Long Life of a Short Film
by Riyad Vinci Wadia
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Filmmaker Riyad Vinci Wadia
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This is part four of a four-part series. Please
read part one,
part two,
and part three.
Watch BOMgAY in the
PlanetOut Online Cinema.
Now came the all-important decision: to get the film sent for censorship or not.
We debated this for a long while and came to the conclusion that it would be an
exercise in futility. The film not only contained images that would be seen as
profane but also had language that was unacceptable to current censor laws. We
knew that all we would achieve would be to create controversy and that was not
our intention. Instead, I devised a plan that I felt would be much more
effective. The plan rose out of my understanding of advertising and marketing,
trades I had experience with as an ad filmmaker.
There is a hierarchy in the media and arts. Film is at the top of the hierarchy,
followed by literature, followed by journalism, followed by visual arts like
painting and sculpture. Film is at this exalted pedestal because it has the
potential to reach the widest audience and cut across social and educational
barriers. It is also seen as the medium that is the most expensive and
collaborative to work with, hence any idea that can be made into a film must have
passed through much discussion and consideration before making it to its final
form. While this is not entirely true, especially in the Mickey Mouse world of
video production, it is a reputation that the film medium generates. And it is
this reputation that allows film to be used for propaganda in the most effective
way. And it was with a propagandist stance that I went about marketing and
screening BOMgAY.
In December of 1996 I had finished work on A Mermaid Called Aida as well and I
requested a friend at the prestigious National Center for the Performing Arts
(NCPA) to let us use that venue to premiere both my recent works. Like New York's
Metropolitan Museum complex or Berlin's Volksbuhne, the NCPA provided me with a
platform that allowed my work to be seen as art, and that, too, as serious art.
For the screening we invited a select band of journalists, film critics and
television crews and some friends and crewmembers. I was rather nervous. Two
years of living a life as an openly gay man and my reputation as a filmmaker were
finally going to come together at this screening. It was a decision I had taken
without too much preparation, rather letting it evolve in fits and starts. The
screening went off splendidly and both films were well received. There were
several questions asked and the session went on till late, ending up in the
gardens outside the theatre complex.
One of the debates that surrounded the film was my claim that the film was
"India's first gay film." Many came forward and said this was not true. They
cited a film called Adhura ("Incomplete") which was made a few years
earlier by one Ashish Balram Nagpal. I investigated this claim and found that
this film was actually a pilot for a television series that never got screened.
Furthermore, it was a story that revolved around a bisexual man and had a brief
and rather derisive homosexual subplot. I stuck to my claim. That is not to say I
was in any real way proud of my achievement. I wish gay films had been made many
years before I came to make BOMgAY and that, too, in abundance. That would
have gone a long, long way in helping me and so many, many others in not having
to struggle as hard as we still have to in context to our identity and cultural
and social acceptance.
Over the next several months the film received reams of newsprint. It opened up
an extensive discussion on homosexuality in India and it brought the "g" word
into people's homes. I was invited to guest on talk shows and lifestyle programs
where lengthy excerpts of BOMgAY were screened. Within a few short weeks I
started receiving letters from gay men in small towns and faraway cities, wanting
to know how they could get a hold of a copy of the film. I was approached
everywhere I went by men who would come up to me and tell me of some gay guy they
knew, some friend they wanted to give the movie to. It seemed to me that before
my very eyes a whole new gay world was coming alive.
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BOMgAY
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Strangely, in all the press that the film received there was not one reaction
that was negative or derogatory. It surprised me that no one seemed to find the
film objectionable or worth raising any ire over. In fact, the most severe
reprimand the film received was from gay activist Ashok Row Kavi who reviewed
both films in the Times of India. He wrote that BOMgAY painted a
portrait of south Bombay (read "westernized Indian") gay life and was far removed
from the realities faced by most gay men in rest of India, especially men who
lived in underprivileged socio-economic classes. I agreed whole-heartedly with
Ashok on this. My film was never intended to be a realistic portrait of an Indian
gay community because, as I saw it, there is no such thing as the Indian gay
community (or, to stretch the discussion, there is no such reality called
India!). An Indian in my opinion is a person who dwells in a geo-political entity
called India. That's where the similarity between one Indian and another ends. At
its lowest common denominator, India is an amalgam of several universes and time
zones. A geo-political entity in which the 14th century and the 23rd century
coexist and whose citizens are not from any cohesive culture. BOMgAY tries
to portray the emergence of a small gay community that dwells in Bombay that
chooses to interpret the word 'gay' as practiced and loosely defined by the
cultural, social, and ideological expressions as seen in the western hemisphere.
Of course this interpretation is mutated with the ground realities of living
within the other cultures that exist with Bombay.
With BOMgAY and the resultant media frenzy, the press was hungry for more
gay-related stories. It legitimized the efforts of social activists, and once and
for all declared that India had a gay community which had a voice in the arts.
Where once gay issues were seldom heard, now there is some reportage almost every
day. More and more gays have come out of the closet in recent times and have
started demanding some semblance of rights. While the road to acquiring these
rights is a long one, the thought of a revolution is no longer fantastical.
Following soon after in the steps of BOMgAY were a slew of films. Some of
these films directly were the result of the hype that surrounded BOMgAY.
Deepa Mehta's Fire brought
lesbianism into focus (inciting riots and becoming a political weapon in the
hands of right wing fundamentalists), and Kaizad Gustad's Bombay Boys had
a confused gay protagonist, too. Wheelchair-bound, Bombay-born writer Firdaus
Kanga starred as himself in Warris Hussain's Sixth Happiness with scenes of his
homosexual awakening being playfully portrayed. Even Bollywood has nodded to the
emergence of an urban gay identity with Subhas Ghai's Taal, featuring a
very camp queen choreographer (played by real life gay choreographer Mahesh
"Pankola" Mahboobani) prancing around the leading lady. The most recent film to
bring gay and bisexual issues to its central story line is Dev Benegal's Split
Wide Open, which has just been completed and will premiere in the spring of
2000. Rahul Bose stars in this as well and plays a street hustler who is educated
by a gay Roman Catholic priest. Further gay images are to be found in recent
television serials and music videos and short films, most produced in Bombay.
The most startling gay Indian film since BOMgAY is a stunning documentary
by 22-year-old Nish Saran of New Delhi. This young filmmaker is representative of
the new generation who have grown up in a world where being gay is no longer
revolutionary, yet a world that still does not accept homosexuality. In his
film, Nish confesses to his mother on camera about his being gay, and tackles
issues of HIV/AIDS and fear of ostracization. The film recently had private
screenings in India and has regenerated media frenzy on gay issues, this time
bringing into sharp focus the need to discuss sexuality in a time of medical
catastrophe.
My own quest continues. I am still working on bring the screenplay (now completed
by scriptwriter Shuchi Kothari) of R. Raj Rao's short stories to the screen. It's
tentatively and subliminally titled Second Chances.
Watch BOMgAY in the
PlanetOut Online Cinema.
You can purchase a VHS copy ofBOMgAYfrom Wadia Movietone, NYC. E-mail the distributor at
cinema@mindspring.com or visit the Web site
www.wadiamovietone.com.
This is part four of a four-part series. Please
read part one,
part two,
and part three.
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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