Bangladeshi movie ‘Under Construction’ reinterprets Tagore for today’s times: Director Rubaiyat Hossain relocates the play ‘Red Oleanders’ to the readymade garment industry.

Akshaya Pillai / Scroll.in

“We rarely get films from Bangladesh, much less directed by a woman, much less with a secular feminist sensibility. Hossain’s Under Construction is all of these. It’s the story of a stage actress in her thirties unhappy in marriage and also with the roles she is assigned to play in the theatre. Her private dissatisfactions are set against Bangladash’s far more dire public ills: exploited factory workers, boiling-over Islamic fundamentalism. Hossain makes the daring decision — many would say, blasphemous — to allow the female protagonist to have an adulterous affair and get away with it. In fact, she does not feel guilty at all when she returns to her smug businessman husband.”

— Gerald PEARY (The Art Fuse)

“The domestically controversial director Rubaiyat Hossain continues to explore the norms and values in Bangladesh society. This time the actress Roya, who inspired her character Nandini, tries to deconstruct and reinvent herself as a middle-class woman and conquer her sexuality.”

— Stockholm Film Festival

WINNER !!

Under Construction wins the Golden Durian Prize for best feature at Salamindanaw International Film Festival. The jury cited the film “for reinvigorating ‘the woman question’ implanted in Dhaka, Bangladesh’s globalized contemporary imaginary.”

Upcoming Screenings

World Premiere on June 06, 2015 at Seattle IFF

director of photography Martina RADWAN editing & sound design Sujan MAHMUD music Shayan Chowdhury ARNOB production design Rubaiyat Hossain produced by Khoan Talkies

SYNOPSIS

Under Construction is about a modern Muslim woman struggling to find herself in the sprawl of urban Bangladesh, where middle class actress Roya reconstructs a famous and politically minded play of Rabindranath Tagore for modern times, reclaiming her agency in the process.

STILLS

Director’s Statement:

In claiming her body-mind-soul how does a woman’s introspective journey gets entangled with the battle on the outside in a world of post-colonial reality where political violence, religious extremism, sweatshop labors, and impunity largely paint the terrain?

‘Womanhood’ authored by patriarchy sustains a power-pleasure-desire lattice by generating, sustaining and reproducing cultural myths about female sexuality. ‘Womanhood’ authored by women, female sexuality comprehended and utilized for the purpose of woman’s subject formation is still largely a process ‘under construction.’

In ‘Under Construction,’ a woman who has not yet been born into subjectivity seeks to unsettle the iconic image of the archetypical Bengali woman—‘Nandini,’ the ultimate depiction of feminine spirit represented as the heroine of Rabindranath Tagore’s last play ‘Rakta Karabi’ or ‘The Red Oleanders.’

TV Interview:

Rubaiyat Hossain’s interview with PBS station in Seattle

Radio Interview:

NEWS & REVIEW

The Arts Fuse/ Gerald PEARY

montreal157:FFM : En voie de construction

The Statesman features Under Construction:

The Daily Star: Two Bangladeshi films at Montreal International Film Festival
Review/Interview: The womanhood in changing Bangladesh – The Straits Times

Dhaka Tribune:Under Construction to open at SIFF

Dhaka Tribune:Female Director, Female Gaze

Dear Cinema:NFDC Film Bazaar: Under Construction by Rubaiyat Hossain