27 April,2011 10:49 AM IST | | Urmimala Banerjee
He may be camera shy but he is not scared of speaking his mind. About to launch India's first lifestyle card for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender community, filmmaker Onir talks about the need for social revolution in our country and the importance of acceptance:
Gay no bar
Well, more than the discounts offered by this card what matters is that it gives the LGBT community access to places where they're welcome and not discriminated against. It gives an individual medical and legal help from people who're sensitised with these issues. I see LGBTs being discriminated against in Mumbai and other cities. It's different in Delhi because of the Article 377 of IPC. There can't be a social revolution unless the law changes. Films too can play a major role by showing the queer community as normal people. I have never been embarrassed about my sexual identity. That's because I have never been discriminated against by friends or family members. After all, people love you for the person you are and not for your sexuality.
Movie mania
My mother was passionate about films. She wanted to be an actress but my grandfather was against it. I spent my childhood in Thimphu, Bhutan where we had only one cinema hall. My parents would take me and my sister to the theatre every weekend. We must have seen every commercial masala film along with the art house ones. In fact, as children we saw films like Chakra, Aakrosh, Manthan which weren't meant for kids. My parents considered us mature enough to watch adult films (smiles). After leaving Bhutan, we moved to Kolkata. My college-going sister used to take me to the film festivals where I saw European and Bengali films. Slowly, I fell in love with films and wanted to be a part of it. After viewing Shyam Benegal's Junoon and Satyajit Ray's Charulata, I was sure that I wanted to be a film-maker (smiles).u00a0
Writer's block
As a youngster, I used to write a lot of essays and poems. I took to writing after leaving Bhutan to express my sadness at leaving a place I identified as home. In fact, I used to write poems on the walls of my bedroom in Kolkata. But once my parents whitewashed my room to give me a surprise, and I lost all of them. As a filmmaker too, I strongly feel the need to tell my own stories. Some of the brother-sister sequences in My Brother Nikhil were inspired by my camaraderie with my sister Irene.
