From editing to VFX, Lights Camera Women is creating a space for women in cinema

As these setups are not often built with her in mind, wherever a woman enters, there is a need to carve out a space for herself.

Key points

• The Chennai chapter began in June and has already held two physical meetups in June and August.
• LCW at present has active members throughout cities including Kochi, Delhi, Hyderabad, Pune, and Noida, with intends to build chapters in more cities.
• One such initiative is the Film Lab, where short films are produced with women making up the entire crew throughout departments.
• This has led to one of LCW's key spaces, Conversations, where women discuss their experiences in the industry and beyond.
• At the end, Navya notes, "What we need is not a different lens, but a collaborative lens."

For filmmaker Navya Nagesh, that thought became the starting point for Lights Camera Women (LCW), an independent collective that intends to empower women throughout all 24 crafts of filmmaking.

Notably, the idea came from Navya's own journey through the industry. At present working on her debut feature and pitching it to producers, she states navigating the industry, looking for the right individuals, and building relationships produced her realise the need for a space where women could meet, talk, and just exist. "I always wanted a space to be there for women to discuss, have conversations, and be visible. At that point, I thought, why am I waiting for someone else to create a community when I can start it?" recalls Navya.

LCW, nevertheless, is not a conventional membership-based organisation. Instead, it brings together women who identify with cinema and want to be part of a collective. While physical meetups allow members to meet one another, exchange experiences, and build connections, representatives lead different chapters.

For Navya, the need for such a space is additionally personal. While working on projects, she often discovered herself as the only woman on a set. Sharing an experience or simply speaking regarding something that bothered her did not always feel comfortable. As women in the industry, don't have anyone to share anything with on the sets, "We. I really thought if there was someone to just listen to, it would have been great, " she shares.

This has led to one of LCW's key spaces, Conversations, where women discuss their experiences in the industry and beyond. For some, Navya notes, simply being heard has produced a difference.

Meanwhile, the Chennai chapter began in June and has already held two physical meetups in June and August. It now has 125 members, ranging from a 20-year-old trying to enter the industry to a 60-year-old woman looking to return to cinema. The collective is meant to create women at different stages of their lives and careers feel equally welcome.

Chennai, she notes, already has an interesting ecosystem of women filmmakers and technicians who are looking for opportunities to collaborate. LCW is trying to turn some of those connections into actual work.

One such initiative is the Film Lab, where short films are produced with women making up the entire crew throughout departments. Under this, the Chennai chapter has already shot and produced a short film titled Kaadhili. It is due to release this month.

While this is the first step, the larger objective is to challenge the perception of where women belong within filmmaking. "There are a lot of individuals who don't even know that there are women VFX supervisors and editors. There are limited number of women, but there are women in the industry, " Navya asserts. The difficulty lies in the reluctance to hire them.

LCW has been trying to address this concern by sharing verified opportunities and spotlighting roles available to women in their groups. These efforts have led to the collective's most visible impact in creating a bridge between women and opportunities. For a Telugu film project, Alias Rukmini, only four women turned up for auditions initially. The casting team then reached out to LCW. In collaborative efforts, 93 women turned up. Plenty of of the women eventually cast in the film were LCW members. These "small victories" create the work worthwhile.

By contrast, the challenge go beyond simply getting hired or working in the industry. "There's another layer to hiring women in the filmmaking space. You are hired since you're a woman for conservative roles like costume designer or maybe helping the heroine who does not know the language, " explains filmmaker and LCW Chennai representative Powlomi Reddy.

Even when women are part of a project, there can be an extra layer of self-consciousness, she states. In mainstream spaces, women often have to think regarding how they speak, their tone, and how their actions might be perceived.

Within a collective of women, that layer begins to disappear. "When we are doing a project together as a team, it's work, and there is nothing to think about, " Powlomi notes.

For context, the expansion and the work that the collective has been doing – a year since its inception in Hyderabad – if women are not always being given a seat at the table, they can build one for themselves and create sure there is room for others too. At the end, Navya notes, "What we need is not a different lens, but a collaborative lens."

Taken together, the developments around from editing to VFX, Lights Camera Women is creating a space for point to a situation that is still moving, and the coming days should bring more clarity.