Rainbow Screen

“The festival is an idea whose time has come. From the beginning,we wanted to host it at a mainstream venue and draw regular crowd. We should be able to do that since the entry is free,” says Sridhar Rangayan,founder of Solaris Pictures and co-organiser of the festival. Agrees co-organiser Vivek Anand,CEO of Humsafar Trust. “We don’t want to remain invisible. People should talk about gay people in a normal way. This festival is a step towards that,” he says.

Rangayan,who calls himself a “queer filmmaker”,has been taking his films to various international festivals for years now. This experience had set him thinking about an international queer film festival in Mumbai. Last September,encouraged by the Delhi High Court verdict that decriminalised homosexuality,he,along with Humsafar Trust and Bombay Dost,got down to organising the festival which will screen films from 25 countries. Interestingly,the city had played host to another such festival—Queer Nazariya at Bandra’s National College auditorium—barely three weeks ago.

“Kashish aims to go beyond the likes of Dostana and the caricature of gay people,” says Nitin Karani of Bombay Dost. Contradicting the common perception,Rangayan says that the films at Kashish address the mainstream queer issues. “They are not just about sex or sexuality,they are about emotions and life,” he adds.

The films for the festival have been picked carefully by five screening committees. “We had received 160 entries. We picked the films keeping the Indian sensibility as well as quality in mind,” says Anand. In fact,Rangayan reveals that at the opening ceremony they will make an announcement saying that “the visitors are free to walk out if they are not comfortable with what’s being shown in the auditorium”.

The festival nurtures multiple aims—to encourage mainstream as well as LGBT filmmakers to explore these subjects; to create more platforms for the screening of these films; and to sensitise more and more people about the queer issues. Filmmaker Onir,who will attend the opening with the cast of his upcoming film I Am,says,“Hosting the festival at a public venue like PVR is a big step. This will help bring good queer cinema to the city.” A festival of this kind,says Onir,helps the growth of a filmmaker just as exposure to French or Iranian cinema does. He,however,is not very optimistic that the stereotypical portrayal of the gay community in mainstream cinema will change anytime soon.

However,according to Anand,the silver lining is that the Hindi film industry is gradually getting interested in the world of queers. The proof lies in forthcoming releases — I Am and Kapil Sharma’s Dunno Y… Na Jaane Kyun,which is also Kashish’s closing film.

TOP PICKS
* Patrik 1.5 (Sweden): The festival’s opening films has Goran and Sven adopt a 15-year-old homophobe with a criminal past. At PVR,Juhu,on Thursday at 9.15 pm
* Amnesia: The James Brighton Enigma (Canada): An American man wakes up in Montréal,bereft of all memory,except one—that he is gay. At Alliance Française on April 23 at 2.30 pm
* Ghosted (Germany): An artist travels from Hamburg to Taipei to come to terms with the death of her Taiwanese lover. At Alliance Française on Thursday at 4.15pm
* Holding Hands (Australia): In this true story,Craig and Shane were holding hands when they fell victims to a brutal hate crime off Oxford Street. At PVR,Juhu,on Thursday at 12 noon
* Oh Happy Day (UK): It’s a comic romp through London’s white collar boardrooms and bedrooms. At PVR,Juhu,on Sunday at 2 pm
* Westler – East Of The Wall (Germany): Lured into visiting East Berlin in 1985,West Berliner Felix falls in love with the East Berliner Thomas. At Alliance Française on Saturday at 6.15 pm