Wsearch searcha Sites e Calendar vyou.pornr Cunt i Plentyoffish n Cunt Calendar f0 Sites ssearcha Review csearchr Plentyoffish C Sites E E107 %9
% Calendar 0%
4 Plugins B Meetingstrippeddevi %9DsearchEsearch%8 Plugins % Plentyoffish F Menu Esearch%AD Plugins 98 Calendar E
%searchE Menu 90%Esearch%searchE E107 Asearchlen Calendar a E107 Plentyoffish
et Meetingstrippeddevi n Calendar ssearchrsearchppe Menu detuesday%60s+porni o
ysearch
Plugins P
o
ln'search Calendar e Meetingstrippeddevi si Cunt n Sites
M Cunt l Plentyoffish Cunt esearch' Calendar Plentyoffish osearchk%E7%92%B0%E4%BF%9D%E6%84%8F%E8%AD%98%E5%AE%9A%E7%BE%A9tsearcha
7l Cunt i Meetingstrippeddevi s E107 oEPSON+ESC%2FP-R%E8%88%87Epson+Stylus+Office+TX600FWb E107 Plentyoffish a Plugins edsearchosearch P Meetingstrippeddevi o Calendar ln Review syou.porn"searchr Calendar tyou.pornn Plentyoffish s" Review
searchhsearchs Menu f Menu lsearch tyou.porna Cunt c
asearchmsearch searcho Plugins e
b E107 s Review d
n7Ma Meetingstrippeddevi a E107 Se Review 'search searchosearchk Menu
An Cunt Menu hee searchr Meetingstrippeddevi Meetingstrippeddevi nly Menu ssearchm
Menu f Hot tsearche
.
As always, when we cannot agree, we must turn to Law. Study contracts. Examine promises. Scrutinize signatures. What does Phoolan's contract say? Or, more accurately, what do Phoolan's contracts say?
They say quite simply, all three of them, that the film was to be based on Phoolan's writings, i.e. The film was to be Phoolan Devi's version of her story. Not Mala Sen's version. Not Shekhar Kapur's version. Not your or my version. Not even the "True" version (if such a thing exists), but Phoolan's version. You see, it turns out that Mala Sen's book was published long after the first contract with Phoolan was signed.
The first agreement for the purchase of the rights to Phoolan's version was with Jalal Agha's company called ANANCY FILMS. It was signed in 1988. The contract clearly states (under-lined right across the top) that it was to be a Documentary film "relating to Indian banditry and your role therein." Having made this clear, the contract refers to it as "the Film" Another agreement was signed in 1989 informing Phoolan that the rights to her "writings" now belonged to Channel Four. The third letter was issued in 1992 bv B V Videographics, S.S. Bedi's company, affirming the agreement between Phoolan Devi and Channel Four, and informing her that they were the latest in the line of succession to the rights of her story.
The contracts, smuggled in and out of prison by Phoolan's family in tiffin carriers, are vague and cursory. Couched in this vagueness there is a sort of disdain. Of the educated for the illiterate. Of the rich for the poor. Of the free for the incarcerated. It's like the attitude of a memsahib getting her ayah to undertake to vacate the servants' quarter in the event that she's sacked. Essentially, Phoolan Devi seems to have given Channel Four the rights to film her version of the story of her life. In return for the sum of a little over five thousand pounds. Less than one percent of the six hundred and fifty thousand pound budget of the film. (What was that about her being greedy?)
Anyway, let us assume that it all started out in good faith. That they intended to make a Documentary Film. Somewhere along the way it became a Feature film. They took care of that in the small print. Okay. In the last clause of the agreement(s), they gave themselves the right to:
Cut, alter and adapt the writings and use alone or with other material and/or accompanied by editorial comment.
Herein (they believe) lies their salvation. What did they mean by this clause? What did they intend when they included this in the contract? To me, as a writer of films, it seems fair enough. You must have the right to cut, alter and adapt your source material. Of course you must. Unless you want to make a film that is exactly as long as the life of your subject. But does "cut, alter, and adapt" include Distort and Falsify?
The Producers' (by now public, and written) refusal to show Phoolan the original version of the film (the one that has been seen and reviewed and is now on its World Tour) suggests that they know they have done her a terrible injustice. But they say they are not worried because they have a "fool-proof" (India Today, August 21st) contract with her. What does this imply? That they deliberately set out cheat and mislead her? That they conned an illiterate woman into signing away her rights? I don't know. I'm asking.
Surely the fact that they were dealing with an illiterate woman only increases their obligation to her? Surely it was up to them, to check and counter-check the facts with her? To read her the script, to fine-tune the details, to show her the rough-cut before the film was shown to the rest of the world?
Instead what do they do? They never meet her once. Not even to sign the contracts . They re-invent her life. Her loves. Her rapes. They implicate her in the murder of twenty-two men that she denies having committed. Then they try to slither out of showing her the film!
"Cut, alter and adapt"? -- is that what it's called?
Could it be that the film's success, and the Producers' (and Director's) blatant exploitation of this person, both have to do with the same thing? That she's a woman, that she's poor, and illiterate, and has (they assume) no court of appeal? Which is why she became a bandit in the first place? What they haven't got yet. The point that they seem to keep on missing (in the film, and otherwise), is that she's no victim. She's a fighter. Unfortunately, this time she's on their territory. Not hers.
FAfter I saw the film, which was about three weeks ago, I have met Phoolan several times. Initially, I did not speak of the film to her, because I believed that it would have been wrong of me to influence her opinion. The burden of my song so far, has been "show her the film." I only supported her demand that she had a right, a legal right to see the film that claims to be the true story of her life.
My opinion of the film has nothing to do with her opinion. Mine doesn't matter. Hers does. More than anyone else's.
Two days ago, on the 1st of September, when the Producer replied to Phoolan's legal notice, making it absolutely clear that he would not show her the original, international version of the film, (the version that has been written about, and so glowingly reviewed), I sat with her and told the sequence of events, scene by scene. The discrepancies, the departures, the outright fabrications are frightening. I wrote about some of them last week. I didn't know then just how bad it really was.
Phoolan didn't write any prison diaries. She couldn't. She narrated them to someone who was with her in jail. The writings were smuggled out and given to Mala Sen. Mala Sen pieced them together, and wrote first a script, then a book. The book presents several versions of the story. Including Phoolan's. The film doesn't, Mala Sen's book, and Bandit Queen the film differ radically, not just in fact, but in spirit. I believe that her film script was altered by the makers of the film. Substantially altered. It departs from the book as well as from Phoolan's version of her story.
Since I have not seen Phoolan's diaries, I can only read the extracts published in Mala Sen's book and assume that they are accurate. Mala Sen quotes her: "...what I am writing is read by many, and written by those I do not know so well..." What a terrible position to be in! What easy meat for jackals!
According to Mala Sen, Phoolan Devi was reluctant to even discuss rape:
There are various versions of what happened to Phoolan Devi after Vikram Mallah's death. When I spoke to her she was reluctant to speak of her bezathi (dishonour) as she put it, at the hands of the Thakurs. She did not want to dwell on the details and merely said "Un logo ne mujhse bahut mazak ki". I was not surprised at her reticence to elaborate. First of all, because we had an audience, including members of her family, other prisoners and their relatives. Secondly because we live in societies where a woman who is abused sexually ends up feeling deeply humiliated, knowing that many will think that it was her fault, or partly her fault. That she provoked the situation in the first place. Phoolan Devi, like many other women all over the world, feels she will only add to her own shame if she speaks of this experience.
Does this sound like a man who would have agreed to have her humiliation re-created for the world to watch? Does this sound like the book that a film replete with rape could be based on? Every time Mala Sen quotes Phoolan as saying " un logo ne mujhse bahut mazaak ki the Director of the film has assumed that she meant that she was raped.
"How else can a woman be expected to express the shame heaped on her...asks Kapur." (August 31st [1994], India Today) And in the film he does not shy away from dwelling on details. Oh no. That's woman stuff. When Phoolan won't provide him with the details, he goes ahead and uses the wholly vicarious account of some American journalist from "Esquire ". The man writes with skill and feeling. Almost as though he was there.
Assuming, for the sake of argument, that whenever Phoolan says "mujhse mazaak ki" she does in fact mean that she was raped. Do they have the right to show it? In all it's explicit detail? This raises the question of an Individual's Right to Privacy. In Phoolan Devi's case, not just Privacy, Sexual Privacy. And not just infringement. Outright assault.
In the rape scenes in the film, (Phoolan Devi is shown being raped by her husband, raped by Babu Gujjar, raped by the police and gang-raped bv the Thakurs of Behmai), her humiliation and degradation could not possibly, be more explicit. While I watched this, I remember feeling that using the identity of a living woman, re-creating her degradation and humiliation for public consumption, was totally unacceptable to me. Doing it without her consent, without her specific, written repeated, whole-hearted, unambiguous, consent, is monstrous. I cannot believe that it has happened. I cannot believe that it is being condoned. I cannot believe that it is not a criminal offense.
If it were a fictional film, where rape was being examined as an issue, if it were a fictional character that was being raped, it would be an entirely different issue. I would be glad to enter into an argument about whether showing the rape was necessary, whether or not it was "exploitative". The Accused - a film that challenges accepted norms about what constitutes rape and what doesn't, hardly shows the act of rape at all! Bandit Queen on the other hand, has nothing intelligent to say about the subject beyond the fact that Rape is degrading and humiliating. Dwelling on the Degradation and the Humiliation is absolutely essential for the commercial success of the film. Without it, there would be no film. The intensity of these emotions is increased to fever-pitch because we're told - She's real . This happened.
And faithfully, our critics go home and write about it. Praise it to the skies.
Who are we to assess a living woman's rape? Who are we to decide how well done it was? How Brutal? How Chilling? How true-to-life? Who the hell are we?
Had I been raped, perhaps I would devote my every waking hour to call for stiffer legislation, harsher punishment for rapists. Perhaps I'd take lessons from Lorena Bobbitt. What I would never ever do, and I don't imagine that anyone else has (even those who loved the film so much) would either -- is to agree to have it re-created as entertainment cloaked in the guise of concern, for an audience that was going to pay to watch. It would be like being raped all over again. And ironically, the more skillful the Director, the greater would be my shame and humiliation.
vCunt Meetingstrippeddevi En E107 Plugins Calendar Menu Review Sites Plentyoffish Meeting Stripped Devi SikhSpectrum.com Monthly. The Great Indian Rape a h Devi Meeting Stripped Devi wCunt Meetingstrippeddevi En E107 Plugins Calendar Menu Review Sites Plentyoffish Meeting Stripped Devi SikhSpectrum.com Monthly. The Great Indian Rape k t t Meeting Stripped Devi Personals