Malini Jeevarathnam, a 28 year old and courageous film director in Tollywood (the Tamil version of Bollywood), has released a short musical film that she calls a lesbian anthem- in Tamil, for a Tamil audience! It’s a documentary and features a Tamil lesbian love song. Here’s an interview with her with English subtitles.
This documentary has received Best Documentary awards at the Norway Tamil Film Festival, nominated for an award at the Pune International Queer Film Festival Out & Loud, and received many other accolades around the world. It has been screening at seven different international film festivals and has won the Best Documentary award at three of them. In India, the movie has been screen at Chennai International Queer Film Festival, Bangalore Queer Film Festival, Hyderabad chapter of Queer Campus Bangalore and received rave reviews in many other cities.
I haven’t seen the film and I’m not sure when it will become available to the general public. But congrats to Malini and her producer and writer colleagues.
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Add Yours →Good news for India and for the LGBTQ community world wide. Perhaps this will pave the way for your novel, Cynthia. I believe this may usher in a new era of open-mindedness. Let’s hope so.
A true pioneer in the film world!
She really is- being gay is still so TABOO in India. I’m learning more about this young woman and her colleague who helped make this film happen, Pa Ragnith, who is a well established Tamil film producer, a Dalit (outcaste person), and a vocal activist. More on him coming! Cynthia