By DHERRAN TITHERINGTON
I winced, as my grandmother told me about how she and other young women handled menstruation, growing up in Britain in the 50s. Nobody really talked about it, and feminine products were expensive and thus inaccessible. Poorer women, like herself, had to use rags and pieces of cloth, making schooling difficult.
Then, a few weeks later I watched the documentary, Period. End of Sentence. I was struck by how ignorant I was to believe that the experience of my grandmother was one left in the past.
The beauty of film is its capacity to spread taboo messages in a format that is universally understood and realised. The film is set in a rural Indian village, Kathikhera, where women are striving to break taboos and barriers surrounding menstruation, through their production of low-cost sanitary pads.
The process began with a group of students, who, upon learning about the original ‘Pad Man’, Arunachalam Muruganantham, decided to raise money through various schemes in order to purchase one of his pad machines for a village outside of New Delhi. The film is a collaboration between Iranian American filmmaker, Zehtabchi, and Action India, a grassroots organisation working in Kathikhera for women’s empowerment.
The initial opening scene is one of multiple young women. Each sitting in their own dimly lit homes, draped in colourful materials. The viewer is met with nervous laughs and wandering eyes. It is easy to presume that the girls are being quizzed on a radically inappropriate topic. But then, as the question is raised, ‘what is a period?’ one begins to feel the magnitude of the stigma surrounding menstruation.
Sat next to her young son, in a room with walls plastered in newspapers, a young woman recalls her inability to cope with periods whilst at school. Having to resort to using rags from old suits, she tells of having nowhere to change away from the gaze of men. Her son acts as a pertinent symbol of her missed opportunity, and her necessity to marry. This was a challenge to education that I had never even considered.
The brand of the pads is labelled ‘Fly’, it entails the process of rising above the restrictions traditionally placed upon women during their period, and the motion of rising to their own versions of success.
Zehtabchi won an Oscar for Best Documentary Short Subject, after only two years of working in the realm of short films, for her work on Period, End of Sentence. Later premiered on Netflix, it now features on the YouTube channel, free of charge. Upon being handed the award, Zehtabchi powerfully asserts, “A period should end a sentence, not a girl’s education.”
The film masterfully concludes with a final shot of the exterior of the small factory. One can hear the whizzing of the machine as it is first switched on: a beautiful symbol of the humble beginnings of this female enterprise.
The Pad Project continues to work alongside Action India to encourage and enable the production of further pad machines and increased education surrounding menstrual health within Kathikhera and beyond.
On its website, The Pad Project encourages schools and organisations to screen the film and follow their corresponding discussion guides, in order to spread awareness and spark conversation on this topic through the best kind of educator: film.
