Richa Chadha: "While doing social work for women empowerment, we organized a free training camp on 'Lightning' for girls'..." By Shantiswarup Tripathi

Every person has a social responsibility to give something back to society in return for whatever he has taken from society. Working in this direction, Richa Chadha and Ali Fazal organized 'The Undercurrent Lab', where girls were given free training in 'Cinema Lighting'. After being trained in this camp, Tanya and Nidhi are now working for Richa Chadha and Ali Fazal's production house 'Pushing Buttons Studio', while other girls are working in different production houses in Bollywood. In this way, due to Richa Chadha's thinking, a new revolution has taken place in Bollywood. It is well known that women are employed in every department of Bollywood including make-up, editing, and direction. But till a month ago, only men were working in the ‘Lighting’ department. There were no girls in this department. Richa Chadha considers this step as a social work. She says that we have gained a lot from this film industry, so it is our social responsibility to do something for its development. So we took the step of 'The Undercurrent Lab'.

 

How did the idea of giving free lighting training to girls come to your mind?

-When Ali and I together decided to start our production studio. After that, when we were making the technical crew of our first film “Girls Will Be Girls”, we realized that there was not a single girl in the cinema lighting department. So we thought that such a lab i.e. training camp should be kept free for girls. For this, we applied to Berlinale for funding. From there we got two grants, and with the same money we gave free workshops to the first nine girls on 'Cinema Lighting'.

This workshop was for those girls who want to become cameramen and Gappers in Bollywood. Wants to become a cinema light omen. In Bollywood, there is Light Man or Light Dada. There is no woman in this department. There is only one gaper omen. So we took up the task of doing this work as a social responsibility. We organized a workshop for girls under ‘The Undercurrent Lab’.

 

Who trained the girls in this workshop?

-There is a company in Goregaon – “Light and Light”. This is a very big company which provides lights in Bollywood. There are two people in it, Nasir Bhai and Irfan Bhai. These two people gave training to the girls. Now some girls are working as gappers.

What is your main motive behind this?

-First of all, this is our social work. This is a medium to give back what we have received from this industry. Apart from this, we are in favor of women's empowerment. So this is also a step towards empowering women. We want that women should get the opportunity to work in every field. Our aim was not to earn money by doing this. We are working to educate the people associated with the industry. In this way, through education, women will be able to work in every field in Bollywood. When we entered this industry, there were very few women working in those days. There was only a hairdresser or make-up specialist. But now the circumstances have changed. Now women are working tirelessly in every department including assistant directors, editors, etc. Women are not working only in the light department. The basic reason for this is that people do not give work to women in the 'lighting department of cinema' saying that women cannot lift the heavy weight of light. Light cannot be lifted to a height. Etc. etc. The interesting thing is that these same women in the village can carry five water pots on their heads and fill water from a distance of two to three kilometers. Can fill water even after giving birth to five children. She can lift all types of weight at home. But she can't lift the light on the set during the shooting of the film...silly things...so we wanted to break this trend and myth. That's why 'The Undercurrent Lab' was organized and today the girls trained in our camp are working in Bollywood. It is a matter of happiness for us.