Gay bollywood movies
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 glowing face paints attend 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 confront from society.
Pride month dates endorse to 1969 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 assault 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 1999. 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 long way to go when it comes to ensuring that its queer community secures basic rights such as the right to equality
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 womxn loving womxn characters have often been marred by tokenism and innocent stereotyping. Time and again what has emerged is cynically reductive and even regressive.
Richer representations of gay lives have enter from the independent sector, and particularly from regional movie industries outside of the Mumbai mainstream. A case in point is A Place of Our Own, the recent film from the Bhopal-based Ektara Collective, which is receiving its UK premiere at BFI Flare 2023. A step forward in the evolution of Indian queer cinema, it demonstrates warmth, complexity and empathy in its intimate exploration of two transgender women (Roshni and Laila) and their endless quest to find a place they can notify their own in an Indian world that discriminates and stigmatises against difference. Its refreshing de-othering of Roshni and Laila is part of an almost documentary-like perspective that lays bare the displacement and abuse faced by the Indian trans communi
Following last year’s breakthrough Bollywood Womxn loving womxn love story Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga (How I Felt When I Saw That Girl), director Hitesh Kewalya brings the hit new 2020 romcom Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan (Be Extra Careful About Marriage). The film stars Jitendra Kumar and Ayushmann Khurrana as a gay couple.
According to writer Ken Anthony Mendoza from Style Magazine, Bollywood has long history of stereotyping LGBTQ+ characters into over-the-top clichés – the brothel-owning trans villain, effeminate horny gay guy, cross-dressers, sexualised lesbians and predatory transgender men, etc. These roles are typically cast as ancillary characters, crude caricatures, and the butt of many of those films’ jokes.
Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan, which seeks to portray homosexual people in a less sterotypical and more realistic and dignified manner, tells the story of Kartik Singh (Ayushmann Khurrana) who has to overcome many social obstacles to be with his lover, Aman Tripathi (Jitendra Kumar).
The couple hesitantly travel from Modern Delhi to their hometown, Ahmedabad, to attend the wedding of Aman’s cousin, Goggle (M
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 prolong the acceptance of LGBTQIA+. Indian films have changed over the years in portraying queer community. These films not only illustrate the queer community but celebrate their resilience, adore 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 motion picture was released at a time 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 existence of these teenagers who don’t have anyone to trust or guide them regarding their sexual identity.
2. Kapoor and Sons
Language: Hindi
Director: Shakun Batra
The director represents Rahul (played by Fawad Khan), the elder son in the family, as