Film Screening - “Umbartha” (1982)

Umbartha (1982) or “threshold” in Marathi, is an Indian, Marathi-language film by Jabbar Patel, heralded as an early vintage feminist enterprise that won many national awards. With thespians like Smita Patil and Girish Karnad acting in lead roles, Umbartha constitutes a feminist take on the rehabilitation of imprisoned women. The film discusses the vicissitudes of feminist and feminine lives lived in patriarchal society, that even if differentiated on the basis of class, is united by patriarchal oppression—mandatory marriage and motherhood, and sexual exploitation, that is compared to a prison. Umbartha was hailed as the first modern Indian films that also took a feminist approach to lesbianism. Locating lesbianism as a response to patriarchal institutionalism, it presented lesbianism as rebellion against incarceration.