India Gay Film Festival heralds change

Being gay and living in India is not only a challenge for its residents, advances in gay rights around the world have little impact on the slow social changes afforded to India’s gay community.

It was less than a year ago that Delhi’s high court finally redressed Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code - effectively decrimanalising gay sex between consenting adults.

Although still suffering widespread discrimination, the ruling undoubtedly brings hope and heralds a new chapter for India’s LGBT population and its activists’ campaign for social equality.

It has invigorated gay pride; inspiring a re-launch of India’s first gay magazine – Bombay Dost – and now the Kashish Mumbai Queer Film Festival – a screening of more than one hundred gay films from around the world in two of the city’s mainstream cinemas.

The four day ‘Queer media’ event sold out within hours and has been hailed by activists as a milestone in gay visibility.

Bringing together the audience, the films and their makers organisers say a key aim of the new annual event is to create social change.

In an interview with radioaustralia.net Indian playwright Mahesh Dattani said the festival was monumental for the gay community.

“I think this a hugely important event; we've never had a queer film festival. I think there's so many myths and misnomers about queerness, about sexuality in general and I think this gives the audience an opportunity to try and understand and to actually see for themselves what queer love is and what queerness is about.

“We're such a traditional society of celebrators, we celebrate life, we celebrate sexuality, for goodness sake, I mean we wrote the Kama Sutra you know and I feel it's time we reclaimed our culture to somehow revisit our openness that somehow we've lost over the ages.”

As well as screening international shorts and features the festival also showcased many recent and undiscovered Indian films.

A panel judged competitive section awarded ‘Lost and Found’ Best Indian Short with ‘XXWhy’ - a film about Kerala’s first out female-to-male transgender winning Best Documentary.

For weekly gay news and chat visit webcam social site http://www.mand8.com/

Related link:http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/connectasia/stories/201004/s2882702.htm