and things have changed now.”