Digitally restored in 2019, three pioneering works by the Yugantar Film Collective offer a rare insight into the active women’s movements across 1980s India.

India’s first feminist film collective, Yugantar, was founded in 1980 by Abha Bhaiya, Navroze Contractor, Deepa Dhanraj and Meera Rao during a time of radical transformation. The group blazed a trail by working directly with the communities they were depicting, and their creative agitation ultimately inspired political change. Female labour rights are a focus in Maid Servant (Molkarin, 1981), which features domestic workers in Pune, and Tobacco Ember (Tambaku Chaakila Oob Ali, 1982), with Nipani factory workers. Yugantar’s most well-known film, Is This Just a Story? (Idhi Katha Matramena, 1983), is a collaboration with the Hyderabad-based feminist activist collective Stree Shakti Sanghatana and an urgent treatise on domestic violence.