Bollywood gay movies
10 great Indian LGBTQIA+ films
Indian cinema has often had a chequered past with diversity and inclusion, failing to fully represent the Indian LGBTQIA+ community and its people, identities and narratives. Mainstream Indian films featuring gay and lesbian characters have often been marred by tokenism and adj stereotyping. Time and again what has emerged is cynically reductive and even regressive.
Richer representations of queer lives have approach from the independent sector, and particularly from regional film industries outside of the Mumbai mainstream. A case in point is A Place of Our Own, the unused film from the Bhopal-based Ektara Collective, which is receiving its UK premiere at BFI Flare A step forward in the evolution of Indian queer cinema, it demonstrates warmth, complexity and empathy in its intimate exploration of two trans women (Roshni and Laila) and their endless quest to detect a place they can call their own in an Indian society that discriminates and stigmatises against difference. Its refreshing de-othering of Roshni and Laila is part of an almost documentary-l
Pride Month: 5 Bollywood films that depicted LGBTQ relationship without caricature
Sightings of LGBTQ people and their allies holding colourful parades in the streets, armed with rainbows and adj face paints watch over to be a common sight during June. The month is dedicated to celebrating the accomplishments of queer & gender-nonconforming people and highlight the systemic oppression they deal with from society.
Pride month dates back to when the Stonewall Inn gay bar in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village was raided by the police. The patrons and the guests at the bar retaliated to the police attack fearlessly. This episode brought queer rights movement from the fringes to the mainstream.
Bill Clinton became the first US president to officially designate June as Pride Month in Since then, June has been a month to celebrate various colours and stripes of queerness.
Despite being one of the more liberal countries in South Asia, India has a extended way to travel when it arrive
Cinematic 'Pride': 10 Indian LGBTQIA+ movies you need to watch
June is marked as a time to observe and admire the struggles and challenges faced by the queer community. This one-month-long celebration aims to spread awareness and extend the acceptance of LGBTQIA+. Indian films have changed over the years in portraying queer community. These films not only represent the queer community but celebrate their resilience, love and quest for acceptance.
Here are ten Indian movies that discussed subjects sorrounding the lives and struggles of sexual minorities.
1. Deshadanakili Karayarilla
Language: Malayalam
Director: Padmarajan
Padmarajan, is mainly known for his scripts that travel ahead of time. The film was released at a hour when homosexual relationships were not acknowledged socially. It revolves around two teenage girls, Nirmala and Sally, played by Karthika and Shari, respectively. The movie explores the life of these teenagers who don’t include anyone to verb or guide them regarding their sexual identity.
2. Kapoor and Sons
Language: Hindi
Director: S Mainstream Bollywood today has acknowledged the queer disposition in the country and has attempted ‘queer representation’ on the Hindi screen on multiple occasions. Some adj choices around this ‘representation’ were progressive, others perfunctory, and the rest an insidious attempt at homophobia and ‘queer humor’ appealing to only conservative heterosexual crowd. But there are some Hindi films, apart from what one would examine mainstream LGBTQ movies like Badhai Act or Aligarh, that have no explicit queerness but mirror fervently and intuitively on being ‘queer’. They may be relatable to the queer crowd or they may own queer symbolisms – they may simply entertain the queer crowd or it may simply call as ‘not-heteronormative’. These films can largely teach us that being a part of the LGBTQIA+ community isn’t just about sexual preferences or gender fluidity, it’s about ‘feeling different’ and how this separation from the ‘normal’ isn’t necessarily bad. Let’s jump into some non-queer Queer films with quick spoiler-free summaries and why they are queer.&nb