`Black & White & Sex` a provocative and confronting film: Winter

John Winter says his film seeks to break the stereotype about prostitutes.

Dehradun: Filmmaker John Winter, whose work `Black & White & Sex` is being screened here as a part of the Australian Film Festival of India, says his film seeks to break the stereotype about prostitutes.

"It is a provocative and confronting film about sex and sexuality with a prostitute as its central character," said Winter, who is here to attend a preview of his first directorial venture being screened as a prelude to the main festival. The 56-year-old Australian director took two years to write and eight days to shoot the film about a prostitute portrayed by eight different actresses. It received the prestigious Australian Teachers of Media (ATOM) award in the best experimental film category last week. "The sole reason why I made the film was I wanted to break the stereotype about prostitutes. Even a prostitute is first of all a person and a woman," Winter told reporters. When asked why eight different actresses play the same character in the movie, he said this is because different persons may coexist simultaneously in a person. "The eight actresses represent the different persons who lurk inside the protagonist Angie, if one part of her is calm, the other is ebullient and even wild at times. "I chose different actresses to project the different individuals that may reside within one person," said the filmmaker, adding this had never been attempted before in the history of Australian Cinema. Another innovative part of the film is that though it has a definite storyline, it is largely conveyed through a series of interviews with a man who never appeared on the screen. "He stays behind the camera, never coming before it. He is only heard by the audience asking questions to Angie who replies by narrating her story. The technique has been deliberately adopted because I wanted him to represent the questions that rise in everyone`s mind about a prostitute. "The interviewer`s voice in the film represents everyone. Me, you anybody. This is also part of the larger purpose of breaking the stereotype about prostitutes by answering questions that rise in everyone`s mind about them," Winter said. `Black & White & Sex` premiered at the 2011 Sydney Film Festival. Winter has also produced many successful films including `Paperback Hero` with Hugh Jackman in the lead and `Rabbit-Proof Fence`. PTI