September 6th, 2018 the supreme court of India passed a judgement relating to section 377 which criminalised same sex relations between consenting adults to be unconstitutional.
It is pride month. The year is 2020. The conversations in the society on this subject haven’t been the easiest or even widespread. India on a whole has still a lot of growth left. We’ve come a long way in the Indian cinema when telling stories of the LGBT community. From outright making fun of same sex relations in films like ‘dostana’, ‘kal ho Na ho’, or even ‘kapoor and sons’ which used their storyline as a plot twist and many more. And we have a long way to go. Yes, there are tricky parameters controlling whether or not one can is able to give complete justice to these stories. On the other hand, there is a surge of documentaries and films by young, unknown artists who give emotional depth by really telling us the layered stories about harsh realities the community faces or simply their ordinary lives which are rare to find on mainstream platforms but stories are being made.
This month it was known that India’s first OTT platform ‘EORTV’ will be launched soon. It will have original TV shows focused only on LGBT stories.
Films from regional and Hindi cinema that portrayed LGBT characters lives with a vision of beauty are –
‘Aligarh’ (2015) by Hansal Mehta
‘Fire’ (1996) by Deepa Mehta,
‘Margarita with a straw’ (2014) by Shonali Bose (Netflix)
‘Super deluxe’ (2019) by Thiagarajan Kumararaja (Netflix)
‘My brother Nikhil’ (2005) by Onir (Netflix)
‘Daayra’ (1996) by Amol palekar
‘Darmiyan’ (1997) by kalpana lazmi
‘Mango soufflé’ (2002) by Mahesh dattani
‘Sancharram’ (2004) by Ligy J. Pullappally
‘Memories of March’ (2010) by Sanjoy Nag
‘Loev’ (2015) by Sudhanshu Saria
‘Njan Marikutty’ (2018) by Ranjith Sankar
‘Dear dad’ (2016) by Tanuj bharmar
‘Moothoon’ (2019) by Geetu Mohandas
‘My son is gay’ (2018) by Lokesh Kumar
It is necessary we mention ‘Moonlight’ by Barry Jenkins that paved the way by winning best picture at the Oscars 2016. Such wins help storytellers globally even the people who invest financially to say what we want.
We can only hope we keep moving forward in this right direction honoring and bringing all the people in our society closer.
And what’s the best way that binds our communities, countries, and world together?
It is cinema. Happy PRIDE!
We’re hiring!
We are hiring two full-time junior to mid-level writers with the option to work remotely. You need to work a 5-hour shift and be available to write. Interested candidates should email their sample articles to [email protected]. Applications without a sample article will not be considered.
