Director Sridhar Rangayan is one of the most prominent figureheads of LGBT+ discourse in Indian cinema. Throughout his prolific career, Rangayan has created seminal films that focus upon stories about the LGBT+ community. His film, ‘Yours Truly’ gives an honest portrayal of the gay community in India and his short, ‘The Pink Mirror’, was one of the first Indian films to openly discuss trans-issues. Sridhar Rangayan is a founder of The Humsafar Trust, the first gay non-governmental organization in India, and has been elected as Regional Director on Interpride.
With the release of his film ‘Evening Shadows’ with the London Indian Film Festival, we spoke to the director about his work, his thoughts on India’s attitudes to the LGBT community, and how LGBT discourse affects the course of his projects.
With Evening Shadows, what attracted you to portraying the coming-out story from the parental perspective?
Evening Shadows comes from a dark personal corner of my life, with the struggles my mother had when I came out to her that I was gay. I could see the pain I put her through, since she is from a small-town conservative family, she had to fight her own personal demons, trying to understand what it meant, not only to her loving son, but even to herself. Making a film that highlights the mother’s point of view was perhaps my own means of redemption. But the fact that the film has resonated not only with parents of LGBT+ children in India, but also parents of non-LGBT+ children, as well as parents across the world underlined the fact that the shadows of homophobia and patriarchy loom large over every society.
How much do you feel that your personal experience as a member of the LGBT community directly impacts the content of your films, especially in a project like Evening Shadows which is about coming out?
All my films are personal, but they are also political, because I feel that, from the time I accepted myself as a gay man, everything about my life which was personal became political. I don’t make my films as a business, I make films to reflect causes that are personal to me, by combining entertainment with advocacy, in my own brand of films that I term ‘Advotainment’. Myself and my (personal and professional) partner Saagar Gupta formed our production company Solaris Pictures in 2001 to make films that we believe in, on topics that are close to our hearts – be it stories around HIV/AIDS or LGBT lives. Our first film The Pink Mirror (2002) was made with a simple idea of bringing to screen hidden lives of many of our drag queen friends, their bawdy dances, their colourful, bitchy language and their deep interpersonal bonding of love and care. Since then every film of ours have carried a slice of our personal life and that of the LGBT+ community we belong to.
Whilst your films do centre upon issues that are faced by the LGBT community, at their heart they tend to focus upon the characters. What comes first for you when you begin writing a narrative: do you base the film upon a particular topic of LGBT discourse and build the characters out of that, or the other way around?
Myself and Saagar usually base our films on topics of LGBT+ discourse that we feel close to, but also strongly feel that no political discourse is possible without the people – who finally become our characters. More importantly we draw our characters from persons we know closely, or have encountered in life, that’s why people have commented that our characters are so real and their environments are so relatable. But each character in our story is not a unique person we have known, but a synthesis or many similar persons we have known and their stories – that’s what makes them universal. Like the lead character of a counselor in our film 68 Pages reflected the dreams, aspirations and lived-in lives of many such real-life counselors.
I understand that the script for Evening Shadows was finished as far back as 2009 but that you did not shoot the film until 2016. Did you adapt any parts of the story during this time considering how significantly the socio-political landscape changed?
We had written the script of Evening Shadows in 2008, before the decriminalization of homosexuality in 2009 by a High Court. While this judgment enabled thousands of youngsters to come out in the open, and we were thinking of changing the script, the reversal of the judgment by the Supreme Court in 2013 happened, and we were back to square one. It was a legal see-saw, but society didn’t keep pace with it. The Indian society takes years to come out of its moralistic slumber, so nothing much had changed, in terms of acceptance of LGBT+ persons by their families. So, when we started shooting for the film in 2016-2017, we pretty much stuck to the original, but set the story in 2013, on the eve of the Supreme Court judgment. Even after the final irreversible decriminalization of homosexuality in 2018 by the Supreme Court, the film became all the more important as a resource tool the youngsters could hand over to their parents to make their journeys of acceptance.
How do you feel India’s attitudes towards the LGBT community have shifted over your career?
When I started my activist phase way back in 1990 (joining the board of the then recently launched India’s first gay magazine Bombay Dost and then co-founding India’s first gay NGO The Humsafar Trust in 1994) homosexuality was only spoken in whispers, and the movement was absolutely underground and invisible. Now almost thirty years hence, the LGBT+ community in India has emerged out of the shadows and are empowered. But LGBT+ persons are still far from visible in public influential positions or becoming role models for future generations. I don’t understand what stops celebrities and influencers to come out and own up their sexuality. I am still waiting for the tipping point. I think perhaps acceptance by families is the key, since it is families that form societies. That’s why films like Evening Shadows become all the more important to create a dialogue between LGBT+ community and families.
What are your thoughts on the dichotomy between the controversial reception of your films in India and the response to your films internationally, especially on the festival circuit?
I was shocked when our film The Pink Mirror was banned by the Indian censor board in 2002, but went on to become a huge success internationally with over 80+ film festival selections. It has been a similar case with most of our films. Our films have travelled to over 200+ film festivals and won around 50+ awards, but recognition within India is yet a far cry. We of course have to contend with a censor board that is still defined by archaic rules, and also a non-existent independent film distribution system, that is still unaccepting of LGBT+ themed films.
As your films are considered to be controversial in India, do you ever feel the need to censor or tone down your content?
Not at all. Every film of ours is honest and sensitive and reflects the realities around us. In fact, our second film, Yours Emotionally!, an Indo-UK co-production portrayed gay desires very candidly way back in 2006. It was the first time that we had two Indian men kissing and making out and, believe me, it certainly was a challenge when we were shooting it back then. Our films are fiercely independent, and we do not brush them with a mainstream paint, just so as to pander to a larger audience. We continue to make films that are authentic and reflect our passions.
In the past decade, aside from Evening Shadows, you have tended to make documentaries rather than fictional films. Why did you decide to shift?
The spark was a press conference in Mumbai in 2007 that I was documenting, which was followed by a rally to protest against indiscriminate arrests of transgender persons in Bangalore. The energy, the passion and the anger by the community was palpable and real. From then on, I started documenting each and every LGBT+ event, whether it was a pride rally, an open mic, a film festival or a conference. Around the same time, I was also directing a film for UNAIDS titled Bridges of Hope (2008) about HIV/AIDS situation in the country, and also Project Bolo (2011), a LGBT Oral History Project, documenting 20 LGBT individuals’ stories. These two projects enabled me to travel across India and put me in touch with diverse realities, and everywhere I went I kept hearing about Sec 377, the law that criminalized homosexuality. I heard and documented people who were victimized, arrested, sexually abused, subjected to extortion using the threat of Sec 377. From this was born the documentary Breaking Free (2015) that exposed the system and brought forward the voices of the disenfranchised LGBT+ community.
But during my documentation I also realized, more dangerous than the colonial law was Patriarchy. I felt that was the root cause of all marginalization and stigmatization, suppressing all voices that were non-heteronormative and non-cis-male-centric. That is the reason lesbian & bisexual women and transmen were invisible, and also subjected to violence and rape. This became the subject of the documentary Purple Skies (2014) which was telecast on India’s government channel Doordarshan. Both these films brought out issues of the LGBT+ community, out in the open, and raised discussions during its screenings in colleges, universities, community centers, etc.
Taking the last question into account, what made you go back to narrative filmmaking with Evening Shadows?
It is not that doing narrative films were off our radar ever. It is just that getting finances to do a narrative LGBT+ themed films is so difficult in India, and we were trying to pitch Evening Shadows since 2007 to various producers, but nothing came out of it. When we managed to finally sell our very first film The Pink Mirror to Netflix in 2015, we decided to invest the money we got into kickstarting this narrative film. Rest of the money we crowdfunded with 180 contributors from around the world to whom we will always be eternally grateful. Also, we managed to rope in the best cast and crew who believed in the film and worked at remunerations that were way below their market rates. In fact, someone as eminent as Shubha Mudgal composed and sang the title song of the film absolutely at no cost, just because she believed in the film and liked Saagar Gupta’s lyrics. We wanted to return to narrative filmmaking with a bang – with a film that was as mainstream as it could be, but without airbrushing reality. We are happy that Evening Shadows has travelled to 73 film festivals across the world and won 24 awards. It was also released in theaters in India and also became the first gay film to stream on Emirates Airlines. But what gave us more satisfaction is that the film is reaching out with its message of acceptance, and touching hearts.
Is there any specific part of the LGBT experience that you believe has not received any attention? Would you ever plan to make something on this topic?
We have quite a few projects on the drawing board and working to realize them. Songs of Eternal Love is an ambitious film that is gay love story between an American Jewish professor and an Indian Muslim singer, exploring the differences in race and religion, and the power of love to overcome all barriers. But we want to make films on the still invisible spectrum of the community – transmen, asexual persons and those who identify as non-binary. They are part of the LGBTQIA+ community and their voices are hardly heard. But before we make films on them, I personally need to understand them better, hang out with them, befriend them closely. Because as I said, our films stem from characters whom we know deeply and connect with. I’m looking forward to more films that break the stereotypes and continue to keep our rainbow flag flying high.
Sridhar Rangayan’s ‘Evening Shadows’ is available to purchase for streaming on the London Indian Film Festival website from Sunday 28 February.
LoveLIFFatHome.com SPRINGS back with new screenings leading up to our SUMMER film festival in June
The UK & Europe’s largest South Asian film festival is back, kicking off with a series of upbeat movies, online on the last Sunday of each month, ahead of our June festival in London, Birmingham and Manchester, and online at www.loveliffathome.com
Kicking off the series of films and marking LGBT+ History Month, Evening Shadows is a tender heart-warming story, set in a small town in Southern India, where a young man comes out to his mother and the upheaval it causes with the traditional family and society around it. The sensitively handled film, directed by award winning Indian filmmaker and gay activist Sridhar Rangayan, underlines the challenges gay men continue to face in India to come out to their family, as well as question the dominant patriarchal social mores. The film has won 24 international Awards and has become a success on the international film festival circuit with selection in 72 international film festivals.
As an exclusive added extra, film critic, Ashanti Omkar talks to Director Sridhar Rangayan and lead actors Mona Ambegaonkar and Devansh Doshi, who play mother and son in the film, talking about their roles and the LGBTQ+ issues in the film in modern India.
