Paromita Vohra

A humorous yet raw and authentic study of women’s reproductive labour across the marriage-market continuum, including, sex work, erotic dancing, surrogacy and egg donation, paid domestic work and unpaid domestic/care work across India, while also offering a comparison of the law’s highly differential regulation of these apparently disparate forms of female reproductive labour.

Who’s Sandra? If you saw her would you know her? Is she naughty or is she nice? And where is she anyway? This film takes a playful look at the figure of “Sandra from Bandra” – part covetous fantasy of the racy Christian girl from Bombay who works as a secretary, wears a dress and likes to dance; part condescending stereotype of a dowdy, religious girl from a minority community. The film searches for Sandra in Bollywood films, in the words of writers and poets, on the gravestones in Bandra’s churchyard. We encounter various claimants to the title – some who aren’t from Bandra and some who aren’t even called Sandra. Finally we find 5 women who really are Sandra from Bandra, each as different from the other as can be even if they are all a little bit the same.

Ayesha is a widow with a secret past, living with her beloved son Saleem in a small town in Pakistan close to the Indian border. When the fires of Islamic nationalism invade their tranquil lives, Saleem and a few of the town's other young men are soon gripped by a religious fervour, and they attempt to bring radical Islamic law to their friends and neighbours. After a group of Sikh pilgrims arrive in town, tensions reach boiling point as Ayesha's haunted past comes rushing back.

Director Paromita Vohra's novel film explores the dearth of public lavatories in Mumbai, India, focusing on the scarcity of women's restrooms throughout the city. In looking at who has to "queue to pee," Vohra delves into other social issues such as gender, class, caste and urban growth in this incisive journey into a usually unmentionable topic. Q2P won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary at the 2007 Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles.

Mixing non-fiction and fiction, Unlimited Girls follows Fearless explorations and conversations: wondering why women must always lead double lives, being feminist but not saying they are. If feminism changes the way we live, then do we change the meaning of feminism as we live it? Fearless returns to the feminist chat-room peopled by talkative feminist ladies who become her friend, to probe and argue and ask and constantly question what she sees and feels. In the end does she lose or confirm her ambivalence? Does she decide to own the label "Feminist" or does she decide it is irrelevant in these post-modern times?

The film explores the campaign waged by the Hindu right-wing organisation Vishva Hindu Parishad to build a Ram temple at the site of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, as well as the communal violence that it triggered. A couple of months after Ram ke Naam was released, VHP activists demolished the Babri Masjid in 1992, provoking further violence.

Who owns a song: the person who made it or the person who bought it? Is piracy organized crime or class struggle? Metalheads who market their own music, folklorists who turn tribal aphorisms into short stories, music archivists who hoard and share everything they can get their hands on, a smooth talking DVD street salesman, media moguls and lobbyists: these are the fascinating figures who throng the global bazaar at the heart of piracy.

This is a film about food and faith. Anapurna, the goddess of food walks the earth and comes to a city by the sea where one of its inhabitants treats her to a gorgeous meal of fish. Pleased, she blesses the city with gastronomic abundance and even reigns as its (very popular) patron deity. However, very soon she faces competition with the arrival of her sister, Laxmi, the goddess of wealth. The rivalry between the goddesses manages to divide the city with all the classical intrigue, insecurity and jealousy that make up a good old fashioned battle. The city spirals into an escalating war over food and property, livelihood and living.

The film explores Mirabai as a cultural icon, revealing her poetry's conflicts with popular beliefs, despite the overwhelming influence of her images and stories.

This documentary is the first public documentation of the concept of love jihad. Filmed in Meerut following a televised moral policing event termed Operation Majnu, the film tracks the birth of a language of television news which has today become a norm of sensationalism and witch-hunts.