A Flowering Tree

The new film by last year’s Tiger Award winner (in the category short film) contemplates in a very exciting visual manner on one of the taboo subjects in India – female menstruation and its connection with Hindu rites and beliefs. While in Brahmin Orthodox culture the period of menstruation is considered to be impure and women are not supposed to cook or touch any food prepared for other family members, the main character in this film evokes old menstrual rituals and places them in ancient Indian culture.
The winner of the Indian prestigious Sanskrit Award, who became recognized in his own country after having been discovered by the Rotterdam Film Festival, which has screened all his films so far, is trying to maintain his enigmatic, associative narrative style which gives to the viewer a freedom to identify with the story in his/her own, intimate way. The film maker points out that this short docu-fiction is: ‘an attempt at constructing a male edition of the audio-visual dictionary on menstruation. Of how menstruation created the world, unravelling the metaformic theory, postulated by feminist author Judy Grahn. A new relational origin story that women’s menstrual rituals are the roots of human culture and that in human evolution women and men have markedly different relationships to blood.’ (RS)