Ka Bodyscapes India preview on April 3

The film presents the experienceof women humiliated over questions of morality

In late 2014, a controversy erupted in the State over the question of ‘purity’ in democratic public spaces after young media person S. Naseera was refused entry on board a Sabarimala-bound KSRTC bus on grounds of being in the menstruating age group.

Those who objected to her boarding the bus ferrying pilgrims had no qualms about allowing her mother-in-law, a postmenopausal woman, and her infant and toddler children as co-passengers.

“Over the past few years, several women in Kerala have been humiliated, even manhandled, in public over questions of morality and purity. The combined experience of them all is what we are trying to bring through Ziya, the character played by Naseera, in my film,

Ka Bodyscapes ,” says Jayan Cherian, the US-based film-maker who debuted with

Papilio Buddha , which was noted for its stark depiction of the land rights struggle of a socially-deprived people.

Ka Bodyscapes , first screened to wide acclaim at the British Film Institute Flare LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) Film Festival last week, will have its maiden India preview at Crown theatre, Kozhikode, on April 3. A few more screenings before invited audiences are lined up in the first fortnight of April in Ernakulam and Thrissur, even as the makers are trying to release the film after obtaining CBFC certification. The certifying agency had ridden the roughshod over Papilio Buddha over questions of “objectionable content”, but the makers had the last laugh at the end of a protracted battle.

Sabre-rattling by extreme right wing forces over some online posters of Ka Bodyscapes brought the focus late last year on the contemporary issues of individual freedom, civil liberties and sexual choices highlighted in the film. “Of late, public debate in Kerala has been around ‘human body’, as evident from the several struggles that sought to protest attempts on the part of dominant forces to ‘appropriate and own’ it. Sexuality has clearly become a human rights issue, and the film is set in this backdrop. When you talk about the politics of body, it transcends homosexual love – the core theme of the film – and encompasses issues faced by several marginalised groups including women. That way, it is also a fight against fascism,” reasons Mr. Cherian.

As in

Papilio …, the director has cast several social activists including Jolly Chirayath, B. Arundhathi, Seethalshyam and Nalini Jameela alongside professional actors like Harish Peradi and Nilambur Ayisha and theatre personality Jayaprakash Kulur in the film.

T.P. ‘Kannan’ Rajesh, head trainer at an international gymnasium chain, says his ‘physique’ has been used by the director to narrate a love story.