Long Life of a Short Film
by Riyad Vinci Wadia
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Filmmaker Riyad Vinci Wadia
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Part one of a four-part series
* Read part two,
part three,
and part four.
Watch BOMgAY in the
PlanetOut Online Cinema.
I wish to share with you the story of why and how I came to produce
BOMgAY, a
short film that had the dubious distinction of becoming India's first "gay" film.
As I sit to write this I realize now that the "why" is more important than the
"how." For in the "why" lies the real beauty of this endeavor. The "how," which
was so important to discuss at the time of its release, has paled in significance
with the passage of time.
In the summer of 1996, I was in my prime. A newspaper profile had dubbed me the
"Young Turk" of Bombay's independent cinema industry, and I half believed it. My
reputation had been built on the fact that at 27 years of age I had already
produced and directed a feature-length film that had garnered international acclaim,
and that I was a scion of an illustrious family that had a 60-year history in
film production. My grandfather, JBH Wadia, was a pioneer producer-director who
had founded the erstwhile Wadia Movietone Studios in 1933. As I carried the
mantle of my family's reputation, I was well aware of the charade that I was
perpetuating by appearing as a dynamic filmmaker all set to steer the course of
my inheritance well into the next century. When asked, I would talk with great
flourish about the several projects I was working on and the great stories I
wanted to tell. The reality was that I felt I was in the creative doldrums, an
impasse that had set in two years earlier after the initial success of my debut
feature, Fearless -- The Hunterwali Story.
What I didn't realize then was that this doldrums was a necessary phase and that
actually I was drifting with a purpose. Not that the drift was on calm waters; in
fact, quite the opposite. You see, in the aftermath of the release of
Fearless at the London Film Festival in 1993, my personal life underwent
a sea change. Having achieved in one shot all my life's ambitions -- monetary
success, fame, respect of my peers, etc. -- what was left was just one issue I
had to deal with: my gay identity, locked deep in the proverbial closet.
This was driven home to me in that winter of '93, in London. I was staying for
the duration of the festival with an old family friend who was gay. He and his
boyfriend of ten years lived together in central London and led a picture-book,
openly gay life that I had read about but until then never witnessed. While I was
deeply closeted, I was very comfortable with my gay identity on a personal level.
It was the act of expressing my gay identity and all that it would entail for my
family and my social environment that made it difficult to take the
no-turning-back decision to open that closet door. Temperamentally, too, I was
loath to do things in half measures, which meant that if I was to ever discuss my
gay identity I would first and foremost have to reveal it to the persons closest
to my being, my parents. Once they knew, I believed I would be comfortable with
the concept of letting anyone and everyone know. For then it would not matter to
me what people thought.
My observation of my London hosts' bliss and my need to finally find that bliss
for myself was sharply put into discussion when a letter arrived at the London
Film Festival desk with my name on it. It was from (the late) Mark Finch,
director of the San Francisco Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, inviting my film and
me to attend the 1994 edition of that festival, all expenses paid. The lure of ten
days in that fabled city, my film headlining at the fabulous Castro Theater, with
me being the center of attention in the gayest spot on the planet was too much
for me to resist, and I accepted instantly. It was only a few days later that my
bravado started to crumble. How was I to explain to my family (with whom I
lived in Bombay) and my friends (not to mention the Indian press, which seemed to
be hanging on my every word) that I was going to show a film at an exclusively
lesbian and gay event? In a deeply closeted society such as exists in India,
where even issues surrounding heterosexual sexuality is seldom discussed
in the open, this was surely asking too much.
On my return to Bombay I hid the news of my acceptance to this festival for a few
days. Then a fax arrived from Mark Finch discussing travel arrangements and other
such technical details and I knew the time had come to take a deep breath and
face the consequences. I gingerly mentioned the news to my parents, speaking a
little too fast and a little too disinterestedly. They took in the news without
too much ado apart from the query of why a gay film festival would want to show a
film on the life of my grand-aunt, Fearless Nadia, who was not gay. I had
anticipated this and casually showed them a review that had appeared in
Variety which praised the film and mentioned that its camp subject and
feminist heroine would be of interest to gay and lesbian audiences worldwide. I
also threw in the fact that now that the film was made I needed to recover money,
and every potential market should be explored. Thus, using capitalism and media
manipulation, I thought I had managed to evade turning the handle on the closet
door. But I felt anger at myself for having cheated the issue. In the festival
entry form I had marked affirmatively one of the boxes alongside the question, "Is the director
of the film gay?"
A few days later -- the 26th of December, 1993, to be precise -- as I was alone
with my mother driving home in her car, we came across a beggar woman carrying a
beautiful child in her arms. My mother wistfully looked at the child and wondered
aloud as to when she would become a grandmother and have a baby to play with and
love. I can't say what came over me. Perhaps it was the weeks of tension of
debating whether I should say I was gay, or perhaps it was the occasion I was
seeking to finally rid myself of the shackles of needless duplicity, but I
blurted out that she shouldn't look to me for that to happen. Without missing a
beat, she turned to me and bluntly asked, "Why? Are you otherwise inclined?"
My coming out was rapid. One day my mother, the next week my close friends, the
following fortnight my brother, a few days later my father, and within two months
my general social circle. Over the next eight months I was travelling the world
from festival to festival, San Francisco and Los Angeles to Cannes and Toronto to
Hong Kong and Tokyo. Alive, free, exhilarated and gay, gay, gay! The pink
champagne bottle had been popped and the bubbles were overflowing. I found and
lost love, became a fixture at gay bars, and discovered Lycra. I started to read
and become aware of gay issues and reevaluate my life and its direction. I
quickly became aware of the silent yet powerful gay mafia that ran the
international film world and started to bask in being the new boy on the block.
It was during this time that the seed was planted in my head to make a gay film
based in India. Both Mark Finch and later David Overby (a programmer with the
Toronto Film Festival) encouraged me by spending some precious hours giving me
insights as to how the gay distribution network worked. The more I travelled
internationally, the more I came out to straight friends in India, the more I
realized that I had a story that needed to be told cinematically -- a subject that
needed to be addressed publicly now that I had addressed it personally.
Watch BOMgAY in the
PlanetOut Online Cinema.
You can purchase a VHS copy of BOMgAY from Wadia Movietone, NYC. E-mail the distributor at
cinema@mindspring.com or visit the Web site
www.wadiamovietone.com.
This is part one of a four-part series. Please
read part two,
part three,
and part four.
This essay is part of the landmark book, Queer Asian Cinema: Shadows in the Shade
edited by Andrew Grossman for the Haworth Press.
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