: India’s First Intimacy Coordinator From Mumbai Is Making ‘On-screen Chemistry’ Safer #IndiaNEWS #Cinema In 2018, India’s social climate experienced a transformation like no other. A clarion

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India’s First Intimacy Coordinator From Mumbai Is Making ‘On-screen Chemistry’ Safer #IndiaNEWS #Cinema
In 2018, India’s social climate experienced a transformation like no other. A clarion call for sexual violence survivors, the #MeToo movement allowed thousands of people to share their accounts of trauma that were once silenced or shared only with a few in confidence.
What was once simmering behind closed doors had now erupted into a worldwide movement that came into prominence in India after a Bollywood actress leveled allegations against a co-star. A single woman’s story became a phenomenon threatening to bring down powerful individuals across the country.
But what after that?
Mumbai-based Aastha Khanna points out the fault in the system that never let the movement meet its true potential.
“In India, the #MeToo movement was as big as any other place. It rocked the entire nation, and yet three years later, we are not very different from what we used to be. With time, the conversations around it died down and the media moved on to the next big thing. Unlike the West, which worked toward finding a solution, at least in the film space, we did not do much. The job of an Intimacy Coordinator (IC), for instance, came into existence in the wake of this movement as people there realised that performers were being put in vulnerable positions. But in India, things did not play out the way it should have,� says Aastha who has been working as an IC in films and web series for the past nine months. Before her, India did not have any certified IC working towards making the visual medium safe for performers.
Speaking to The Better India she highlights different facets of her job role and the urgent need for us as a society to undergo a transformation.
‘It’s Not Just About The Sex’
During early 2020, Aastha was working as an assistant director (AD) in filmmaker Shakun Batra’s upcoming movie, when on the director’s insistence she happened to discover the role of an IC. After searching relentlessly to hire an IC in India, she realised that the role was nonexistent in the country and thus began her journey to fill a gaping void in the film and television industry.
“We were about to shoot a few scenes of intimacy and so the director asked me to do the requisite research. I tried looking for people to hire who could be experts in this but found none in this field. Then, the director sent me an article on Amanda Blumenthal who had worked on the drama Euphoria. That is when I reached out to her and began to get her help to design exercises and intimacy workshops. Under her guidance, we ended up making a team of three people — me as an IC, an intimacy coach and a director of intimacy, for the film,� she shares.

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