New Delhi, Jan 27: KASHISH Arts foundation is organising a 2 day-long Indian language LGBTQ+ film festival as part of the recently launched Mumbai Festival 2024 activities by Maharashtra Tourism. The event titled ‘KASHISH Chalchitra Utsav 2024’ will be held on January 27th & 28th from 11.00am to 9.30pm at Veda Kunba Theater, Andheri West.
This Indian language festival is coming after a hiatus of 4 years, to also coincide with the ongoing Mumbai Queer Pride month activities.
The festival will feature 37 Indian LGBTQ+ films in Hindi, Marathi, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali, Panjabi, Urdu and Sanskrit. These are films which have won awards, acclaim or audience favourites at past editions of KASHISH Pride Film Festival, earlier known as KASHISH Mumbai International Queer Film Festival.
“KASHISH has for the past 14 years been an integral part of Mumbai, and we are very happy to be celebrating KASHISH Chalchitra Utsav with our collaboration with the government-supported Mumbai Festival, and also the community-led Mumbai Queer Pride month activities. We want to continue to build bridges between the LGBTQ+ community and society, to mainstream LGBTQ+ narratives and lives,” said Sridhar Rangayan, festival director.
“We want to bring Indian language LGBTQ+ cinema to the forefront, so that we can have diverse narratives which can speak and convey to our fellow citizens in their own languages,” said Saagar Gupta, director of programming.
An interactive story building contest and a panel discussion on emerging trends in Indian LGBTQ+ representation in cinema and web series are also planned.
The Mumbai Queer Pride March will be held on February 3, 2024 starting from August Kranti Maidan.
KASHISH Pride Film Festival is South Asia’s biggest LGBTQ film festival and the first mainstream LGBTQ+ film festival in India. It has been held in Mumbai for the past 14 years and the 15th edition will be held June 5-9, 2024 at Liberty Cinema and other venues.
More information about KASHISH at mumbaiqueerfest.com and details of the festival are available here.
