Konangal is screening two documentary films here in Coimbatore tomorrow to honour Deepa Dhanraj, a documentary filmmaker, who has been chosen for the annual Lenin Award this year.

The screening is conducted in collaboration with Tamil Studio, Chennai.

Deepa Dhanraj is an activist and documentary filmmaker from Bengaluru and has been actively involved in the women’s movement since 1980. Over the last few years, she has participated in workshops, seminars and discussions on various issues related to women’s status, including political participation, health, and education.

She was one of the lead researchers in a multi-centred research study, ‘Minority Women Negotiating Citizenship.’

‘Invoking Justice,’ the 59-minute Tamil documentary brings together Deepa’s decades-old practice of drawing links between ideology and mobilization, political awareness and social change. It follows the decision-making process of the one-of-its-kind the Tamil Nadu Muslim Women Jamaat, Konangal President, Pon Chandran said in a release today.

Set up in 2004 by Daud Sharifa Khanum, the all-women organization emerged in response to allegations of chauvinism, corruption, and abuse of power in the traditional all-male Muslim jamaats. The female jamaat tackles cases involving women and their families— possible dowry death, domestic abuse—within the framework of the Sharia code, using their knowledge of the Quran and moral superiority, when taking on resistant male gatekeepers of the religious law during negotiations with potential allies.

The second documentary, ‘Something like a War’ (52 minutes, with English subtitles) focuses on the coerced sterilizations (done by tubal ligation) of women in India and on the opinions of Indian women of these programmes, and traditional family life of the Indian women.

The film documents the state of reproductive rights for women in India that juxtaposes detachment of science next to a new form of oppression for women.