South Asian film focus

PLAYING GAY Bollywood’s Dostana, which opens the fest, has its male leads pretending to be lovers but falling for the same woman.

This city is no stranger to highly specific film-festival subjects—human rights, Havana, digital cinema, Israel, the gays, you name it. But this weekend’s I View Film 2009 fest from Engendered gets even more pointed, screening nearly 20 shorts and features that examine gender and sexuality issues through a South Asian lens. And considering the power of Bollywood, says the festival’s director, Myna Mukherjee, film is the perfect medium for getting messages out about what can be difficult queer and feminist issues.

“A lot of what people [in South Asian culture] see as acceptable or nonacceptable is dictated by the film industry,” explains Mukherjee, adding that one of the most recent Bollywood blockbusters to make an impact was Dostana, which marked the first time that straight mainstream actors played gay. “It showed onscreen kissing—with two males! It was a very big deal,” she says. “It normalizes the issue. There are a lot of stereotypes in the film, but everyone’s talking about it.” Dostana will open the festival.

Mukherjee, a former Wall Street stiff who left the finance business to start a feminist dance theater several years ago, soon moved on to establish Engendered. Now the nonprofit organization produces a yearlong cultural and political festival of South Asian–flavored performances and art exhibits that deal with issues of sexuality.

“Art is a very powerful field of communicating,” she says. “There is sometimes a lot more you can express through the arts.” But straight-up discussion isn’t so bad either, so in June, Mukherjee added the first annual South Asian Queer Leaders Summit to the mix.

The entire Engendered series, she says, has created a community in which to reflect upon the striking changes to South Asian policies—from India’s decriminalization of sodomy in July to the election of Nepal’s first openly gay member of its parliament last spring. It’s also provided a unique forum that strives to address the dual identity of queer South Asian New Yorkers. “Even though you are very much emancipated and you are queer, it doesn’t take away your other identity of being South Asian,” Mukherjee says. “And in many of these films, I think those questions are being addressed.”

In addition to Dostana—in which two straight guys pretend to be gay in order to secure a posh Miami apartment—other features dealing with LGBT issues include My Own Country, directed by Mira Nair, in which an East Indian doctor settles in Tennessee in 1985 during the height of the AIDS crisis, and Nilanjan Neil Lahiri’s Ode to Lata, in which a gay South African Indian man flees to Hollywood. Docs and shorts include Parvez Sharma’s festival darling A Jihad for Love, exploring Islam and homosexuality; “Searching 4 Sandeep,” about a cross-continental lesbian love affair; and “I Am,” which talks to South Asian parents of LGBT children.

Engendered: I View Film 2009 runs Fri 28–Sun 30. See engendered.org.

From Dostana:

From “Searching 4 Sandeep”:

Trailer from A Jihad for Love:

See more in Gay