Sex and sleaze makes the best recipe for media. May be that's why it's a relief when you encounter real people asserting their right to gender and sexuality. That Sunday evening could not have been spent in a better way than at the Habitat Centre.A short film festival by the YP Foundation threw open a new sky of possiblities- of sheer grit and of really unreal dreams.
Life of a photographer chronicalling Indian gays lied close to underbelly of male sexual workers and their desire to be accepted. Yet another film had Miranda House girls sharing visions on same sex relations and intricacies of anything male.
'My Identity' tries to unravel just that- intricacies of men having sex with men (MSM) who crossdress for commercial sex. Talking about their natural tendency to love a male body, the film asserts their wish to have families and gain social acceptance. It also serves a volley to the entertainment industry for projecting homosexuals as an object of ridicule. "Most television programmes or films lampoon same sex relations. Some of us may behave like the way they show, but that's nothing to joke about. It's as natural for us to fall for a man as it is for straight men to fall for a woman. What's the big deal in that," asks Manoj, an MSM who helped Mukta Foundation produce the film.
Taking the thought further, 'Flying Inside My Body', a film by former Jamia University students, takes a different trajectory. It chronicles the life and thoughts of 53-year-old photographer Sunil Gupta in first person. The film goes back and forth into Gupta's life.
So we walk through his images of homosexual Indian couples clicked in 1980s to challenge the notion that same-sex tendencies exist only elsewhere- off the Indian shores. The effort was obviously to debunk the theories which remain as strong today as ever. A remark summarises his effort. "I had to emphasise that they are embedded within families. Outside world thinks they have to be feminine, perverts or pedophiles. I found nobody had photographed same-sex relations here making them a missing piece of history. India is quite a tricky place to be gay and being Indian. That is what motivated to take up the project," he says.
The film goes on to detail Gupta’s own struggle to assert his sexual preferences on his parents and friends who believed he has to be straight. Fighting HIV in latter part of the film, he again decides to break free of the victim tag associated with those living with HIV and that he does by being open about his status even with strangers.
Before the film ends, the protagonist has another point to make- that he can be old, sick but still desirable. This he does by posing nude. Here, however, the out-of-focus images give away the flimmakers' prejudices. They confess the same. "We wanted the movie to be more acceptable. The nude images could have put many a people at unease," says Sushmit Ghosh, one of the filmmakers. The sequence in a way does injustice to Gupta’s defying spirit.
Spirits flow high at Miranda House too as three students decide to get their hostel mates candid on their bodies and sexual preferences. No morphed faces, no fake names, which is why ‘Female Gaze’ seems so refreshing.
When girls start talking about physical abuse in public transport, they also point out their compulsions of wearing restrictive clothes. The film gets lighter as it muses about the not-so-secret but yet hushed up pleasures of people fiddling with their bodies.
Girls get chatty about sexual preferences with some pointing out being more comfortable with a woman. Male intricacies, they say, are difficult to predict. We can’t disagree. The film ends with a hostel party as the camera catches girls in slow motion seemingly out of any societal rules. It’s a different world in there, the film shows.
Life of a photographer chronicalling Indian gays lied close to underbelly of male sexual workers and their desire to be accepted. Yet another film had Miranda House girls sharing visions on same sex relations and intricacies of anything male.
'My Identity' tries to unravel just that- intricacies of men having sex with men (MSM) who crossdress for commercial sex. Talking about their natural tendency to love a male body, the film asserts their wish to have families and gain social acceptance. It also serves a volley to the entertainment industry for projecting homosexuals as an object of ridicule. "Most television programmes or films lampoon same sex relations. Some of us may behave like the way they show, but that's nothing to joke about. It's as natural for us to fall for a man as it is for straight men to fall for a woman. What's the big deal in that," asks Manoj, an MSM who helped Mukta Foundation produce the film.
Taking the thought further, 'Flying Inside My Body', a film by former Jamia University students, takes a different trajectory. It chronicles the life and thoughts of 53-year-old photographer Sunil Gupta in first person. The film goes back and forth into Gupta's life.
So we walk through his images of homosexual Indian couples clicked in 1980s to challenge the notion that same-sex tendencies exist only elsewhere- off the Indian shores. The effort was obviously to debunk the theories which remain as strong today as ever. A remark summarises his effort. "I had to emphasise that they are embedded within families. Outside world thinks they have to be feminine, perverts or pedophiles. I found nobody had photographed same-sex relations here making them a missing piece of history. India is quite a tricky place to be gay and being Indian. That is what motivated to take up the project," he says.
The film goes on to detail Gupta’s own struggle to assert his sexual preferences on his parents and friends who believed he has to be straight. Fighting HIV in latter part of the film, he again decides to break free of the victim tag associated with those living with HIV and that he does by being open about his status even with strangers.
Before the film ends, the protagonist has another point to make- that he can be old, sick but still desirable. This he does by posing nude. Here, however, the out-of-focus images give away the flimmakers' prejudices. They confess the same. "We wanted the movie to be more acceptable. The nude images could have put many a people at unease," says Sushmit Ghosh, one of the filmmakers. The sequence in a way does injustice to Gupta’s defying spirit.
Spirits flow high at Miranda House too as three students decide to get their hostel mates candid on their bodies and sexual preferences. No morphed faces, no fake names, which is why ‘Female Gaze’ seems so refreshing.
When girls start talking about physical abuse in public transport, they also point out their compulsions of wearing restrictive clothes. The film gets lighter as it muses about the not-so-secret but yet hushed up pleasures of people fiddling with their bodies.
Girls get chatty about sexual preferences with some pointing out being more comfortable with a woman. Male intricacies, they say, are difficult to predict. We can’t disagree. The film ends with a hostel party as the camera catches girls in slow motion seemingly out of any societal rules. It’s a different world in there, the film shows.
We wonder why it ceases to be that out here.
Note- The pic above is the famous "Liberty Loves Justice" pose. It's symbolic in several ways.
