Censors clear male lip-lock scene

 The Central Board for Film Certification, also called censor board, has for the first time decided to pass a male kissing scene in a Hindi film.

Audiences will see little-known actors Maradona Rebello and Amit Purohit locking lips for 10 seconds “in a drunken state” in Pankh, which has already courted controversy for showing male nudity.

Pankh, directed by Sudipto Chattopadhyay and produced by Sanjay Gupta, also features Bipasha Basu, Lillette Dubey, Mahesh Manjrekar, Ronit Roy and Sanjeeda Sheikh.

“We have seen the scene and decided not to raise an objection as there is no way we can prove it is unnatural sex,” said Vinayak Azad, regional censor board officer. “We are not against homosexuality and don’t want to project ourselves as such. [But] we will be releasing the film with an ‘A’ [adults only] certificate.”

Homosexuality is a crime in India under section 377 of the Indian Penal Code.
Azad, however, sounded concerned about the film’s climax in which Rebello, playing a character named Jerry, drops his towel in front of his mother (Dubey) and is shown bare-bottomed. “I have asked them to modify that particular scene,” he said.

Chattopadhyay said he was not expecting the kiss to be passed so easily, “especially after they asked us to cut scenes from the climax because we have shown the actor butt-naked”. Explaining the context of the kiss, he said: “Salim [Purohit] has always grown up thinking that Jerry, a cross-dresser, is a girl. So he is kissing Maradona thinking he is a girl. Even Maradona is shown fantasising about a woman [Basu] all through the movie.”

In Pankh, Rebello plays a former child actor whose mother used to dress him up as a girl on screen. The movie dwells on how the screen image proves overpowering for the child’s sexuality when he grows up.