The pioneering and influential Yugantar Film Collective, from Bangalore, was the first Indian film collective to be founded and constituted exclusively by women: Deepa Dhanraj, Abha Bhaiya, Navroze Contractor and Meera Rao. Openly feminist, the collective began making films in 1980, at a time when India was going through a period of political transformation. Working cooperatively and with an activist sensibility, they produced four films focussing on the social, political and economic condition of women in India and their subordinate status in society.

Filmed in work or family settings, the collective’s output speaks to the layers and subtleties of the physical and emotional violence inflicted on working Indian women, and acts as a superb record of a growing political consciousness and the collective fight for better working conditions. Deeply informed by on-the-ground research and featuring a plurality of voices, each of the films addresses a single theme: domestic labour, factory labour and union organisation, domestic violence, and deforestation.

We present restored versions of the group’s complete oeuvre — modest in size, but of immense artistic, civic and historical value. These works move us with the current relevance of portraits composed 40 years ago, as much as they amaze us with their mastery of the fields of fiction and experimental documentary film.