Review
Breaking new ground: Maja Ma’s portrayal of queerness in a traditional Indian family
This reconciliation between Pallavi’s public (seemingly) heterosexual and closeted lesbian identities points to a distinctly Indian way of avoiding polarities through a new social arrangement where both identities are allowed the space to flourish.
By Juhi Sidharth and Chaitanya Ravi
Love matters – A review of Atypical (Season 1)
Sam is an 18-year-old boy who believes that he is ready to have a girlfriend. He is on the autistic…
By ElsaMarie D'Silva
February 16, 2023
Cinema’s Unintentional Counter-Narrative on Marriage
Reviewing three films (or the subplots of three films) to see how subplots show that marriage isn’t a destination or a single story that begins and ends in the ‘happily ever after’.
By Shweta Krishnan
January 3, 2023
The Promise of Queer Failure as a Way of Life
In a world where queerness is looked at as failure, The Queer Art of Failure allows for many possibilities to make sense of these failures.
By Rajeev Anand Kushwah
December 12, 2022
Why Settle For Good When You Can Have Great?
The Half of It is beautiful because it brings out the insecurities of teenagers who want to fit in with the world around them and are confused about their feelings which might be the diametrical opposite of what is socially expected.
By ElsaMarie D'Silva
December 12, 2022
Happily Ever After: Review of Good Luck to You, Leo Grande
This film reminds us of the power of connections in finding pleasure, joy, confidence and healing.
By ElsaMarie D'Silva
October 17, 2022
“Darlings”: Two Women, One Story
Darlings, with the narratives of Badru (Alia Bhatt) and her mother, Shamshu (Shefali Shah), illustrates the story of ordinary women in India who are struggling to change their discourse, deconstruct their reality, and imagine miracles.
By Anuja Das
September 19, 2022
Masculinity, queer representation, and the motifs of movement in ‘Dedh Ishqiya’
The film has all the makings and trimmings of a commercial thriller – a dynamic story, song and dance, an action-packed climax – and at the same time, it is a cinephile’s film.
By Srishti Gupta
Locating the ‘Nagar’ in ‘Nagarkirtan’: Identifying the feeling of socio-sexual rootlessness in the Transgender community
The plot of the movie narrates the tale of the love that grows between two people who are struggling to survive in a world of rootlessness and are continuing to make a cosy home for themselves. The love between Madhu, who works as a food delivery boy, and Puti, who survives by singing at traffic signals, blossoms while they cross paths everyday at the traffic signal and the look that they exchange appears to us as if each of them is trying to find a home in the other.
By Ria Basu
A ‘Room’ of One’s Own – Sexuality, Self-expression, and Safe Spaces on Clubhouse
In theory, the concept of the app is a great one – it provides women, queer people, and people belonging to oppressed castes the tea-stall, cigarette-shop type of public spaces for conversation that are available to upper-caste cis het men. The relative anonymity acts like a safe cover, and the app affords a certain autonomy and agency to marginalised people to regulate the kind of conversation that goes on in rooms moderated by them.
By Srishti Gupta
‘A Promise to Stand By’: The quiet feminism of Nathicharami
Nathicharami takes sexuality and sexual desire away from upper-class, Gucci-clad women and makes its viewers acknowledge its existence in the lives of women (middle-class wives and widows, in the case of this film) who are invisibilised, both in the society they live in and as subjects of popular content.
By Srishti Gupta
The Falsity of ‘Happily-Ever-Afters’: Examining Coupledom in ‘Lust Stories’
The anthology’s pull rests in its sincere and frank portrayal of male and female desires cutting across the divides of age, sexuality, and socioeconomic position. In terms of romance, the idealistic, till-death-do-us-part fantasy peddled by our movies and mainstream literature has been replaced by a realistic portrayal of modern relationships.
By Srishti Gupta
Hot Girls Wanted – Keeping up with the times
The film Hot Girls Wanted followed the journey of five young women aged 18-25 years as they joined the pornography industry and also looked more broadly at at women in this age group and their motivation to join.
By ElsaMarie D'Silva
January 3, 2022
Book Review: Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows
The story is so well told and is written with such a light, deft hand that it is almost easy to miss what makes it so quietly radical. To review it within the scope of exploring the coming together of literature and sexuality we must begin with its central cast of characters – the widows.
By Sheena D'Lima
January 3, 2022
Of “unapologetically flawed” women and feminism-lite: A review of Four More Shots Please!
Four More Shots Please! moves in the right direction when it comes to women (of a particular social stratum), their lives, and feminism at large – even if it takes small, stumbling, baby steps towards it.
By Srishti Gupta