Heaven knows why some joys are described as guilty pleasures. I feel no guilt, for instance, in gawking at designer gowns and sundry outlandish outfits at glamorous dos.
In a sea of silk trains and sartorial eccentricities at high-profile events so far this year though, the prettiest sight for me has been an intangible wardrobe accessory no stylist can procure: the quiet pride with which the team of the Malayalam cult classic Amma Ariyan (Report to Mother) walked down the red carpet at last month's Cannes Film Festival. They were there for the world premiere of a 4K-restored version of this film directed by the late John Abraham, and originally released in 1986.
While congratulating them on social media, the award-winning writer-director-producer Anjali Menon added 'a special wish for Bina Chechi who has hosted many such moments for many filmmakers at @iffklive and totally deserves her own glorious moment and that too at Cannes! '
Bina Chechi is the multiple award-winning editor Bina Paul, who represented Amma Ariyan at Cannes, along with lead actor Joy Mathew, and Shivendra Singh Dungarpur whose Film Heritage Foundation undertook the restoration. And IFFK is the International Film Festival of Kerala, which was Bina's arena for over two decades.
As the curatorial and creative force behind the Kerala fest through most of the period from its inception in the 1990s till early 2022, Bina is widely credited for the respect the event has attained nationwide and among filmmakers abroad. It was during her tenure as artistic director that, in 2021, the notoriously picky French auteur Jean-Luc Godard accepted a Lifetime Achievement Award from IFFK, even attending the ceremony via video. He had famously not bothered when selected for an honorary Oscar over a decade earlier.
In 2022, as she made her last bow at IFFK, the festival pulled off a surprise by getting the movie star Bhavana as a guest of honour at the opening ceremony, which proved to be a milestone for Kerala, since Bhavana's fight for justice in an assault case has been a turning point for women's resistance in the state.
Bina's own contribution to the feminist movement merits a place in history texts, along with her remarkable professional accomplishments. She began working as an editor in the 1980s when women technicians were uncommon in Indian cinema. And she is one of the founders of Women in Cinema Collective (WCC), a first-of-its kind rights organisation launched in 2017 by women of the Malayalam film industry, following an assault on their colleague that year.
What makes Bina significant far beyond her career achievements is that she has tapped her stature to improve conditions for other women. Like all WCC's co-founders, she has paid a price for her activism in the last 9 years, and refused to bend nevertheless.
One clear example of this, as more than one source told me in 2022, is that when her term at IFFK ended, the state government did not ask her to stay on in the job because she had repeatedly clashed with it in her capacity as a WCC member. The irony is that IFFK has lost far more in the bargain than Bina did, since she has a standing independent of the festival's branding.
Over the years, each time I have met Bina, I've been struck by her sharpness, her boundless energy, her ability to focus on the task at hand, and the clarity of her convictions. At 67, she still has a packed schedule as she continues to edit films and oversees a clutch of boutique festivals, among other commitments in India and abroad, and remains pivotal to WCC's campaign for gender equality.
She makes it look easy. So we tend to forget that the silver-haired woman smiling that luminous smile would have cracked her bones through a lifetime of smashing glass ceilings en route to the red carpet at Cannes.
