Sidharth Gautam Film Festival

Yesterday a friend of mine working in a NGO invited me to participate in Siddharth Gautam Film Festival a festival with a difference which primarily focused on gender, sexuality, human rights, sexual health and HIV. It sounded interesting and I was interested, being a gay, 21 year old yet to come out of the closet for me it has been tiring as I constantly had to hide my sexuality in the Engineering college that I studied in, I hung on to girls hoping nobody would recognize my sexual orientation. I went to this workshop as I was hoping to maybe get some answers from the movies I see, look for someone who would provide me with answers on how to deal with myself and my sexuality The inaugural was predictable with a Government Official coming out and happily patting his back on the outstanding achievement of his department, and the movies that his department has been sponsoring. After the inaugural, I am not sure what his name is but a gentlemen gave a brief description on Sidharth Gautam, which was impressive and I really expected the movies that would be shown would be impressive and speak about the issues that Sidharth Gautam was passionate about. What a comedown!!

The first movie shown was Ame Chaari (We four), a shoddy movie, about four people, three male, one female and one adolescent (the story was about five people, but was called Ame Chaari, not sure why). the incidents in these four people's live happened in four different areas, and places but the same pink room was shown for all the four stories. The acting was stilted, stiff and the stories were tacky, what bothered me was that the Director had not even made an effort to understand the entire gamut of issues related to HIV/AIDS. This it seems was directed by Mr. Pranab Das, who once upon a time had made a national level award winning movie, 'Hakim Babu'

The second movie was Mamata Ra Phula, developed for the Department of Women and Child by Sritam Das, a Popular Oriya film star?? and this movie was bizarre, with the Director giving a weird explanation as to why he could not do better than what he was doing, a poster which was shown when the women was pregnant with a girl child was still visible after twenty five years. and the new born child private parts was kept exposed to show that a girl child was born, but failed to show that a new born child would still have the end of the umbilical chord sticking out of her navel, whereas this child was a healthy clean larger baby.

The third movie was Bhul Re Bhul Karani: A movie which started well showing the lives of Transgenders, but ultimately lost itself and ended as a foolish, abrupt, inaccurate end.

In the end they tried to show us a movie called 68 pages, which looked good and enjoyable which was trying to focus and dealing not only with HIV/AIDS but also sexuality, rights, but this ended abruptly with the organizers giving a weak explanation about how the time is up and if anybody was interested they could come to their NGO to see it.

What was good was the effort of the organizers, but was bad was that there was no effort on the part of the organizers to reject movies which are shoddy, and perpetrate the us and them. The filmmakers who were present in the panel discussion made no sense, as they themselves were unaware about sexuality and sexual orientation. They even could not differentiate between jouna, jounata, jounatwa and jouna kriya (sex, sexual, and sexuality, sexual intercourse). I hope the organizers as well as filmmakers read this, as it is important that if you are thinking of a alternative film festival then you have to put in a lot of your thought to ensure that our lives reflect reality, not drama which has the potential to do more harm than good.

Did I get my answers to my dilemma ?? no but I hope to soon.

Sohamm.

Did I get answers to my dilemma