Film
‘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
Video Page: Leading Lady Parts
The short film Leading Lady Parts offers incisive commentary on how femininity and female sexuality are represented in popular culture.
By Curated Content
December 3, 2018
Video Page: Imtiaz Ali’s New Short Film Has a Rockstar
Imtiaz Ali’s 5-minute film begins as any trite gangster flick but rapidly flips things around both in narrative and in audience perception.
By Curated Content
April 18, 2016
Video Page: ‘How Can It Be’
A moving short film by Mira Nair on the anguish we subject ourselves to when faced with the inexplicable power…
By Curated Content
February 1, 2016
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In terms of romance, the idealistic, till-death-do-us-part fantasy peddled by our movies and mainstream literature has been replaced by a realistic portrayal of modern relationships.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
August 1, 2014
Reel Review: Desire and Conciliation in Raj Kapoor’s Satyam Shivam Sundaram
Satyam Shivam Sundaram (Truth, God, Beauty) is the story of Rupa (Zeenat Aman), an archetypical abhagan (wretched girl), whose misery begins at her birth when her mother dies. She is immediately declared an accursed child and is shunned by others. Later, a freak accident results in scalding oil splashing across one side of her face, leaving her permanently scarred. Nevertheless, she goes about her daily life – alone, yet content.
By Syed Saad Ahmad
Let’s Talk About 377 | Popular Culture is Changing How India Views Homosexuality
When Deepa Mehta’s Fire came out in 1996, violent protests roiled India over the depiction of romance between two female leads. There is no homosexuality in India, demonstrators declared while burning effigies in the Capital. In contrast, when Margarita With A Straw came out in 2014, it received accolades for its sensitive portrayal of queer desire in a woman with disability.
By Curated Content
Issue in Focus – Desire and Sexuality
Any desire, not necessarily or narrowly sexual, but perhaps related to sexuality, such as independence, equality, gender role-bending, controlling your own finances, eating the food you’d like to eat as opposed to the food your spouse desires, wearing the clothes you’d like to wear, birth control, choosing to have or not to have children … any of these desires would have only that importance that the individual concerned is able to apportion to it.
By Shikha Aleya
August 1, 2018
How We Reimagine and Redefine Freedoms
Every part of life, the world too, is storied. Stories are the thread that hold histories and truths together. Stories are at the core of myth-making. Everything that we know is part of multiple crisscrossing relational storylines that we raise and those that we have no power in raising.
By Curated Content
March 15, 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
Descent into Darkness
No Limits explores several themes – the struggles that athletes go through to reach their goals, the personal and professional risks they take to break records, the compromises they make and the single-minded focus required of them.
By ElsaMarie D'Silva
April 21, 2023