A Small Film Festival With A Very Big Heart

Feature, By Christian Taylor, 5th August, 2008

The inaugural South Asian Queer Film Festival opens this weekend and lovers of queer film are sure to find something to whet their appetite. The festival runs over three days and explores everything from love, lust and drag to homophobia, isolation and racism. It’s a small festival with a big heart.

The philosophy behind the event is simple – to galvanise and increase the visibility of the queer South Asian community in Australia, and also to send a message to South Asian countries, like India and Bangladesh, where an individual’s choice of being in a same-sex relationship is still seen as a crime. The festival also coincides with India’s 61st Independence Day.

“The aim of the festival is visibility, voice, vision,” says festival director Sadhana Jethanandani. “We want to increase visibility of the South Asian queer community in Australia. Voice their emotions and express their feeling through films about and made in South Asian countries. And ultimately become part of the global vision of providing equal rights to the South Asian LGBQT community.”

The festival will be opened by SBS journalist Anton Enus, who was a founding member of South Africa’s gay and lesbian sports movement in the early eighties, and who has also made contributions to reconciling Johannesburg’s multicultural gay and lesbian communities.

The festival kicks off drinks, followed by the Australian premiere of Yours Emotionally. Made in 2006, the film tells the story of two UK-born boys, Ravi and Paul, who visit India for a holiday and witness an all night gay sex party. The boys throw themselves into the steadily growing Indian gay culture, with Ravi falling for the good-looking but deeply closeted Mani. Will their relationship be able to overcome caste, economics and customs?

In Sancharam (The Journey), two girls grow up in rural India and discover, as they mature, that they have feelings for each other. But when their families find out about their affair, things take a very difficult turn. In Miland Soman Made Me Gay four South Asian gay men are living in Washington DC are explored – one Hindu, one Muslim, one Christian and one Sikh – each with their own sexual, cultural and religious struggles.

The Bollywood-esque comedy Gulabi Aaina (The Pink Mirror) explores India’s world of drag and the families Indian drag queens form, against the backdrop of HIV and its impact on the world around them. The filmmakers say that this is India’s first film about drag queens.

The festival closes with the controversial film My Brother Nikhil, India’s first mainstream film featuring a gay lead character. Set in the late eighties, early nineties, it tells the story of a gay swimming champion who is arrested when it’s discovered that he is HIV positive. Forced into isolation by the law, he is deserted by just about everyone he knows, apart from his sister and boyfriend. The film deals with the trauma of this man and his fight for dignity. A reviewer from AfterElton called it one of the finest gay/AIDS-themed films he’d ever seen.

The festival has been put together by Trikone AustralAsia, a registered non-profit organisation, which was set up last year to offer a supportive, empowering and non-judgemental environment where queer South Asians can meet, make connections and proudly promote awareness and acceptance of their sexuality in society.

Gulmohar: South Asian Queer Film Festival 2008 runs from August 15 to 17 at the Metropolitan Community Church, 96 Crystal Street, Petersham, just down the road from the Clarence Hotel. For more information on the festival, and to book tickets, click here.

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