The 14th edition of KASHISH Mumbai International Queer Film Festival, South Asia’s biggest LGBTQ+ film festival is organizing the KASHISH 2023 Online Festival from June 16 – 25, 2023 at https://xerb.tv/channel/kashish2023/virtual-events
The festival will screen 107 films from 44 countries at its online edition.
Here are a pick of 6 films by Sridhar Rangayan, festival director
June 21, 2023
HOME GROUND
Dir: Aram Kwon
2022 | 80 min | Republic of Korea
In the mid-1990s, the first openly lesbian bar in South Korea, LesBos, opened its doors in Sinchon, Seoul. This documentary follows one of the bar’s proprietors, Myong-woo, whose witty commentary prompts a broader reflection on Seoul’s lesbian scene, and the evolution of the city’s queer spaces over the past five decades. This is a film about a shared sense of belonging, and shared environments of kinship. Offering a rare insight into Seoul’s often-hidden lesbian history, Home Ground reveals the vibrancy and endurance of South Korea’s queer culture.
June 21, 2023
APAIBA LEICHIL (Flurry Clouds)
Dir: Bobby Wahengbam
2021| 90 min | Manipur, India | Meitei
The film shows the conditions of the Nupi Sabis (transgender people) in Manipur. It shows one of the Nupi Sabi (played by real life trans actor Bishesh Huirem) becoming popular in the Shumang Kumhei troupe but whether the popularity of Nupi Sabis is related to their personal romantic life and social outlook is not properly known.
June 22, 2023
RUNS IN THE FAMILY
Dir: Ian Gabriel
107 min / South Africa / English
When modest tailor and single Indian dad, Varun (Ace Bhatti), is called to break his long-lost white ex-girlfriend, Monica (Diaan Lawrenson), out of a rehab clinic across the country, he and their transgender son, River (Gabe Gabriel), take a road trip across South Africa to rescue her. Varun tells stories of his adventurous past with Monica as he and River jump the border fence and hitchhike in eSwatini with a kind and fiery stranger, Shaunice (Loren Loubser). Finally, they reach the rehab clinic where the receptionist, Hloni (Faniswa Yisa) takes some convincing before finally releasing Monica to the father-son duo. Tensions are high as the dysfunctional new family unit adjusts on their way back home where River is set to compete with his best friend, Ollie (Cleo Wesley), in a once-in-a-lifetime drag competition that could win him his long-awaited gender-affirming surgery, so long as no con artists from Varun and Monica’s wild past with their old friend and mafia man Stan (Rob van Vuuren) get in their way.
June 23, 2023
WHO OWNS THE SKY
Dir: Sabian Baumann
2022 | 82 min | Argentina, Switzerland | English, French, German, Spanish
An activist documentary uses an intersectional approach connecting the questions of the interrelationship between gender concepts and cis-hetero norms with colonialism and capitalism.
The starting point of the film is a series of interviews with activists from artistic and academic environments in Buenos Aires, Argentina and Zürich, Switzerland.
+ LEGENDARY CHILDREN [ALL OF THEM QUEER]
(Amazones d’Hier, Lesbiennes d’Aujourd’hui, 40 ans plus tard)
Dirs: Dominique Bourque, Johanne Coulombe, Julie Vaillancourt
2022 | 57 min | Canada | French
This documentary gives voice to the four lesbians who founded the collective Amazones d’Hier, Lesbiennes d’Aujourd’hui in Montreal in 1979: Gin Bergeron, Ariane Brunet, Louise Turcotte and Danielle Charest. Forty years later, through archival documents and interesting ‘mise en abyme’, they look back on their pioneering achievement: a video about lesbians of the time.
June 24, 2023
SMALL TOWN BOYS
Dir: Gaël Lepingle
2022 | 83 min | France | French
A nightclub employee, Youcef falls in love with the dancer of a queer troupe on summer tour. Elsewhere, a young man perched on high heels crosses the village he is about to quit. In an isolated village, Jonas has an appointment for erotic pictures with a stranger. A diffracted and atmospheric triptych about the solitude experienced by youngsters during the long, slow days spent in communities deep in the provinces.
More details at https://xerb.tv/channel/kashish2023/virtual-events
