Shabana Azmi advocates for equal work-equal pay, Juhi Chawla feels there's no competition with male counterparts

January 10, 2016

Mumbai, Jan 10: Veteran actress Shabana Azmi and Juhi Chawla recently visited the capital for promotion of their upcoming film 'ChalkNDuster'. While Juhi Chawla decided to break the silence on her recent comment about the gender pay disparity in the film industry, Shabana Azmi poured her heart out and urged the young male actors to take the lead in bringing about an 'actual change'.

Azmi

Actress Juhi Chawla was subjected to a lot of criticism for her not-so-feminist comment on the gender-based pay gaps where she confessed that she never got upset over the existing wage gap and even accepted that her male counterparts would get paid more than her. When asked about her stand, she clarified that she is in no competition with anybody but only with herself. "I don’t think that to succeed in life you’ve to compete with anyone else. You’ve to compete with yourself".

The actress who is all geared up about playing the role of a teacher in her upcoming film believes that one should only be bothered about how much they've improved from the past days as 'life is a constant journey for improvement'. "Today, I should be better than how I was yesterday, and tomorrow I should be brighter than how I am today. If I can achieve that, then, I'll consider myself to be successful.”

Shabana Azmi, who believes that this wage gap is prevalent in the film industries all over the world took a firm stand and came up with a thought-provoking idea to end the existing gap. Understanding the current scenario, she said, "It's existing only because it's the male star who bring the bucks in the box office. No matter what you do, the female oriented films get much less money with limited reach due to which the budgets have to be controlled".

Appreciating the healthy trend of women in main stream cinema wanting to do more substantial roles and not just successful ones, she even lauded the new actresses willing to try out more and more.

Eulogizing Shah Rukh Khan for taking the first step towards bringing about a change, she said, "Shah Rukh Khan made a commendable gesture when he said that Deepika Padukone's name will come before his, which is lovely...but he needs to go beyond that."

The 'Fire' actress urged the big names of the industry to star in the female-oriented films with even some lesser important roles to bring about the equality. Challenging the existing pattern on casting in the films, "Just as it is perfectly acceptable that when you have any of the big heroes then the big heroines will come along and do a secondary role. So, why can't male young superstars also say 'alright I will do this film in which I have a less important role because I feel it's important'?"

"To begin with, we must get equal pay for equal work. It's a question of sensitizing the male actors towards the change, only then will the female actress' will get their due pay", she added.

The upcoming film 'ChalkNDuster' is all about highlighting the plight of teachers and to regain the nobility of the profession. Directed by Jayant Gilatar, the film features Juhi Chawla, Shabana Azmi and Divya Dutta in pivotal roles.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
News Network
June 30,2020

California, Jun 30: Online video-sharing platform YouTube on Monday banned several prominent channels, including those belonging to Stefan Molyneux and Richard Spencer.

The company banned six channels for repeatedly violating YouTube's policies.

According to The Verge, other channels banned include American Renaissance (with its associated channel AmRen Podcasts) and the channel for Spencer's National Policy Institute.

YouTube began taking stern measures on supremacist channels in June 2019.

"We have strict policies prohibiting hate speech on YouTube, and terminate any channel that repeatedly or egregiously violates those policies," the Verge quoted a YouTube spokesperson as saying.

"After updating our guidelines to better address supremacist content, we saw a 5x spike in video removals and have terminated over 25,000 channels for violating our hate speech policies," the spokesperson added.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
News Network
February 12,2020

London, Feb 12: Oscar-winning British director Steve McQueen is returning to his art roots with a series of short films at London's Tate Modern art gallery, offering a sensory exploration of black identity.

McQueen, who became the first black director to win the best picture Academy Award in 2014 for "12 Years a Slave", is now based between London and Amsterdam and is focused on championing diversity in the film industry.

Visitors to his new exhibition will be greeted by "Static", a film of New York's Statue of Liberty, scrutinising the iconic symbol from every possible angle at very close range against a deafening backdrop of the helicopter from where the footage was filmed.

"What interests Steve is our view of the world, how humans are trying to represent Liberty," said Fiontan Moran, assistant curator of the exhibition.

"7th Nov, 2001" features a still shot of a body while McQueen's cousin Marcus tells of how he accidentally killed his brother, a particularly traumatic experience for the artist.

"Western Deep" is another visceral work, giving a sense through sights and sounds in an interactive installation of the experiences of miners in South Africa, following them to the bottom of the mine.

"Ashes", meanwhile, is a tribute to a young fisherman from Grenada, the island where McQueen's family originated.

The images of beauty and sweetness filmed from his boat are tragically reversed on the other side of the projection screen, which shows a grave commissioned by McQueen for the eponymous young fisherman, who was killed by drug traffickers.

African-American singer, actor and civil rights activist Paul Robeson (1898-1976) is honoured in "End Credits".

The film shows censored FBI documents detailing the agency's surveillance of Robeson, read by a voice-over artist, for five hours.

"He is... testing the limits of how people can be documented in an era of mass surveillance," said Moran.

In a similarly militant vein, the exhibition features the sculpture "Weight", which was first shown in the prison cell where the writer and playwright Oscar Wilde was imprisoned.

It depicts a golden mosquito net draped over a metal prison bed frame, addressing the theme of confinement and the power of the imagination to break free.

The show runs alongside an exhibition of McQueen's giant portraits of London school classes, many of which appeared on the streets of London last year.

"I remember my first school trip to Tate when I was an impressionable eight-year-old, which was really the moment I gained an understanding that anything is possible," said McQueen, adding it was "where in some ways my journey as an artist first began".

He recently told the Financial Times newspaper the difference between his art films and his feature films was that the former were poetry, the latter like a novel.

"Poetry is condensed, precise, fragmented," he said. "The novel is the yarn".

The exhibition opens on February 13 and runs until May 11.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
News Network
May 10,2020

New Delhi, May 10: While people across the country have been spending a lot of time at home owing to the lockdown, superstar Shah Rukh Khan on Saturday provided a unique platform for all the aspiring filmmakers to produce some 'fun, creative and... spooky' video.

The 54-year-old actor shared a statement on Instagram, detailing about the opportunity for the filmmakers to channel their inner "filmmaking ghost to make a scary indoor film with an element of horror in it."

Taking it to the captions, the 'Don' actor wrote: "Since we've all got a bit of time on our hands in quarantine, thought I can get us all to work a bit... in a fun, creative and... spooky way!"

In the post, titled with a hashtag 'SpookSRK,' the actor has listed down the rules to be followed while making the video and shared the email link to submit their work.

The 'Dilwale' actor also announced that the selected "three winners" will get a chance to video call the star himself.

Wrapping the post on a lighter note, he added: "I will be sending in my film as well...P.S - Ghosts are welcome to send their entries too."

This comes a day after the first trailer launch of Shah Rukh's new Netflix horror series 'Betaal'.

SRK's Red Chillies Entertainment is producing the horror-thriller. The new series also stars Vineet Kumar, Aahana Kumra, Suchitra Pillai, Jitendra Joshi, Manjiri Pupala, and Syna Anand.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.