Streetside Romeo

Two boys on a DTC bus begin a tantalising game of eyeball tennis. Typically,the light-eyed,more feminine boy gets hit on by a strapping six-footer. The burly make his move only after a few endearing gazes from the doe-eyed Twinkie. For the uninitiated,a Twinkie is an effeminate boy-man who,in keeping with the cliché,is attracted to “manly men”. Their romance is rudely interrupted when a girl slaps a boy and finally,tragically,a pickpocket proceeds to seduce the Twinkie and makes off with his wallet. Lost and Found ,a short film by Shrenik,a 25-year-old film and video artist in Delhi ,brings light-heartedness to gay issues.

“This kind of an incident is something that happens all the time on city buses and so I decided to make a satire on it,” says Shrenik,who has dropped his surname and prefers to use this unusual short name. Two of his short films,Lost and Found and Hold On ,were screened at the recently concluded Queer Nazariya film festival in Mumbai while a third is in the pipeline and may see a screening at The Humsafar Kashish film festival in Mumbai in June.

Shrenik,whose day job as an ad filmmaker keeps him in touch with his craft,says,“Although I studied mass communication,I learnt most of my filmmaking skills while on the field.”

From artist Jehangir Jani’s Make Ups to Ashish Sawhn’s Happy Hookers,most films on cruising are known to underscore the danger and seamier side of picking up and going to bed with a relative stranger,however Shrenik blithely turns it around. “I wanted the film to remind viewers of the silent era of Charlie Chaplin,which is why I treated the footage to give it a grainy look,toned it in black and white and added jump cuts,” says Shrenik.