|
|
 |
Bringing It Home: Indian Film Tackles HIV, Gay Life With Family Tale
By Sandip Roy, Pacific News Service
In India in the past, films depicting homosexuality have been
censored or ignored. Theaters screening such films have been ransacked.
But a new film with a gay relationship at its core is moving audiences
to tears by focusing on the family and the impact of HIV.
 SAN
FRANCISCO - June 24, 2005 - When the lights came up after a screening of
"My Brother Nikhil" at the Castro theater in San Francisco, my eyes were
raw and red from weeping. I had expected that India's first film to take
on the twin taboos of HIV and homosexuality would be an emotional
tearjerker, with sad songs and 100 wailing violins. Instead, it was
really about family.
Coming out in India in the late 1980s was a lonely experience. In order
to do it, many of us had to isolate ourselves, sometimes putting oceans
between us and our families. Yet the family remained, like an amputated
limb still tugging us back. And as Onir, the director of "My Brother
Nikhil" found out, it's a feeling that cuts across cultures.
"I thought being San Francisco, people would go for the gay angle," says
Onir, who uses one name only. "But a Mexican man who had been positive
for 15 years came to me and said, 'Thank you for making a film about
family.'"
Coming out as gay is often about the triumph of the individual over
family. In queer magazines, hunky gay men and women advertise everything
from cruises to pills. They are usually alone, or at most with a cutie
they might have met on Gay.com. Families are missing, as if they don't
matter. But some of the biggest cheers at San Francisco's annual LGBT
Pride Parade are always reserved for gray-haired folks in nondescript
T-shirts, marching under the PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and
Gays) banner.
Watching "My Brother Nikhil," I realized that if attitudes toward HIV or
homosexuality are to change, that change has to come from within
families. Onir realizes that too. Even the title, "My Brother Nikhil,"
places the film squarely in the realm of family relationships.
The genesis of the story was a film Onir had edited about Indian swimmer
Dominic D'Souza. In the early days of the epidemic in the '80s, laws
allowed quarantining HIV-positive people in virtual isolation in
sanatoriums. Yet D'Souza became one of the first openly HIV-positive
activists.
"Dominic's face would haunt me," says Onir. But instead of making a
documentary about homosexuality and HIV, he decided to make a regular
Bollywood film in Hindi. It even has a song.
"I needed the film to be seen in India," says Onir. "We never promoted
it as a gay film or a film about HIV/AIDS." Onir had seen both those
strategies backfire. A critically acclaimed Hindi remake of
"Philadelphia" with a heterosexual AIDS victim sank at the box office
despite UNDP support. Onir turned down an offer from some leading
international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working on HIV/AIDS
to release the film on Dec. 1, World AIDS Day.
Previous queer-themed films like "Fire" and "Girlfriends" had released
in India touting their lesbian content. India's right wing, always on
the watch for "Western corruption," ransacked theaters. Onir describes
his film instead as one about relationships, between brother and sister,
father and son and also between two male lovers.
Onir organized screenings for some of the more homophobic distributors
as well as some big names in the right-wing parties. "I switched on the
lights immediately after the screening," says actor Sanjay Suri, who
plays Nikhil. "And I could see they had been crying."
With an estimated 5.2 million Indians infected with HIV, HIV awareness
has become the mantra of NGOs all over India. Media is key to this
effort. But foundations funding HIV/AIDS awareness want films that have
a direct message about prevention. "It never works," Onir says. "It has
to be personalized, and then you can talk about the issue afterwards."
"People know its all around, but they don't want to spend money to watch
a film about AIDS," Suri says.
One thing Indians do understand, however, is family drama. With
Bollywood star Juhi Chawla -- a sort of Meg Ryan of wholesomeness --
playing Nikhil's sister, the film, Onir says, gets its point across
"without making anyone uncomfortable, without threatening anyone." Even
the Indian censor board, a notoriously prickly body, has issued a
U-certificate, which allows the film to be screened for everyone from
school children to army soldiers.
Some gay activists have criticized Onir for toning down gay content in
order to make the film more mass-market friendly. Though the
relationship between the film's protagonist Nikhil and his lover Nigel
is unmistakable, they are never shown kissing. "Even the heterosexuals
in the film don't kiss," Onir retorts. "But from the very first look
Nigel gives Nikhil, you know he loves him." The idea, Onir says, was to
introduce to audiences homosexual relationships based around love rather
than sex.
It works. Onir recalls that some of the crew members were uncomfortable
with the theme of the film. But toward the end of the shoot, he
overheard the gaffer telling the cameraman, "I never thought of these
things in this way before. I think it's OK."
"It's OK" is a small ripple of change. But it's starting at the only
place where change might really stick -- in the heart of the family. Gay
films have often been about coming out. In some ways, "My Brother Nikhil"
is about coming home.
Sandip Roy is a PNS editor and hosts "UpFront," New
California Media's radio show on KALW-FM 91.7 in San Francisco. |
