Beyond Borders: Exploring the Portrayal of Women in Diasporic Films
Diasporic cinema is a scholarship of film making which is based on the themes of migration, identity and culture. It is about the lives of people who live in other countries and not their homeland. Women have several important responsibilities in the domestic and working domains. Thus they have a fair amount of representation in the diasporic films. Women play as key characters in these narratives, where they are burdened by their cultural identities as they try to adapt to their new surroundings. The tension between following traditional values and the values of the new society is enormous for women. This struggle is very beautifully and correctly projected in the films made by diasporic film artists such as Mira Nair, Gurinder Chadha and Deepa Mehta. For example, the film Bend It Like Beckham, directed by Gurinder Chadha describes the challenges faced by the members of the South Asian diaspora in the UK. The film is about a Punjabi-British girl named Jess who desi...