Young eyes are able to see all that is obvious, but also that which remains hidden and unrecognized from plain sight. Colours of Kollywood – Lack of melaninA short documentary made by a group of Bachelor of Visual Arts students of MGR Film and Television Institute takes a critical look at colourism in the Tamil cinema industry, according to which fair-skinned women appear in lead female roles in a large number of commercial films.
Screened in the Short Documentary Competition category at the 16th International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala (IDSFFK), the documentary was one of the highlights of the third day of the festival. Directed by 20-year-old Paro Salil, with cinematography by Akshay Parunan, audiography by Subramanya Bharathi and editing by M. Gopikrishnan, the film begins with shots of a beach in Chennai observing the absurdity of the situation, and questions the lack of representation of women of all the different skin colours seen there in Tamil cinema.
historical perspective
By translating the lyrics of popular Tamil songs from the last few decades, we are shown how the protagonists talk about the desirability of fair-skinned women. The analysis becomes even more poignant when the documentary asks prominent people, including filmmakers, activists and students, to look at the issue from a historical perspective.
Filmmaker K. Hariharan attributes this to a colonial hangover, but also talks about how in the 1970s and ’80s, filmmakers like K. Balachander cast dark-skinned women as the lead roles in their films. But by the 1990s, things took a turn for the worse. Still, during that same time, many of Tamil cinema’s leading men were dark-skinned, and the preference for lighter skin was limited to women. Many of these women also “browned up” to play dark-skinned characters.
The documentary compares the situation with how brown-skinned actors are playing lead roles in popular television series in the West Bridgerton Or never have I everBut, as Mia Malzer, an Indian-born actress who has been part of acclaimed projects elsewhere, says, it can be difficult to find lead roles in Tamil cinema. We can only hope that the voices of this film’s young makers will bring about change in the industry.
