Its eight edition having just been wrapped up, Kashish, India’s premier international queer film festival, appears to be moving from strength to strength if the milling crowds at Marine Lines’ exquisite art-deco theatre, Liberty Cinema, was anything to go by. Behind the frisson and the atmosphere, it’s still a festival grappling with funds, logistics and the deficits of execution, but the sheer dint of will and the support of the queer community manages to shore it up each time. They leave rejuvenated, even chastened, by the opulence of human experiences offered up by those who purportedly occupy society’s fringes.
Platform for dialogue
Cinema is of the essence, but Kashish also provides space for interjections and intercessions, never complaisant about a status quo that is still so disquieting in India. At the opening, when the British Council celebrated 50 years of their country’s unshackling from sodomy laws in 1967, compere Sushant Divgikar, in fetching drag, sassily reminded us of Section 377, the Victorian legacy that’s still a millstone around our collective neck. When the Inuk LGBTQIA+ activist Mona Belleau, a wonderful ambassador of her people, introduced the Canadian documentary, Two Soft Things, Two Hard Things , she catalogued, with great equanimity, the historic wrongs committed in order to integrate Inuk populations into Canada, almost extracting an apology from the Canadian consulate.
Then, there was Swara Bhaskar’s impassioned defense of intersectionality at the closing event. Once shunned by celebrities, queer platforms are now increasingly de rigueur, thanks in part to the efforts by festivals like Kashish in bringing queer discourse into the mainstream. This reliance on celebrity endorsement can lead to awkward moments like when a stand-up routine by Navin Noronha and Nick Pillow was ignominiously interrupted for a few minutes to allow chief guest Arjun Kapoor to make a royal entrance (not a first for the festival). Although Kapoor was gracious enough to apologise when he took the stage, Pillow’s half-nervous exclamation, “I have forgotten my lines,” became the evening’s running gag, invoked by each speech-maker overawed by the momentous sense of occasion that Kashish appears to deliver without fail.
Spanning the globe
The international cinema showcased took us on kaleidoscopic journeys across the globe in the span of just a few days, peppered with piquant cultural references so easily identifiable to queer audiences that they could only chuckle with sheer delight at recognising what is very often obscured by the mainstream. In Two Soft Things, Two Hard Things , we were given breathtaking access to a remote Arctic community in Nunavut. In Apricot Groves , a transman, Aram, takes a road-trip to Armenia to forge connections with his girlfriend’s family. Narbe Vartan (as Aram), in his very being, provided a haunting sense of a masculinity that is intrinsic, and one that must be worn. In Play The Devil , the rough-hewn world of working-class tenements collides with the bourgeois trappings of silk-stockinged enterprise, as lovers across the divide negotiate an inherently exploitative turf. The film’s young lead Petrice Jones picked up the award for the best performance (male, female or transgender) at the festival. It was also a pleasure to catch the 1985 British classic, My Beautiful Laundrette , blown up on big screen, with Hanif Kureishi’s writing still powerful and resonant in an increasingly partisan social climate that thrives on polarities.
Familiar characters
In a festival that many have come to regard as their own, we often encountered cinematic portraits of real-life people who belong to the community. The ‘talking head’ documentary is now an easy cliché, but queer subjects still present an intriguing mix of conflict and uplift. Ashish Sawhney’s Coming Out - India Stories provided us several intrepid characters including activist Gautam Yadav, who was diagnosed with HIV at just 18, but has since become a veritable beacon of hope. His working-class family is depicted as a model of acceptance. There is Naveen Kharmawphlang of Shillong, who brings his engrossing world-view to It’s Okay to be Gay , a film that cannot bring itself to cut off its subject mid-sentence, as reflected by its editing choices or lack thereof. Again, Sawhney gives us an insight into the world of hairstylist Justine Rae Mellocastro, who represents the brave new generation.
Loveable gaffes
At the closing gala, after one too many untoward incidents that we have grown to expect at Kashish, Rohini Ramanathan, master of ceremonies, affectionately uttered, “This stage can be the mother of all f***-ups.” The trailer launch of Onir’s new film, Shab , met with spectacular fail, and debutant Ashish Bisht’s sculpted body remained freeze-framed on the screen, to fawning cat-calls. When Dolly Thakore opened an envelope to announce an award, she looked up to see if the slide hadn’t already been projected, a customary gaffe. Ramanathan has grown with the festival. At her earliest outings her humour didn’t always register, but now, no more an outsider, her missives land with authority and grace. In a chaotic evening, the closing screening of Sudhanshu Saria’s Loev was pushed to Dracula hour, a pity because this was a film with the requisite buzz to pack the venue to the rafters.
It took a musical performance by Sona Mahapatra to finally demonstrate what makes the festival really special. She roused the audience off their seats, with her infectious numbers and diva-esque theatrics. When she interrupted the jamboree-like atmosphere with a lilting classical interlude, accompanied by a kathak set-piece by Sanjukta Wagh, there was pin-drop silence in the hall. More than any other kind of audience, this was a bunch prone to receive anything convivial that came their way with wholehearted sincerity. Perhaps, it spoke of the effect a truly inclusive space can have on a generation that flaunts its expressions of identity much more openly than ever before, and bears the brunt of that. Outside this happy hunting ground, the world remains unremittingly bleak but just for being a soothing salve on even the most embittered of psyches, Kashish has certainly earned its place in the world.
