Sixth International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

The woman seen on the big screen would always be a subject to discuss, converse and debate for several factors continuing to persist in cinema even today. Kerala is a state known for gender equality, women empowerment, and it holds the highest position in women’s education in Asia. Then, cinema has started to focus on the need of looking into new problems and challenges of women to be discussed in current times caused due to societal changes over the time. The demands of audiences to bring newness in cinema has helped in the growth of Malayalam cinema to a larger extent. This also has brought a different narrative style for cinema and gave rise to significant interesting and stronger women characters in the cinema. In this study, research looks into the portrayal of women in two recent Malayalam cinema titled and ‘Sara’s’ released in OTT during pandemic in 2021. The researcher uses thorough content analysis of selected cinema preferring it as suitable qualitative research methodology. The study also attempts to understand the pros and cons of stereotypical imaging of women in film and understand the contribution of cinema towards representing problems of women in reality while depicting on the screen. The researcher focuses on learning the intimate shift or adaptation technique adopted in the way of storytelling as a part of film making which develops through women characters thus resulting in recent Malayalam cinema.