Tribeca Film Festival touches on barriers South Asian Woman face with ‘South Asian House’ panel in New York

Seen & Heard

The Tribeca Film Festival today at Spring Studios here in New York City sheds light on the growing minority voices sounded by South Asian women, the “South Asian House” hosted a panel of 5 S.A.W. actresses who are power players in their own right, as well as filmmakers, directors, and writers coming together to raise awareness about being strong, but more needs to be done, the panel featured Moderator/ Producer Rohi Mirza Pandya, Playright/ Screenwriter Rehana Lew Mirza, Actor/ Producer/ Author/ Activist Sheetal Sheth, Founder Culture House/ Executive Producer Raeshem Nijhon, and Director Afia Nathaniel.

For South Asian women, the key takeaway is being noticed, not only for their wide-range acting abilities, but other key aspects they bring to the table, such as creating a piece of work on their own terms with whatever means and support system possible, coming from their close-knit community of actors, friends, and family, as well as the movie industry as a whole where nobody is going to pigeon hole South Asian women for their race, as well as being a woman.

In all the tremendous success these S.A.W. movers and shakers have, it’s not to say that it didn’t come easy, or that it gets easier, there’s growing pains of taking up acting, where it takes a mountain of devotions, planning, unplanned, studying, time, and focus for you to be available with not just presence, but showing your casts, crew, and bosses at the studio and on set that you are a good fit, and they can use you at every capacity possible with no issue; a few of these S.A.W. panels have had to adjust their own methods because they now have children, and are doing whatever possible to make it work, whether it’s not always taking up every opportunity, or having spouses who will take on the extra load of children and a household when these actresses have to work.

These South Asian women took a leap of faith in order to pursue a career in the film industry, leaving the comfort and support of their families back home because they needed to find their voice, a voice that rises beyond the expectation of Hollywood perceiving S.A.W. actresses portraying roles of saving young woman from arranged marriages, or the requirement of movies with South Asian actors both male and female needing to create Oscar winning films, the South Asian community, South Asian women, and all women of course need to have a front seat of the table, shape pop culture with stories that leave a message behind its meaning, be allowed to make a bad movie in their sex and race class, and regardless of good or bad movie, in order for audiences to see S.A.W. in a wider capacity, the content has to be good.

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Daniel Quintanilla