Chadariya

Moving between the realms of the individual and the collective, Nimisha Srivastava’s Chadariya unearths the pain and violence lived by young Indian unmarried women through the construction of a personal landscape of abortion. Intergenerational narratives are spoken through multiple voices in an attempt to create an interwoven “sense-scape.” The body becomes the site where pasts meet futures, congealing together in a visceral interplay between individual experience and a collective inheritance. While the haptic camerawork creates a sense of closeness, the interjecting written frames confront and trouble the ease of sharing and the real violence inflicted every day on women’s bodies. At one point in the film, a mother shares her lonely experience with pregnancy, and sings about a fabric, gesturing to life itself.