Sharira: Chandralekha’s explorations with dance

Dance is undeniably one of the finest art forms that modern world knows about. Chandralekha, one of the greatest exponents of dance India has ever seen took it to new levels of creativity and discovery before she passed away last year. ‘Sharira: Chandralekha’s explorations with dance’ is a first person account of how this talented woman conceptualises dance as a spiritual revelation rather than just an art form.

Technically speaking, this documentary directed by Ein Lal is a crude work shot impromptu at various occasions and compiled later. However, its highly effective content that is executed mainly through narratives of Chandralekha and demonstrations by her students makes it work.

Liberation of body through dance is the central theme of her work ‘Sharira’ that is demonstrated in this film. Body is always looked at as the valley of sins where all problems originate. Thanks to its innate connection with sexuality, body is wronged all the time. Chandralekha comes up with a masterpiece that throws these stereotypes into air and creates a new world of a free body along with a free soul that is not embarrassed by its sexuality. The moves are bold and graphical and borrow heavily from Yoga. Put together, those moves depict the rhythm of the body that drives people ahead.

Chandralekha asks some pertinent questions like “where does the body begin and end?” and “how do two dancers come together?” Her answers lie in her work Sharira that embodies freedom in every sense of the word.

Fearless: The Hunterwali story

Some women stick to stereotypes. Some women put great effort to change them. Fearless Nadia undoubtedly falls into the second category. The dramatic story of this bold and beautiful woman told with great authenticity and sombreness is Fearless: The Hunterwali story.

Filmed by Roy Vinci Wadia, Nadia’s great nephew, this documentary is a sincere attempt to document a life that was pioneering in many a way in the history of Indian cinema. It features the interviews of the heroine herself and several other eminent film personalities apart from some rare footage of her otherwise unavailable films.

Born Australian as Mary Ann Evans, Nadia was introduced to the Hindi film industry by JBH Wadia and his brother Homi Wadia (owners of the Wadia Movietone). She had a sprawling career spread over 30 years with a pre-dominant image of the gutsy and stylish fighting diva. Her character Hunterwali, the whip-weilding woman, in a movie with the same name made her a huge hit with the masses. The nick name Hunterwali stuck to her ever since.

Being a foreigner definitely helped her as it was more convenient for the conventional Indians to believe that a blonde lady is doing the unbelievably risky stunts as against an Indian woman doing the same. However, we should remember that Nadia made waves during a time when cinema itself was in a nascent stage, that too in a patriarchal country like India. If not for this convincing story by Roy Vinci Wadia, generations down the decades would possibly never believe that such a courageous woman once lived changing the equations of cinema and its audience.