Nobody calls Raees a film about a Muslim guy, or Kapoor & Sons an LGBTQ+ film. Where do you draw the line?

It looks like a great year for LGBTQ+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning and Others) films. Moonlight won the Best Picture Oscar; French ‘AIDS’ drama 120 Beats Per Minute, picked up the Grand Prix at Cannes last month; Chilean transgender drama, A Fantastic Woman, bagged the Best Screenplay Silver Bear at Berlin while teenage gay movie Beach Rats won for Best Direction at Sundance early this year.

These titles winning big at top festivals does seem to indicate an acceptance of the LGBTQ+ narrative in mainstream cinema (remember, no LGBTQ+ film had won Best Picture Oscar before Moonlight). But are these really ‘LGBTQ+ films’ or do they just have people of the community at the centre of their narrative? How important is that labelling? Or any labelling for that matter: ‘feminist’, ‘queer’ or ‘Dalit’ film?

If it tells an audience upfront what the film is about, it could also make some dither—“Oh, it’s a ‘gay’ film”—and make the film even more marginalised. Wouldn’t that defeat the whole ‘mainstreaming’ of the narrative?

Sudhanshu Saria, director of Indian queer mumblecore LOEV, hates labels. He has spoken of not wanting his film to be looked at as ‘Indian’ or ‘queer’ or ‘Indian-queer’. “I want it to be looked at as just a movie.”

Marketing gamut

Asked why he runs away from the label of a queer film when his film is essentially about queer relationships, Saria says he has always assumed that a film didn’t need to be marketed to queer audiences and allies. “The film has been made to capture their love, and I expect these audiences to engage with it anyway. The label sometimes allows audiences to dismiss or skip a film because they think it isn’t about them or about what they consider to be love.”

Sridhar Rangayan, director of Kashish–Mumbai Queer International Film Festival, looks at the argument differently. It really bothers him when filmmakers say they don’t want to associate their films with the word ‘queer’. “As a filmmaker, I understand; I know the market forces that operate. When you give a tag, it immediately goes under a box and limits its chances of a release. I know that dilemma,” he says. But as a festival director, it makes him sad that sometimes he cannot open with the most important or the latest LGBTQ+ film because the filmmaker still wants to wait for a release or do the rounds at a bigger festival. “A film like Carol would not like to open an LGBTQ+ festival,” Rangayan says.

The opening film at Kashish this year was Jennifer Reeder’s Signature Move. Co-written and produced by Pakistani-Canadian actor-comedian Fawzia Mirza, the film stars Mirza and Shabana Azmi. Currently doing the rounds of the LGBTQ+ festival circuit (Boston, London, Mumbai, Toronto, and now headed for the oldest one, Frameline, San Francisco), the film premiered at the well-known SXSW (South by Southwest) festival in Austin in March.

Signature Move, the opening film at this years Kashish-Mumbai Queer International Film Festival

“Opening the film at SXSW was really important for us because the festival is so mainstream. (A festival) that has so much power behind it… when they say we think that these stories matter, it gives the film more power, more weight and more credibility,” says Mirza. “It’s why we want Bollywood stars to come to Kashish (Arjun Kapoor was the chief guest this year). We want the mainstream to come and see how beautiful (it is) and to be (our) allies.”

Mirza is someone who wears labels on her sleeves with pride. She is a lesbian Muslim Pakistani woman living in the West; her film is being touted as a queer, feminist, culture-clash, indie comedy. “In a dream world, it would be wonderful to be called just a film. But there’s great importance in being a feminist film,” she says.

“In the West, you are so othered, there’s a different culture of individual identity versus communal or tribal identity. So, I think, claiming identity personally, and also through art, is important.” It is for a similar reason that Rangayan thinks labelling a festival LGBTQ+ helps. “It brings focus to a particular issue or to a kind of cinema,” he says. “It is important to say that and own it—we own the word ‘queer’; we own this space.”

Filmmaker Onir has stayed away from labels, but agrees it is necessary to give the community a space to make their presence felt. “If today, a Kashish doesn’t happen, where else will people get to see these films?” He launched the trailer of his upcoming relationship drama Shab at the festival last month. But by labelling, he also feels we are dividing human beings into different sections. “Very soon, then, we’ll have a Dalit film festival, a Muslim film festival. So where do we stop?” he argues. “Nobody calls Raees a film about a Muslim guy, right? Nobody calls Kapoor & Sons an LGBTQ+ film.”

Gay, by chance

For a film to be attached to any label, it is important to also see how it was conceived. Like Kapoor & Sons, Kenny Basumatary’s Local Kung Fu 2, a low-budget, Assamese action-comedy adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors, can’t be called a gay film—the gay hero, in both films, just happens to be there.

A still from ‘Moonlight’, the 2016 winner of the Best Picture Academy Award

On the other hand, you have Razi Muhammed’s Malayalam film Velutha Rathrikal (White Nights). It has people of another marginalised community (Adivasis) at its centre and nods at various issues (infant mortality, malnutrition, land alienation, water issues) but it is also a queer film, for it is a queer re-imagination of Dostoevsky’s White Nights. Nagraj Manjule’s blockbuster ‘Dalit’ movie, Sairat, is not just a tragic romance—it’s only when Manjule pulls the rug from under your feet in the last minutes does one comprehends that the film couldn’t have been conceived outside the Dalit framework. What Sairat successfully did was to sensitise some non-Dalit audiences to the caste issue. What we need is an LGBTQ+ version of Sairat.

Almost 70% of the Kashish audience comes from the LGBTQ+ community. But wouldn’t the 30% non-queer audience be people who are sensible or sensitised? Rangayan disagrees, “There is only an outward, upper layer acceptance, but that needs to go deeper and have a wholehearted acceptance or understanding (of the issue).”

Rangayan tells me something that, if true, is far more important than seeking others’ acceptance. . “In the initial years, when they had to tick a box (in the registration form), the LGBTQ+ community would check the straight or bisexual box. So, earlier, we thought a huge straight audience was attending,” he laughs. “Later, they got comfortable and started checking the right boxes”

The author is an urban cogwheel who finds solace in writing about films and music.