I remember back in 1998, when, as a post-grad student of Social Communications and Media at Sophia’s Polytech in Mumbai, a few of us were shoved into a police truck and driven down to the police station because we were outside the New Excelsior theatre protesting the vandalisation of Deepa Mehta’s Fire by Right Wing groups. We were young, hot blooded and very excited by the first-ever film (starring Shabana Azmi and Nandita Das) addressing issues of marginalised sexuality and ‘choice’ being screened publicly at a theatre. Getting arrested at the time was a mark of ‘Pride’ rather than shame.
Cut to 2020. This time the villain is Covid-19. As a result of the pandemic, Pride has been postponed to 2021 because large crowds cannot officially gather. The queer community, unlike the fearless farmers who are camped on the borders of Delhi, have decided not to take the ‘risk’. However, once again, cinema unites us. And once again it is a Deepa Mehta film, Funny Boy , that brings the community together.
The I-View World Film Festival, organised and hosted by Engendered, the trans-national arts and human rights organisation, marks International Human Rights Day (December 10). It has partnered with Hybrid Film Festival in New York, to showcase 50 shorts, documentaries and feature films from South Asia, Canada, Britain, Italy, Sweden, Netherlands, Argentina, Australia, Turkey/Syria, Iran and Thailand. The 10-day festival will have Covid-conscious screenings and a socially-distant red carpet at the DLF Cyber-Hub in Gurugram, with a panel discussion around Deepa Mehta’s film (and Canada’s official entry for the 2021 Academy Awards). It can also be viewed virtually on the Plexigo app.
A shared crisis
“For me, Funny Boy is a quintessentially Canadian story and could have only been written by a Sri Lankan who had emigrated to Canada,” says Mehta. The film is an adaptation of Shyam Selvadurai’s award-winning book of the same title and deals with issues of love, war, conflict and sexuality, set against the backdrop of Tamil oppression and resistance in the island country.
Mehta’s work in cinema, whether it is her ’90s trilogy Fire , Earth and Water , or her 2009 Midnight’s Children , has always challenged traditions and stereotypes, and is daring, fearless and provocative. “The objectivity that Canada provides, through which we can look at our respective homelands, is, I think, this country’s greatest gift. It is what I hope will give us a global understanding of the nature of the ‘Other’,” adds the filmmaker. Funny Boy is the story of Arjie, who is exploring his sexuality and comes of age at a time when homosexuality was still illegal in Sri Lanka.
“The one thing that these extraordinary times have brought is a sense of shared crisis across humanity, and, while these times are challenging, there are all kinds of new possibilities that have emerged,” says Myna Mukherjee, founder and director of Engendered. “We are able to reach out across the globe through these films, which are the perfect gateway to open up universal conversations around identity and marginalities, gender and sexuality, climate change, class and caste, oppression and migration. By utilising the cinematic lens, we aim to create global awareness of issues that have become heightened in the midst of a global pandemic,” she adds.
A still from ‘Brief Story From The Green Planet’
On the watchlist
This year, Engendered has joined forces with NYC South Asian Film Festival (NYC SAFF), produced by Jingo Media, to alternate its human rights programming between New Delhi and New York City biannually. “We are joining forces to increase our global reach by curating world-class content that will question the representation of the ‘other’ and help find their place in our politically and socially-divisive cultures,” says Jitin Hingorani, founder and festival director of NYC SAFF.
The other interesting films on gender and sexuality include Faraz Arif Ansari’s Sheer Qorma. Starring Shabana Azmi, Divya Dutta and Swara Bhaskar, it revolves around a woman and a non-binary person who are in love. Then there’s Sweden’s critically-acclaimed, And Then We Danced , by Levan Akin, a passionate tale of male dancers set amidst the conservative confines of modern Georgian society. And Brief Story From The Green Planet , the Teddy Award-winner for Best LGBTQ film at the Berlin Film Festival.
The centre-piece programming is director Nathan Grossman’s critically-acclaimed documentary, I Am Greta , an extraordinary journey of a teenage climate change activist on her international crusade to get the world’s attention focussed on environmental issues.
The closing night feature is Pakistan’s official entry to the Oscars, Sarmad Khoosat’s family drama Zindagi Tamasha (Circus of Life), about a patriarch whose single act of self-expression wreaks havoc on the lives of his immediate family in Lahore.
The I-View World Film Festival is on till December 20. Watch the films on plexigo.com.
Published - December 10, 2020 11:23 am IST
