INDIAN PANOROMA AT KASHISH 2014
KASHISH Mumbai International Queer Film Festival 2014 – South Asia’s and India’s biggest LGBT film festival – will screen 28 Indian films this year which is the highest count ever for Indian films being screened at KASHISH. Around 154 films from 31 countries will be screened at the festival. These include shorts and features in both narrative and documentary categories.
28 Indian films in Marathi, Bengali, English, Hindi, and Gujarati to be screened at KASHISH 2014
KASHISH Mumbai International Queer Film Festival 2014 – South Asia’s and India’s biggest LGBT film festival – will screen 28 Indian films this year which is the highest count ever for Indian films being screened at KASHISH. Around 154 films from 31 countries will be screened at the festival. These include shorts and features in both narrative and documentary categories.
Many of the Indian filmmakers are showing their films for the first time at KASHISH, including the National Award winner Marathi director Ravi Jadhav, whose short Marathi film Mitraa, based on Vijay Tendulkar”s play Mitrachi Goshta, will be screened on Saturday, May 24, 4.45 pm at Liberty Cinema in a short films package ”Indian Showcase”.
The package also includes films by Ipshita Maitra again a first timer at KASHISH and returning filmmaker, Pradipta Ray who was the winner of prestigious Riyad Wadia Award for Emerging Indian Filmmaker at KASHISH 2012. Pradipta”s short Bengali film Eidi (The Gift) effortlessly displays the complexities of bonds and friendship among the queer community.
Ravi Jadhav’s Mitraa tells the story of a lesbian protagonist in the newly independent India in 1947, while Ipshita”s Between Dreams and Waking has its lesbian lead-pair living in the contemporary India. This interestingly gives a comparative glimpses about the situation of Indian lesbians in two different eras.
Another interesting Indian short film, again by a returning filmmaker Avinash Matta from Hyderabad, is Kyonki… (Because…) where the protagonist realizes the importance of Pride March by drawing parallels with Gandhi”s historic Dandi March. This film gives out a strong message of solidarity to the queer community in a simple way.
The festival is also screening Sanjoy Nag”s Memories in March as a homage to late writer, actor and filmmaker Rituparno Ghosh who passed away in May 2013. Ghosh”s Chitrangada was the Closing Night Film at KASHISH 2013.
Ritesh Sharma”s Rainbows are Real, about three transgenders in Kolkata, a Delhi based feminist organization Nirantar”s Bioscope: Non-Binary Conversations of Gender and Education that follows 4 trans* people who recount their own stories of silence, violence, oppression, resistance and survival in the Indian education system and Sridhar Rangayan”s Purple Skies an unflinching look at the lesser known and often misunderstood terrain of Indian LBT community.
