Sridevi and Madhuri Dixit within the 90s outlined queer.

As somebody not too long ago advised me, the most effective definition of being queer is ‘if you could be your absolute genuine self with out having to suit the prescribed morals of society’. Numerous the cinema of the 90s noticed girls celebrating their our bodies and their sexuality, with out ever gifting away their company. Madhuri and Sridevi have been the closest I got here to seeing want being celebrated.

Sridevi in Mr. India

I’m at all times requested the query: ‘Is your subsequent story a queer story?’ I really feel it’s an unfair and unimaginative query. It may be a cishet (cisgender heterosexual) love story and nonetheless be a queer movie as a result of I have a look at life, want and relationships outdoors of society’s binaries.

The minute you attempt to field individuals, you’re doing them a disservice. The reductionist label undermines my different identities — I’m additionally a Bengali filmmaker, a Mumbai-based filmmaker. I’ve made Nayantara’s Necklace, which is about two girls bonding over many idle afternoons and speaking about their want for the boys of their lives. It’s the politics of want, whether or not queer or straight, that pursuits me probably the most.

Konkona Sen and Tillotama Shome in Nayantara’s Necklace

Realities of a hyper-capitalist world

I hate the phrase ‘illustration’ as a result of it reeks of charity. It means that in a largely straight world just a few stray mentions ought to be sufficient to acknowledge our existence. You see a whole lot of token queer characters in mainstream exhibits and movies immediately. However present after present, they both die ultimately, or they kill individuals, or are simply comedian tropes. It has lowered us to victims, villains or clowns. It’s symptomatic of the truth that these filmmakers see us because the ‘different’.

I bear in mind watching a present final yr, on the finish of which a homosexual man kills his lover after which dies instantly after. That sensational finish was celebrated by critics. The viewers, nonetheless, realized nothing concerning the couple — not their ache, their loneliness, and even what drove them to the act, besides that ‘the world is merciless to them’. The gays got here in simply to fill a plot gap in a cishet narrative.

Filmmaker Jaydeep Sarkar

Lots of people could really feel that the illustration field has been ticked with these roles, however who has it really helped? It’s not going to assist a queer one who is hoping to seek out the power to return out.

What’s lacking in our exhibits is queer pleasure. Humour and subversion are a lot part of our historical past and our lives, and it’s hardly made it to our cinema. I really feel we have to inform lighter, extra optimistic tales of queer love. This was the primary motive why I wished to make Rainbow Rishta (Amazon Prime Video). Predictably, one assessment of the present acknowledged it’s ‘not deep sufficient… certainly their lives can’t be that simple!” I used to be amused at how the critic couldn’t fathom a queer life that wasn’t unhappy. The assessment was candy triumph for what I got down to do: break the trauma narrative round queer folx.

What I’m actually focused on is learn how to promote queer tales. We dwell in a hyper-capitalist world and queer movies will get made provided that they get viewers. I’m wondering when an Indian trans actor will likely be celebrated on a worldwide stage, like Karla Sofía Gascón, who gained the Cannes Finest Actress award for Emily Perez.

Karla Sofía Gascón in Emily Perez

There may be some nice unbiased queer cinema being made, however when will mainstream Hindi cinema have its personal Kaathal, backed by an enormous star like Mammootty — a movie that takes you near the queer expertise with empathy and style. Or Tremendous Deluxe, the place Vijay Sethupathi performed a trans girl. We urgently want this churning, to inform queer tales confidently and at par with different mainstream cinema, and promote tickets and provoke conversations in residing rooms.

Vijay Sethupathi in Tremendous Deluxe

We’d like extra tales from small cities

After I made Rainbow Rishta, I used to be very clear that I wished it to be various — not solely when it comes to orientation and gender, but additionally geography. So, I appeared for tales in small cities. What I found there was very ironic; small city India is much extra progressive than metropolitan India.

I’ve encountered much more queerphobia in Bandra than I did in Daniella Mendonca’s Bhayandar. The suburb is stuffed with small-scale industries run out of individuals’s properties. In a neighbourhood the place individuals dwell arduous lives, each little pleasure is treasured. So when Daniella, a transwoman, determined to marry Joel, a cishet man, all of Bhayandar got here out to have a good time. Morality stays the bane of the center class.

Daniella Mendonca in a nonetheless from Rainbow Rishta

I’ve skilled this in my very own life, too. I had by no means allowed myself to dream of a sasural, of the sort I had seen within the motion pictures of Sooraj Barjatya, rising up. However then I met my companion, and later his household primarily based in Jamshedpur. My mother-in-law is my function mannequin. I’ve seen her stroll into rooms and shatter each prejudice together with her assured assist and love. I’ve seen individuals really feel diminished by their very own biases, once they encounter somebody as empathetic as her.

Are we on the fitting path?

Quantitatively, there are extra homosexual characters on display now. Whereas they don’t seem to be being ridiculed, they’re undoubtedly being patronised and stereotyped. We’re nowhere near the place we ought to be. Nonetheless, I really feel it’s all a continuum, and we’re taking the fitting turns.

The campy movies have occurred, the trauma plots have occurred, now queer pleasure should are available in. We have to be extra irreverent, fearless, and cheeky to make queer cinema that can have an effect.

The author is a Mumbai-based filmmaker.

As advised to Surya Praphulla Kumar