BackOscar glory for period film with India connection
The documentary looks at how low-cost sanitary pads were introduced at Kathikhera village in Uttar Pradesh Period. End of Sentence’s triumphant feminist energy chimed with the overall tenor of the award
PremiumIn the mostly sedate 91st Academy Awards (save for Spike Lee, who slipped an expletive past the censors), there was a moment of high drama for Indian viewers when Period. End of Sentence won Best Documentary Short. The film by Iranian-American director Rayka Zehtabchi is set in Uttar Pradesh. Guneet Monga’s Sikhya Entertainment (The Lunchbox, Masaan) is the executive producer. Mumbai-based Monga, 35, was one of the people thanked from the stage by Melissa Berton, the film’s producer.
The 25-minute film, which can be streamed on Netflix, looks at how low-cost sanitary pads were introduced in the village of Kathikhera in Hapur, Uttar Pradesh. (Arunachalam Muruganantham, inventor of the pad-making machine and inspiration for the 2018 Hindi film Pad Man, makes an appearance.) The women there were taught to run the machine and make pads themselves, which some of them started to sell in nearby towns.
The superstition and lack of knowledge surrounding this subject will be familiar to Indian viewers. An old woman tells the filmmakers that only god knows why menstruation happens and a group of boys calls it a disease.
However, once the women take ownership of the machine, the tenor of the film changes. They head out to sell the pads, to educate and earn the first salaries of their lives—a simple, inspiring final 10 minutes.
The machine that the women in Kathikhera use and the film were funded through “Kickstarter, bake sales and yogathons" by the students of Oakwood School, Los Angeles (Berton is a teacher there), making this a grassroots triumph in more ways than one. “Periods are normal and in no way do they stop us from achieving anything," Monga said after the win. “Every girl in India or anywhere around the world needs to know this and hear this loud and clear."
She ended with: “Now that we have an Oscar, let’s go change the world."
After the many hiccups in the run-up to this year’s Academy Awards, many expected a train wreck of a ceremony. Instead, what we got was a clinical, if unmemorable, display—no host, no risk and no flubs. Even the awards went largely according to plan: Alfonso Cuarón (Roma) won Best Director; Rami Malek (Bohemian Rhapsody) and Olivia Colman (The Favourite) took the top acting prizes. The only big surprise was Green Book being awarded Best Picture, one of the weakest winners in recent memory.
Period. End of Sentence’s triumphant feminist energy chimed with the overall tenor of the awards. Maya Rudolph, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler got the ceremony off to a bright start. Women won for costume design, make-up and hairstyling, documentary feature, documentary short, animated short, live action short, sound editing and production design. The Oscars have a long way to go in terms of gender representation, but 2019 gave us reason to be optimistic.
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