That's the question writer Nayantara Roy is going about asking gay, lesbian, and transgender persons for a documentary film on queer life after the reading down of Section 377 that criminalised homosexual behaviour. Sunday MiDDAY caught up with this New York Film Academy student on the last day of the shoot
That's the question writer Nayantara Roy is going about asking gay, lesbian, and transgender persons for a documentary film on queer life after the reading down of Section 377 that criminalised homosexual behaviour. Sunday MiDDAY caught up with this New York Film Academy student on the last day of the shoot
DO all tall women think they look fat in photographs?" Nayantara Roy asks, as she lugs the camera from the well-lit drawing room in her Malad flat to the bedroom, where Preet (name changed), a stunning woman is waiting for her. The scene is an intimate one and the male members of Roy's team -- Jaimini Pathak and Anand R, with whom she set up film production house Happy Endings, two years ago -- aren't allowed inside.
Preet, who had a male-to-female sex reassignment surgery four years ago, will be reading out a piece she wrote for a magazine, and besides the white cat hiding under the bed, Roy wants no one else in the room. 
Roy films Preet (name changed), for a film on the nature of
queer life and freedom after Section 377 was read down in 2009
As Roy adjusts the colour settings of her camera, she keeps a steady banter going. Personal questions are asked and answered, sometimes with a smile and a nod, sometimes with a well thought out response. Throughout, Roy keeps her eye stuck to her viewfinder, and encouraged by Roy's inoffensive indifferenceu00a0 -- the sort only a filmmaker in such a pose exudes -- Preet talks about her love life, and why she thinks that Gender Identity Disorder is a disease like cancer that needs to be treated, even though transgender people don't like to think of themselves as patients.
Twice, she looks directly into the camera and asks, "Am I looking fat?" Roy rears her head and answers, "No. This shot is perfect." A student at the New York Film Academy, Roy has been in Mumbai since the second week of May to shoot a documentary on whether the reading down of Section 377 of the IPC that criminalised homosexual behaviour has changed the way the queer community perceives freedom. And while Roy and her partners spent 10 days shooting the film, she has been in conversation with several people for over a month-and-a-half, and attended the Kashish International Queer film festival held last month, for "montage shots".
In fact, reveals Roy, emerging from the glass doors of kitschy Bandra lifestyle store Azad Bazaar after interviewing co-owner Sabina, and LABIA founder-member Chayanika Shah, the film got its name from the same montage.
"I observed something quite strange. As I stood in the cinema foyer holding my camera, people would half-turn to look at me, and then seeing the camera, would look away. In those moments, I caught a certain furtiveness and hesitation," says Roy, "which, I believe, is a depiction of the larger quality of queer life in India."u00a0 That's when Roy, who has friends and family that are queer, decided to name her documentary Over The Shoulder.
Even as Roy asked people if they thought they were 'azad', through the course of shooting she learnt how hesitation and fear are often layered over by reams of other emotions -- jubilation, pride, confidence and in some cases, indifference too.
"I received a whole gamut of responses, from 'Hell yeah, I feel azad' to 'I would be free, if I could come out to my wife and family that I'm gay'," says Roy. Legally, an archaic law may have changed, but socially, freedom is still a dream for most -- many still live in closets the size of rooms."
A lot of that, feels Roy, has to do with the social and cultural 'image' of the community. "There have been too many intrusions into the lives of queer people, who have been poked and prodded for sensationalism," says Roy, while her camera assistant shifts his weight from one foot to another. She hasn't called him in for a single shot.
u00a0
"They've been on the wrong side of publicity for far too long, and that makes me very angry."u00a0 Anger is an emotion that comes very easily to Roy, by her own admission. And some of it, she hopes, will make it into the film that is being shot by a handheld camera, making the footage, gritty, raw and cinematographically intimate.
Last year, Roy wrote the script for Dirty Talk, a play on censorship that was performed at an international youth theatre festival. This year, for Happy Ending's first non-commercial documentary, she returns to the issues of the fundamental rights of equality and freedom of speech. The aim, says Anand, co-founder of Happy Endings, is for it to be screened as a short public awareness film in a mainstream cinema hall.
"It hasn't been an easy film to shoot. At times, I have had to switch off the camera to talk to the person I am interviewing. It is important for me to forge a personal connection before anything else," says Roy, who was moved to silence when Chayanika Shah talked of the 'solitary exclusion of a large section of the community', who didn't have the social and economic luxury of attending queer parties.
"That was big for me," she says. "Already I can hear the music score to two of my interviews," says Roy. The film, she promises will be ready in a month-and-a-half -- cut, edited and finalised in the Academy. After that, let's hope it makes its way back to its country of origin to an unhesitant audience.
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