since the 1960s, women's collectivization in the Indian state of Kerala has been closely linked to labor exploitation dynamics, with women's workforce concerns being ignored in order to firmly establish the status of male (socialist) workers. This article examines the semi-fictional portrayal of the working women's rights movement in the Malayalam-language anthology film Freedom Fight (2022), produced by filmmaker Jeo Baby. It focuses specifically on the Asanghadithar segment by Kunjila Mascillamani, which features Penkoottu, a group of women in Kozhikode (formerly Calicut), Kerala's unorganized labor sector. The analysis aims to illustrate how women's collectivization—a movement that would have otherwise gone unnoticed—was made visible and how male conceptions of labor were rewritten to include female perspectives and histories. Asanghadithar and work by Kerala's Women in Cinema Collective (WCC) can be considered together as paradigm-shifting interventions in the treatment and representation of women. The comparative analysis illuminates the precarious existence of female workers in unorganized labor sectors and highlights the necessity of women's collectivized existence in Kerala's social and political domains. The patriarchal ideas deployed in venues of oppression (the workplace for Penkoottu and cinema for WCC) are challenged by the feminist experimental docu-fictional representation of activist-filmmaker Kunjila Mascillamani.Five to six women are shown climbing a gate and stealthily walking inside a shopping complex at night. They must have planned something out of the ordinary because one of the women asks why they have to do this in the store where she works. The scene is unique because it begins with a group of women who are determined to work together to accomplish a goal on their own. When they attempt to break the shop's lock, two men sleeping in the complex threaten to call the police. The woman who appears to be the group's leader responds vehemently: “We are not here to steal. We have come to build a toilet” (33:01–33:22).This is the first scene of Mascillamani's Asanghadithar: The Unorganized Sector. It features Viji Palithodi, who founded the women's union Penkoottu, along with actors and women workers from S. M. Street (Sweetmeat Street), a shopping area in Kozhikode, resulting in a docu-fiction in which Mascillamani uses the political present to revive the historical struggles of women workers. Asanghadithar narrates the story of a group of women who work in the busy commercial street in Kozhikode known as “Mittayitheruvu” or “S. M. Street.” The group includes women from the lower class who are working in different shops as saleswomen, and the film explores their struggle to access their right to pee in proper toilets and work in a safe environment. Their struggle is juxtaposed with the general apathy of the patriarchal society, which includes shop owners, labor union representatives, and government officials, all of whom try to alienate the women from their identity as laborers.The film stands out through its inclusion of the active feminist labor organization called Penkoottu. Moreover, by fictionalizing and subjectivizing the history of feminist politics ushered in by Penkoottu, the film contributes a regionalized discourse to global labor dynamics and its representations.1 Penkoottu, formed under the leadership of activist and tailor Viji Palithodi in 2009, mobilized women workers of S. M. Street (saleswomen, sweepers, and tailors) and staged protests to demand the right to access toilets during working hours. Their “toilet strike” was a largely successful campaign, even though they had to face multifarious attacks on personal and professional levels.Textual analysis of the film segment illuminates labor's gendered aspects within and outside the film's mise-en-scène. Focusing on the narrative in Asanghadithar as a semi-fictional representation of Penkoottu's 2010 strikes, this article relates female labor debates in Kerala to the Women in Cinema Collective to explore questions about labor and women in cinema spaces. Director Kunjila Mascillamani anchors the analysis of the two gender-based organizations, as her association with WCC and her decision to feature Penkoottu in Asanghadithar open up female labor's complicated relationship with patriarchal unorganized working sectors. The article is divided into three sections. The first situates the docu-fiction in the larger corpus of documentaries and activism in India and argues for Asanghadithar as an archival historical document. The second highlights the political significance of cinema in the context of gendered oppressions by analyzing scenes of Asanghadithar against the backdrop of women workers’ collectivization and protests. The third explores female labor in cinema through a case study involving the WCC and Penkoottu as shown in Asanghadithar.Studies of Kerala's labor demographics have considered issues such as wages, conditions at work, state intervention in industrial relations, social development indicators, and economic production (Heller; Kannan, “Kerala Economy” and “Political Economy”). Historical movements such as the 1946 Punnapra-Vayalar uprising and the 1963 Land Reforms Act have paved the way for worker's rights and later unionization in a generally socialist political environment. There have been discussions in the public domain on the safety and security of workers in Kerala both within and outside the region, especially after the migration of Keralites to Gulf regions. Left-leaning politics and the socialist idealism of the state have led to a utopian vision of labor (Afzal). This quixotic view of labor conditions in Kerala is highly illusionary and lopsided, especially when considered from a gendered perspective. The Kerala Model of Development, which was celebrated due to the relatively empowered status of Malayalee women over other Indian women, paved the way to a misleading silence on female laborers’ contributions and general safety. The complex identity of women in Kerala's public sphere remained largely absent from the social discourses (Jeffrey; Biju; Devika, “The ‘Kudumbashree Woman’”). One of the significant anthropological studies on women workers in the cashew industry by Anna Lindberg argues against the erasure of women's role in protesting against exploitative working conditions and collectivization (155). Lindberg found that although women constituted more than 90 percent of the cashew workforce, men participating in demonstrations (who were relatives of the women workers, students, or labor union members) were more readily recognized. By comparison, the women's role was not highlighted unless an unusual display disrupted the society's codes of morality, as when a woman worker in a 1960 Kollam factory protest tore off her blouse to challenge the violent state authorities to stop her. Lindberg's scholarship on the women cashew workers documents the tendency of Kerala society to frame women workers’ public display of protest as unnatural or an anomaly (156). It is against this backdrop of ever-present anxiety about female collectivization and the deliberate removal of public articulation by female laborers that the protests by Penkoottu and their cinematic documentation have gained such significance. Placing the film's representation of Penkoottu within the larger context of female labor complexities, historian J. Devika argues that “Penkoottu . . . allows us to ‘be for’ all those who struggle against the violence of naturalized gender, invisibilized class, and secularized caste in Kerala, and all women who grapple with the pleasures and dangers of entry into the public through governmental routes” (“Longing for the Future”).Asanghadithar can be seen as a cultural product that resembles a visual archive for the 2010 protest by Penkoottu in S. M. Street, Kozhikode, Kerala. Here, Carolyn Steedman's idea of the archive as functional memorabilia that document a particular moment in history provides a useful theoretical background. Steedman's view of archives’ ability to preserve material “about loss, the search for what has been lost, the dream of finding it, and of plenitude” (“Archival Methods” 22) is aptly complemented by an intervention of fiction in Asanghadithar, which bridges the gap between history and the present. The dynamics of archives are such that although they exist as receptacles of what occurred, the process of fictionalizing events creates a relationship between expression and truth to contextualize history. Fictionalizing the past in a documentary mode gives the filmmaker a historical, ethnographic, and creative outlet to represent history, thereby approaching authenticity in representation (Sikand). In a discussion of Payal Kapadia's much-acclaimed political protest documentary film A Night of Knowing Nothing (2021),2 Debashree Mukherjee theorizes the significance of positioning the past as a testament for the future: “Archives for the future are counterhegemonic meta-interventions into the political status quo,” says Hochberg, and these must be crafted through acts of creative intervention and speculation. The past is not a stable place that can be unearthed once and for all but is what Stuart Hall termed a “positioning” to urge new generations to forge ahead. 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S. and have documentary in the of and and they are by are the and of by into the complex between intervention and authenticity in documentary The new moment in ushered in by is as both and the of in in India have an of such as those by the Collective and with the to The of Indian documentary contributes to debates on and on authenticity and Mascillamani's be within this historical context of as it new for both women's labor visible and it as a social Mascillamani's documentary on Penkoottu was through but remained due to this the Freedom Fight and she to the narrative and it a of the the story of Penkoottu and its a larger By fictionalizing Penkoottu's Mascillamani for women workers, the and discussions on female The intervention made by the of Mascillamani to and call to the Penkoottu which otherwise would have remained known to a the of documentary docu-fiction is an experimental of In Asanghadithar, Mascillamani the experimental of historical with semi-fictional and approaching history through a feminist It is the that and Asanghadithar from other labor portrayal of labor it to other labor such as and examines Kerala's socialist politics of the which public protests by the struggles and of labor within a the of a new factory in a in Kerala. narrates the precarious story of a and who for on a In this the existence and the for which is with the in which narrates the struggles of a woman who is as a in and who has to a and she and is to her of labor perspectives on the of Kerala's working their all these on an labor their Asanghadithar from the labor struggles in other through its articulation of the gendered workforce in an portrayal of women's issues in a collectivized the of female workers. discussions on female workers on issues such as and workplace these are social issues that public their representation on a male in to a for the of for women by and commercial social issues and female have the who to women's such as A and The have made a significant in concerns women. they the idea that women to women's on or men generally for female politics a representation of female articulation in working which contributes to the of cinema to the discussions of labor has a history of women's movements and the Indian such as and have with feminist movements to the by both and Indian women. on Indian features a on women's documentary in which she argues that feminist have with documentaries to political way of The complex dynamics of patriarchal with state have for women in include due to during in film a violence in Indian and of women's in film women laborers’ of rights in sectors in in film and and the of in the context of in in by documentaries an visual history to feminist movements in Kunjila Mascillamani's work can be in this of Indian feminist documentary The of Mascillamani's of a and female and how they are in patriarchal and within activist the film's women and in their all of women's and of feminist interventions in documentary is the of The in has docu-fiction to as a for and women's history into the of have the of docu-fiction to and women's protest has as a new to the dynamics of and society, to unorganized sectors. 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Street and the union to the women's issues as labor issues and the as and women, that men are to or The in labor who to be of the struggles between the working class and the are of the of women and their issues within the of the working This a for women, as is in Asanghadithar, which to in the of apathy women as film workers Mascillamani's activist has from WCC who the of Mascillamani at the in in WCC and its such as were the first in the film industry to to Mascillamani the of Asanghadithar from the film Mascillamani and WCC the and the governmental for the of in and for women in a women's film and and WCC the right of women to a safe and gender-based a new political which as and of even though they are with when the of S. M. Street a they that the of the and safe working the from the of as these struggle to even after their the women in Asanghadithar, one on the street the of their the of the or the of Women at and on film production is the for which to and all in the production of represent a for and and WCC in different their unique social They class and work due to the of Penkoottu's have about and cultural to the that its has from the right to a safe to more such as the right to during working and the right to be as workers with WCC has political and to the industry by government and industry to the issues women face in the WCC aims to for the of and focuses on the of women's rights in the industry the in the Penkoottu's the Penkoottu is an of to women's the dynamics of the labor movement and cinema This highlights the of and to women's The between Penkoottu and WCC in their of female which the idea of a The working of both that has for women participating in highly In both women's to or in the case of in Penkoottu, their as a for and women in cinema are to their as the for in a cinematic WCC and Penkoottu's representation in Asanghadithar as historical . . . a of the of and to the into highlights workplace oppressions and women's labor by way of between documentary and It is to place such as Asanghadithar in the larger political context of documentary cinema and feminist especially against the backdrop of Asanghadithar is a political as it to a between social and political that are not about in but with and for those as and that are with the of The within the unorganized and in this challenge the and the the Penkoottu and WCC have been to these and the of women's labor as to labor is the for both Mascillamani, by way of her in the group and her association with the has the gap between unionization in different unorganized the of cinema a public display that a of to the of the labor By and experimental such as these and political how gendered are to by and sectors such as security and even cinema production to its in to a their workers through their precarious which are more for women. the active of Penkoottu and and of Mascillamani, the ideas of labor by questions about women's within of labor the has been an of women's the to ideas of labor for a safe and for is a in women's cinema in the for about women's in and of and public to be in cinema the idea of to a of the of Malayalee by the of labor that women's production and unorganized must its own gendered and to a such as Asanghadithar women into the public discourse of and feminist movements and us how to This work highlights labor concerns and the of the of labor to the of gendered existence in
Ajikumar et al. (Thu,) studied this question.