Bijaya Jena part of discussion on women in cinema at the Dhaka International Film Festival

National award-winning Odia actress and filmmaker Bijaya Jena was part of a conference at the prestigious

Dhaka International Film Festival

2021, where she spoke about women's participation in cinema. Jena, who had been a part of this festival as a jury member and a panel speaker in previous years, attended the event virtually. The film festival is currently going on in Dhaka.

She said the film festival has a dedicated competition section for women. “I took part in the discussion session on the topic, 'How social media has been helping women in

filmmaking

and film viewing'. Along with me, there were other panelists including Nepali actress and filmmaker

Nisha Shrestha

, Bangladeshi filmmaker

Shamim Akhtar

, chairperson of DIFF, professor

Kishwar Kamal

, and Sadia Khalid, editor of a newspaper,” she said.


She gave the example of Nati Binodini, who defied society to become a famous actress and earned the respect of

Ramakrishna Paramhansa

in 1880. “Creative women need patronage to achieve anything in the fields of art and cinema. In cinema, government support is very much needed for more creative women to come to the fore,” said the actress, who had acted in several Odia and Hindi films. She also added that the Kerala government has allocated Rs 3 crore to female filmmakers very recently and it would encourage more creative women to step into filmmaking.