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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Features/  FTII protestors organize Queer film festival
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FTII protestors organize Queer film festival

Seven LGBT-themed films will be screened over the weekend to encourage 'self-introspection' among students

FTII students hold a protest against Gajendra Chauhan’s appointment as FTII chairman at Jantar Mantar, Delhi, on 3 August. Photo: Ramesh Pathania/MintPremium
FTII students hold a protest against Gajendra Chauhan’s appointment as FTII chairman at Jantar Mantar, Delhi, on 3 August. Photo: Ramesh Pathania/Mint

Even as the protests against the appointment of Gajendra Chauhan as the chairman of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) enter their 78th day, a group of students have organized a two-day event of screening queer-content films at the Institute.

The six international and one Indian film will be screened over Saturday and Sunday, and will be accompanied by an open forum at the end of the screenings on both days, for all viewers to discuss the various issues that the films raise.

Aritra Sarkar, one of the organizers, said: “The films are primarily about gender and how gender plays a role in one’s politics. Every movement, including the students’ protest, needs its share of self-introspection. These films are not only about the revolution (around gender and sexuality), but also show the internal conflicts (the protagonists) had to face because of moral judgments by society."

“The current condition at FTII where we are escalating to a larger movement for pluralism and expression from just a students’ strike is not really very different from the Queer movement fighting against a legal and social order that doesn’t allow freedom of being," he added.

Stephen Beresford’s 2014 film Pride, which debuted at the Cannes International Film Festival and was nominated for Best motion picture—musical or comedy at the Golden Globe Awards, will be screened. It tells the story of how a strike called by the National Union of Mineworkers in the early 1980s, considered to be one of the biggest industrial actions undertaken in England, was supported by Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) movement. This combining of interests paved the way for civil partnerships and same-sex marriages to be recognized in the UK.

Anup Singh’s Punjabi film Qissa: The Tale of a Lonely Ghost, which was released in Indian theatres in February, will end the two-day screening. The Indian-German film, which won an award at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2013, is set in the time of Partition and tells the story of a man whose desire to have a male heir leads him to raise his last-born daughter as a son. The film critiques the notion of masculinity, as much as it questions the idea of boundaries—whether of gender or nation.

Other films that will be screened include Tropical Malady, a 2004 film from Thailand, Tomboy, a 2011 film from France, and The Times of Harvey Milk, a 1984 film about the first openly gay politician to be elected to public office in the US.

The films will be screened on Saturday and Sunday, from 11am to 6pm, at FTII classroom theatre. It is open to public.

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Published: 28 Aug 2015, 02:10 PM IST
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