Women behind the scenes

The number of women directors, choreographers etc is still small in Bollywood, but the list continues to grow. Here are some women who are the best in the business

By Deepa Gahlot

Women have become stars on screen in Bollywood, and some like the Mangeshkar sisters have dominated the music scene, but Hindi cinema is still behind when it comes to letting women into the technical domain. But some women have, over the years, succeeded in unusual fields.

Bhanu Athaiya

Bhanu Athaiya was possibly the first female costume designer in Hindi films and has spent over 50 years in the movie business. Born in Kolhapur when it was a rich cultural centre, Bhanu studied art in Mumbai and started sketching designs for women's magazines.

Raj Kapoor and other filmmakers of the time noticed her talent and asked her to design costumes for films. She did the costumes for films such as Pyaasa, Kaagaz Ke Phool, Ganga Jumna, Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam, right up to Lagaan and Swades. Athaiya won the Oscar for her work on Richard Attenborough's Gandhi, two national awards for Lekin and Lagaan and several other honours. She is known for meticulous research and attention to detail, and has no equal when it comes to period films.

Renu Saluja

Renu Saluja crashed the male bastion of editing when it was unthinkable for Bollywood to have female technicians. After being trained at the Pune Film Institute, she initially edited films for her FTII buddies like Vidhu Vinod Chopra (she was also married to him), Kundan Shah, Saeed Mirza and others. Later, she did films like Ardh Satya and Bandit Queen. Saluja won National Awards for her work in Parinda (1989), Dharavi (1991), Sardar (1993) and Godmother (1999).

All her directors gave her credit for understanding the medium and transforming their work with her genius at the editing table. Saluja died of cancer in 2002, but opened the door for other women editors. Thanks to her diligence, a female cutting films is not an oddity today.

Saroj Khan

At a time when the portly dance masters ruled Hindi cinema, a young Saroj Khan clawed her way in and went on to become a successful choreographer. She’s done films too numerous to list and won many awards. In fact, it was after her creative and extravagantly choreographed dance numbers that Filmfare had to introduce an award for Best Choreography, with Saroj Khan becoming the first winner for her Ek Do Teen number in Tezaab. She won it for the next two years for Chaalbaaz and Sailaab. Actresses like Sridevi, Madhuri Dixit and Aishwarya Rai owe their initial success to Saroj Khan's hit dance numbers. She paved the way for other women choreographers like Farah Khan, Rekha Prakash and Vaibhavi Merchant.

Farah Khan

Farah Khan shattered the glass ceiling for women directors in Bollywood. Before the success of her Main Hoon Na, no female director had been able to get a box-office hit. Through women filmmakers like Aparna Sen, Sai Paranjpye, Kalpana Lajmi, Tanuja Chandra and others were making films, none of them made money-spinners.

Farah Khan started her career as a choreographer with Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander. She brought a fresh and youthful style to her dance numbers that got stars like Aamir and Shah Rukh Khan dancing to her directions. The friendship eventually led to her making her successful debut as a filmmaker. Farah Khan also took Bollywood-style choreography to international projects like Monsoon Wedding, Vanity Fair, Ru Guo Ai (Chinese), the stage production of Bollywood Dreams and pop star Shakira's music video for Hips Don't Lie. She’s a winner in the male-dominated world of Hindi cinema.

Shibani Bhatija

Women are making waves in the field of writing everywhere, but Hindi cinema has just a handful of women scriptwriters. Many of them -- Achala Nagar, Reema Rakeshnath and Honey Irani -- either haven't worked in years or haven't been working consistently.

It hasn't happened before that a young woman suddenly comes in, works with two big banners and gets two blockbuster hits in a row. While her industry connections helped, the success of her two films was due to her understanding of the language today's audiences speak, and of course top stars, which is why Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna and Fanaa were big hits. Shibani Bhatija studied in the US, worked for a TV channel for a while and is today an in-demand script writer, practically a lone runner in mainstream Bollywood.

Sharmishtha Roy

Sharmishtha Roy trained with her father, the famous art director Sudhendu Roy, and after his death started working in films independently in what was till then male territory. She is still one of the very few female art directors in films. The biggest directors in the industry like Yash Chopra, Karan Johar and Subhash Ghai work with Sharmishtha, whose first major break came with Dil To Pagal Hai.

Roy is known for her larger-than-life glamorous sets for the big films and has won awards for them. But she did an equally thorough job on a film like Dev, for which she recreated a working-class Muslim tenement of Mumbai's Mohammad Ali Road and designed M.F. Husain's vision on Gajagamini and Meenaxi: Tale of Three Cities. She has won several popular awards for her work, and is still at the top in her field.