The proper portrayal of LGBTQIA+ communities in Indian cinema has been gaining momentum for a while now, despite the fact that homosexuality was only decriminalised in India in 2018.When it comes to diversity and inclusion, Indian cinema has a checkered history, frequently falling short of accurately portraying the country’s LGBTQIA+ population, as well as their members, identities, and stories. Tokenism and simplistic stereotyping have frequently harmed mainstream Indian films with gay and lesbian characters. What has repeatedly emerged is cynically reductive, if not retrogressive.
The independent sector, and particularly regional film industries outside of the Mumbai mainstream, have produced richer depictions of queer lives. A Place of Our Own, the latest film from the Bhopal-based Ektara Collective, is a prime example and will have its UK premiere at BFI Flare 2023. It represents a development in Indian queer cinema as it intimately examines two trans women (Roshni and Laila) and their never-ending search for a place they can call home in a society that stigmatises and discriminates against difference. Its refreshing de-othering of Roshni and Laila is a part of a perspective that almost reads like a documentary and exposes the violence and displacement that the Indian people experience.In advance of the movie’s BFI Flare screenings, we look back at ten significant LGBTQIA+ film milestones from the Indian subcontinent.
1. Badnam Basti (1971)
Director: Prem Kapoor
As a result of Parallel Cinema, the new wave of politically engaged alternative filmmaking that emerged in India from the 1960s onward, many taboos were broken. Prem Kapoor’s contentious Badnam Basti, which questions gender and sexual norms, was once believed to be lost, but it was found in 2019 and reclaimed as India’s first queer movie.The film, which is based on a Kamleshwar novel, employs a traditional element of Indian cinema—a love triangle involving two men and a woman—but defies convention by exploring the characters’ bisexuality, which is implied rather than overtly emphasised because of the censorship of the time. At a time of significant political unrest, when Indian cinema was beginning to change and modernise, and nothing was sacred anymore, Kapoor’s film was a breakthrough.
2.Fire (1996)
Director: Deepa Mehta
The love story in Fire between two women sparked protests in India, but Deepa Mehta’s film also explores how women come together in the face of patriarchal oppression, loneliness, and neglect. The film exposes how men’s hypocrisy is frequently overlooked while women are effectively denied both status and identity as the relationship between Radha (Shabana Azmi) and Sita (Nandita Das) gradually becomes clear. The men in the movie feel they can possess and control their sexual desire in addition to the way that it is suppressed by the forces of tradition. Character names in Mehta’s film, which are controversially subverted into something much more radical and sensual, are derived from the Hindu goddesses Radha and Sita. It points to a modern, progressive India by reclaiming and reinterpreting Indian history and culture from a queer and feminist perspective.
3.My Brother… Nikhil (2005)
Director: Onir
Onir’s brave film tells the tale of Nikhil Kapoor (Sanjay Suri), a gifted swimmer who is diagnosed with HIV. It was inspired by the life of Indian AIDS activist Dominic D’Souza, who contracted HIV and was forcibly quarantined. My Brother… Nikhil was created prior to the proliferation of LGBT-themed films in mainstream Indian cinema, and it is set in Goa in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The sombre script describes the ingrained biases present in every aspect of society, including Nikhil’s family, which shuns him for being gay, and governmental organisations, which forcibly discriminate against him, resulting in his sombre exclusion. The outcomes, while occasionally sentimental, were important in that they helped to pave the way for future LGBTQIA+ films and also helped to increase awareness of AIDS in India.
4. Memories in March (2010)
Director: Sanjoy Nag
One of the first openly gay artists in Indian cinema, Rituparno Ghosh is a revered member of the queer community in India. Through his daring work, he persistently explored his own sexuality and expanded the boundaries of what was thought to be feasible when picturing queer life on screen. His passing at the young age of 49 was a great loss to the Indian film industry.In March, Ghosh co-wrote and starred in the film Memories, which centres on the grieving mother Arati (Deepti Naval), who learns her son had a secret life and is gradually compelled to accept his sexuality. Arati’s socially prescribed notions of love and companionship are questioned by Ghosh’s Ornub, the son’s gay partner, which sparks a sharply defined critique of the hypocrisies of middle-class Bengali society.
5. Margarita with a Straw (2014)
Director: Shonali Bose
In Margarita with a Straw, Kalki Koechlin portrays a queer disabled woman who embarks on a personal quest to understand the nuanced nuances of her sexuality, drawing on the experiences of director Shonali Bose as a bisexual woman in India. In a conversation with her cousin Malini Chib, a disability rights activist, Bose got the idea for the movie. With cerebral palsy, Laila (Koechlin) is portrayed as a flawed, complex character who is both vulnerable and independent.The coming-of-age story is used in this intersectional piece to explore how sexual identity is a flexible, changing, and occasionally contradictory concept. Given that both Laila and Khanum (Sayani Gupta) are weighed down by their own flaws, the relationship between the two is framed with an unexceptional gaze.
6. Aligarh (2015)
Director: Hansal Mehta
Gay sex is prohibited by Section 377 of India’s penal code, which has been in effect for 157 years. The Supreme Court legalised homosexuality in 2018. Aligarh, a social issue movie directed by Hansal Mehta and released three years prior to this landmark decision, is based on the true story of Professor Siras (Manoj Bajpayee), who was expelled from Aligarh University for having sex with another man. Later, Siras was discovered dead.The compelling screenplay by Apurva Asrani examines the social and political complexities of persecution through the eyes of the media, the legal system, and social activism. The scene of Siras singing along to vintage Indian movie tunes, anchored by Manoj Bajpayee’s masterful performance, develops into a moving refrain, detailing a dignity that no bigotry can erase.
7. Iratta Jeevitham (2017)
Director: Suresh Narayanan
The state of Kerala in southern India was the first to announce a transgender policy in 2015, protecting their rights and ending years of discrimination. Iratta Jeevitham, directed by Suresh Narayanan, starts with the love story of two women, Sainu and Ameena, before transitioning into a tale of transition. The movie was inspired by a short story by Ahmad Mueenudheen.Ten years after leaving the coastal village of Anchangadi, Ameena reappears as Adraman, a trans man. The coastal rural landscapes offer a distinctive counterpoint to the exploration of themes like social acceptance and transgender identity because they move away from an urban environment. Iratta Jeevitham is a work that has its roots in the ongoing political activism of transgender people in Kerala. It serves as another example of the radical interventionism of local LGBTQIA+ films.
8. Nagarkirtan (2017)
Director: Kaushik Ganguly
Bengali director Kaushik Ganguly’s film, about a trans woman named Puti (Riddhi Sen) and a flute player named Madhu (Ritwick Chakraborty), explores the alienation that the trans community faces. Puti’s desire to have sex reassignment surgery is made more difficult by financial obstacles in a cruel society where trans people are frequently marginalised, shunned, or exploited. A new gender identity is still unattainable. Ganguly’s respectful, humane treatment of the ‘kinnar’ community (also known as the ‘hijra,’ though that term is now frequently viewed as derogatory) using a non-linear structure and flashbacks amplifies a third gender history that dates back thousands of years and is connected to both Hinduism and Islam. In addition to connecting to Ganguly’s recurrent interests in sexuality and gender throughout an eclectic body of work, Nagarkirtan is a regional work that is significant in mapping the complex struggles faced by transgender people and communities in India today.
9. Moothon (2019)
Director: Geethu Mohandas
Popular film genres frequently evoke a feeling of familiarity, but they also present a chance to break the rules. By framing the main protagonist Akbar (Nivin Pauly) as bisexual, Moothon subverts traditional gender representations while still using the cliches of the gangster/crime genre.Director Geethu Mohandas portrays the queer romance with a tenderness that makes it universal, focusing on the friendship that develops between Akbar, a gangster, and Ameer, a gay man who is deaf (Roshan Mathew). The queering of the genre represents a genuine departure from the past because Indian gangster films are fixated on masculinity. The choice to cast Nivin Pauly, one of the biggest stars in south Indian cinema, as the main character makes this work all the more unusual. It had a significant impact on Moothon’s ability to reach a wider audience as well as on the notions of what it meant to be a contemporary star.
10. ‘Geeli Pucchi’ (2021)
Director: Neeraj Ghaywan
Neeraj Ghaywan, the director of the critically acclaimed debut movie Masaan (Crematorium, 2015), provided one of the best modern analyses of the caste system. More recently, his ‘Geeli Pucchi’ segment of the four-part anthology film Ajeeb Daastaans (Strange Stories) makes the argument that understanding caste is essential to understanding sexuality because the two are intertwined but infrequently depicted together on screen. In the narrative, a Dalit worker named Bharti (Konkona Sen Sharma) falls in love with a Brahmin data operator named Priya (Aditi Rao Hydari). But it quickly becomes clear that Priya values her caste over her queerness. The film by Ghaywan provides a stark commentary on the ways that caste influences many people’s decisions, even when doing so means repressing sexuality and love. Thus, a rigid system of discrimination is maintained.