Tag Archives: Deepa Mehta

Shabana Azmi Cast In Fawzia Mirza’s New Lesbian Feature Film

Do you remember Fire, Deepa Mehta’s hit 1996 film about two lonely daughters-in-law, who fall for each other? Well the film starred Bollywood actress, Shabana Azmi, and now 20 years later she returns in yet another lesbian drama.

Actor-director Fawzia Mirza has cast Azmi to play a mother to a lesbian daughter, in her upcoming feature film.

In the American production entitled Signature Move, Shabana is cast as a mother who watches television soaps all day long and seems oblivious to the fact that her daughter (Fawzia) is a lesbian and in a relationship with a Mexican girl, who is a wrestler.

 

This venture marks Mirza’s first feature film that she will be producing herself. Mirza is known for works such as Me, My Mom and Sharmila and The Muslim Trump Documentary.

She has also recently been honoured with ‘Champion of Change’ award by the White House.

Delhi University Holds its First Ever Lesbian Film Festival

Delhi University will hosted its first-ever lesbian film festival with around 100 people in attendance. The two-day event has been organised by the Universities Gender Studies Group.

The group is currently working hard to raise awareness regarding women’s sexuality and marginalisation of lesbians.

“We are holding a film festival and calling it a lesbian film festival because of the marginalisation of lesbians in our culture. Women who love women are erased. Same sex culture is dominated by gay men. Women are not given space to be on their own. So, we want to create that space and focus on how to create that space.”

The film festival will showcased, Deepa Mehta’s ‘Fire’ starring Shabana Azmi and Nandita Das.

“We have focused on Indian films because lesbian space is particularly neglected here. We have a range of films from an earlier representation of lesbians in art film Umbartha in 1983 to Fire in 1998, which created a great controversy and inaugurated a lesbian movement in Delhi in the form of CALERI (campaign for lesbian rights).”

Other films shown will be Debalina Majumder’s Ebang Bewarish (…And the Unclaimed) and And You Thought You Knew Me by activist Pramada Menon, Jabbar Patel’s ‘Subah’, and ‘Umbartha’ starring Smita Patil and Girish Karnad.

There was also three works by Kolkata-based filmmaker, Debalina Majumder, were also be featured in the festival.

Another film, ‘Taar Cheye Shey Anek Aaro’ (More than a friend), which looks into the life of four individuals in the background of rising awareness on same-sex relationships. The film also has real-life interviews of people from various sections of society.