Tag Archives: Fire

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.