The Many Shades Of A Woman

The burkha of conservatism lifted, Lipstick... emerges in all its vivid, glossy colour.

- Suhani Singh

THE STORY IS LADY ORIENTED, their fantasy above life.” When the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) made this observation about Lipstick Under My Burkha on January 25 this year, denying it certification in the process, writer-director Alankrita Shrivastava knew she had a battle on her hands. In February, at a screening for the revising committee in Mumbai, CBFC chairperson Pahlaj Nihalani said that it was not one scene or dialogue, but that the “whole film was a problem”. “It’s a very strange thing that a government body, in the year 2017, can say ‘we’re not going to certify your film because it is from the female point of view’,” says Shrivastava. “It was a wake-up call for me. It was not just about my film. You can’t set this kind of precedent.”

Two months later, the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal (FCAT) came to Shrivastava’s rescue, issuing a decree criticising CBFC for its “misdirected” assessment, adding that it had failed to “judge the film in its entirety from the point of view of its overall impact since it sends a message of [female] empowerment and emancipation”. The FCAT ruling also stated that “there cannot be any embargo on a film being woman-oriented or containing sexual fantasies and expression of the inner desires of women”. Asking for the sex scenes to be shortened and one word to be muted, the FCAT ordered the CBFC to issue a certification, which arrived on June 3.