Breaking the Silence

a short documentary by Disha Shetty

Based on the tragic story of Nirbhaya – the victim of a brutal gang rape in New Delhi, India in 2012 – this animated documentary raises awareness on the issue of rape culture and the importance of abolishing the taboo surrounding the topic in order to allow progress for change. Below is the final proposal and treatment for the project:

Breaking the Silence

Proposal

Many documentaries have been made to shed light on individual cases of sexual and gender-based violence around the world. However, despite this, the topic of sexual violence still seems to be taboo in many societies. My documentary, Breaking the Silence, is a historical and personal documentary that tells the tragic story of  a victim of rape culture, who has since transformed into a symbol of courage, and the ways in which it has drastically altered the lives of many Indian women. The approximately five minute documentary is targeted towards an audience of young adults and will stress the need to open up a dialogue about rape culture with the intention of encouraging them to become more engaged in this socio-political issue by freely discussing it and bringing awareness to it, therefore helping to abolish the taboo on rape culture.

On the night of December 16th, 2012, a 23-year-old medical student named Jyoti Singh (dubbed Nirbhaya, meaning “the fearless one”, by the media), and her male friend stepped onto a bus with six men claiming they were driving in the direction of her house. Upon climbing aboard, her friend was badly beaten, pinned down at the front of the bus, and spent the rest of the night drifting in and out of consciousness. Nirbhaya, on the other hand, was forcefully dragged to the back of the bus, where she was gangraped and assaulted with an iron rod. The men showed no mercy in their physical abuse. By the end of the night she had multiple injuries, including bite marks and intestines hanging outside of her body, and both she and her friend were left naked and unconscious on the side of the street. Their bodies were found two hours later and they were taken to a hospital. The rapists, meanwhile, cleaned the blood from their bus and returned to their lives.

The next morning, December 17th, 2012, the events of the night before was broadcast by the media and immediately after riots ensued. Thousands of men and women took to the streets of New Delhi and other cities in India, expressing their rage over the lack of security and respect women were given in India. Their anger was only elevated by the shocking response from men in power in the Indian political and legal systems who claimed that Nirbhaya got what she deserved as no young woman should be out of her house that late at night, especially not with a male friend. This stirred an important conversation about the backwards way women’s roles were viewed and how they were constantly seen as inferior and unimportant.

Nirbhaya died on December 29th, 2012.

What happened to Nirbhaya was an important moment in history for Indian women all around the world as it accelerated the feminist movement in India. Personally, this event was a pivotal moment in my life. I clearly remember sitting at a hotel breakfast on a family vacation in Egypt watching the story of Nirbhaya being broadcasted on the television. Only 12 years old at the time, I was unable to fully comprehend what had happened. Taking the liberty to read further into it, the event became my first insight into the horrors of what it means to be a woman in some parts of the world.

I have always been interested in art, but for a long time it was just copying and reproducing what I saw onto paper rather than creatively interpreting it. However, after December 2012, my art gained meaning. It became the way that I expressed my viewpoint on feminism and other social justice issues that resonated with me and that I felt needed more recognition. It became my goal to reveal the injustices of socio-political issues around the world and open up a dialogue about them.

In order to accomplish my objective, I will interview other Indian women in my life, including my mother and friends, to inquire how the event affected them and why they think it’s important for these issues to be spoken about more openly.

I will also include a description on how India has changed since the 2012 gang rape and how it has affected rape culture and people’s views on it since, in order to demonstrate the importance of speaking up about these issues. These claims will be supported by a few quotes. One from Indian activist Kavita Krishnan, who claims, “One really encouraging development after the Delhi incident is that I see a lot of young people – school and college students, communities – getting interested with issues around discrimination against women.” She further states that “A number of talks on the subject have been held in schools and colleges. Students are reading about and debating the history of women’s movements. There’s deep introspection about how we end up sustaining violence and discrimination against women.” Another quote will be from Karuna Nundy, who states, “Delhi police data show 1,036 cases of rape were reported until 15 August, 2013 – as against 433 cases reported over the same period last year. This is likely to be in some part due to increased reporting, which would point to a greater sense of entitlement and more societal support for survivors.”.

Breaking the Silence is a documentary that deals with an important issue and uses personal and historical anecdotes to stress the importance of openly discussing rape culture in order for society to advance towards a solution that includes educating the youth and elders on equality and ethics regarding women and their role in society.

 

Treatment

Using the research I have conducted, my documentary will use anecdotes of personal experiences, interviews of Indian women in my life such as my mother and my friend, and news articles and statistics that provide evidence for the change that the events of December 2012 has brought upon India. I will also include clips from the interviews of the rapists’ defence lawyers from Leslie Udwin’s documentary India’s Daughter, which shows the direct impact the event had on both the families of the people involved and on Indian society as a whole, to shed light on the misogyny that still exists in India and therefore prevents social progression.

My documentary will be approximately five minutes in length. It will use a mixture of animation a photography, and begins with my voiceover narration of what happened to Nirbhaya, highlighting the careless brutality of how she was treated, and how the country reacted to her injustice. The animations will take inspiration from Alexandra Hohner’s short animated documentary on a disease called ME/CFS and will consist of simple white line-drawings over a red cloth background – alluding to a powerful and significant colour in the life of an Indian woman – and will transition into and out of real photographs to provide a visual narrative that helps the viewers experience of understanding the story, while also demonstrating the affiliation my art has to the event.

Next will be an insight into how the event affected me personally. I will describe the changes it brought to the meaning and direction of my artwork and I will feature images of my artwork that addresses feminist issues. The large scale effect of the event will be complemented by interviews with Indian women in my life who, like me, live outside of India, including my mother and my friends.

I will then transition into the overarching objective of my documentary, which is to emphasise the importance of openly discussing rape culture to bring awareness and encourage education about the mistreatment towards women. Using the viewpoints of activists and lawyers who integrated themselves deeply in studying and advocating against what happened to Nirbhaya, accompanied with statistics and personal and historical anecdotes, I will prompt the viewers to evaluate their own perspectives on this issue and how they can discuss it in their own lives to bring more awareness and understanding.

Most of the research has already been completed, and the so has most of the script. The storyboard is presently being worked on, and I have also begun to experiment with some of the linework, frames and transitions for the animation. I will continue to look for more reference images for my animations and images to include in my documentary, which my animations can transition into and out of. I am also currently working on organising the interviews with my mother and my friend, after which I will be able to extract the most important parts to effectively integrate into my documentary to help build my argument.

Below is the link to my final documentary:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1x9nfi7XNZNwfc3fiOzReBu0VJ1ICj1Bv?usp=sharing

I had made a lot of changes to get to this final outcome. For example, I had initially included interviews with other young Indian girls, however, I felt that it didn’t fit well with the flow or the aesthetic of the documentary as a whole, and that it was just repeating points that were already stated in other sections of my documentary so I chose to remove the interviews entirely. I also chose to add text when mentioning quotes, to make it easier for the viewer and to give a visual break from the animations.

Overall, while the visuals were very successful I think a weak point of my documentary was the audio. The slightly monotonous seemed to gloss over the tragic description of the event as I tried to fit in too much information in a very short amount of time. Aside from that I think the documentary turned out quite well and I am happy with the outcome.