Deepa Mehta has always been a rebel with a poise. Never allowing the naysayers to rub her the wrong way, she has taken all the attempts to thwart her voice on her chin. Her latest film Funny Boy is yet stream in India although it’s been streaming on Netflix in the rest of the world for a year. It seems like an instant-replay version of Deepa’s pathbreaking LGBTQ film Fire in 1996. Excerpts:
Your film Funny Boy is still to be shown in India, even though it got released even in Sri Lanka where it was initially banned. Your thoughts?
Funny Boy, a film about prejudice, gender and race was never banned in Sri Lanka. Due to the pandemic its release in movie halls all across Sri Lanka had to be postponed.
I have been told by unofficial sources that it was the gay theme that kept Netflix from screening your film in India. And yet this week Netflix is streaming another gay-themed film Cobalt Blue directed by Sachin Kundalkar and based in his own 2013 novel about a teenager growing up in Kerala in the 1990s who has a relationship with his paying guest. How does one explain the dichotomy?
All that I was told was that Netflix India rejected it while ironically Netflix International embraced it. Never got the reason why, especially as it was a prestigious Ava du Vernay release and went on to win numerous awards.
Looking back, how much of the mindset has changed the world over when it comes to films on homosexuality since you made Fire?
A lot has changed on how films on LGBTQ+ are perceived and embraced the world over. What a relief that the ‘tamasha’ created about Fire has diminished.
Fire had to face the ire of the moral police. How do you look back on the experience of trying to get the film released in spite of the hurdles?
Post Fire’s release and subsequent trashing of movie halls and the heartbreak accompanying it, a few things have stood up over time for me. One, the steadfastness of Shabana Azmi and Nandita Das who stood by the film. It’s another matter that they couldn’t do the film eventually. Seema Biswas and Lisa Ray did. The integrity of Jhamu Sugandh, and the image of hundreds of women carrying placards outside the trashed movie hall Regal in Delhi, which proclaimed in bold letters “We are Indians and we are lesbians”. This was to counter the reason for the ban of Fire by the Government which was that there are no lesbians in India.
Jane Campion recently said that women filmmakers have to constantly fight the boys. Do you agree with her?
The boys’ club is sadly still a reality.
Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha.
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