Construction of Women in the Liberation War Films of Bangladesh

The focus of this paper is to understand the construction of women in the war films of Bangladesh. Analysed here are 26 full length and seven short feature films made on the Liberation War of Bangladesh (muktizuddho), the war through which Bangladesh became independent from Pakistan in 1971. The theoretical framework combined theories of representation, semiotics and feminist film. Results showed that though women had multifaceted roles in the war, like worldwide war frames, the films of Bangladesh were no exception to represent women as passive rape victims and to commercialise rape. They were never represented as freedom fighters. Whatever their roles in the films, had any woman been raped, she either had to die, become insane, or become invisible; she had never been represented as a normal human being. As the years passed by, war films of Bangladesh shows a gradual decline in the active participation of women in the war. Further interpretation has been made why such treatment was given to the women characters in the war films of Bangladesh in the light of critical theory.