A queer twist to filmmaking

Nikki loves Meg. Meg loves Nikki. Nikki then falls for Aarti. This plot may seem simple, linear and ordinary. But here’s the twist: Nikki and Meg are lesbians, and Aarti, who also goes by the name Abdul, is a transgender who identifies himself as a woman. That, roughly, is the storyline of Love Is All You Need, a queer film screened at the recently concluded Bangalore Queer Film Festival, which questioned gender politics a little more than usual.

Like most of the other queer short films screened, this film was made on a tight budget and an even tighter deadline. It has three actors — Dolly, Vijeyta and Kareem. Dolly was also the producer. Her friend Merina Diana Morris was the director. Between Dolly and Diana, they did almost everything — from organising costumes to holding lights and scheduling the shoot.

The two worked together on the queer film Love, Lust and Leela which was made on a budget of Rs18,000, last year. And in 2011, Diana made another queer movie, Deliver Me. “These three films taught me that queer filmmaking involves more than just straightforward filmmaking,” she says.

When she set out to make Deliver Me, euthanasia was it’s theme. It was incidental that she was approaching the issue through the lives of two girls who fall in love, face family oppression and end up dead. “The queer angle was to be a faint thread holding the movie together, but when I fleshed out the script, that took precedence and became the central theme,” says Diana.

The film drew mixed responses from the queer community. “Many of them asked me: why did the girls have to die? Why didn’t you show them fighting the dictates of society/family? And emerging triumphant? That’s when I realised that queer women don’t want be to seen as victims. Onscreen they want to be seen as liberated women.”

Diana then decided she would take into account the insecurities and emotions of the queer community while making a film. “I toed the line with Love, Lust and Leela, and that was a hit,” says Diana. But this wasn’t what she set out to do when she got into queer filmmaking. She wanted to “deconstruct” this community. “I know their insecurities, and I wanted to confront them through films.”

Despite the community’s response to her films, she’s still passionate about queer issues, she says. “Society looks at queer people as if they are just about one-night stands and open relationships. This is a stereotype fed by mainstream media.” However, Diana now wants to collaborate with mainstream filmmakers on a straight, commercial movie. “I cannot call myself a filmmaker unless I make a movie exactly how I visualised it. Until then, I can only claim to dabble in filmmaking,” she says.

@vmalu