Through a lens, controversially

The PSBT Gender Sexuality Festival will tackle issues that are usually off-limits for many filmmakers "" such as homosexuality and menstruation.

There's a deafening silence surrounding many issues of sexuality and gender in Indian society. Most people don't even think about it, much less speak of it.

Not so Ambarein Al Qadar, Anandana Kapur, Sukanya Sen, Umesh Bisht, Priya Krishnaswamy and other filmmakers whose documentaries will be screened at the PSBT Gender Sexuality Festival starting today at the India Habitat Centre in the capital. Homosexuality, crossdressing, transgenderism, child abuse "" nothing is taboo for these filmmakers.

"For a long time, films on sexuality meant hijras or HIV/AIDS," says T Jayashree, whose Many People, Many Desires about lesbians, gays and bi-sexuals in Bangalore will be screened at the IHC.

But now, Jayashree says, there are a lot of younger people making films that turn an unflinching eye on the reality of alternative sexuality and question mainstream gender perceptions. Most of 15-odd films by Indian filmmakers on the programme list are new productions, made over the past year or so.

"Perhaps it is the result of globalisation, but there is now greater space for people to express their sexuality openly."

Despite all the new freedom, however, fixed notions of gender and sexuality continue to exist, and it is these that the films at the PSBT festival seek to question, and open to debate.

Take Ambarein's documentary, Who Can Speak of Men, which was a student film made in 2002-03 with two of her fellows, Gazala Yasmin and Nihal, from Jamia Milia Islamia's Mass Communication Research Centre (MCRC), follows three normal (read middle-class) Muslim women in Delhi.

But Kafeela, Arshi and seven-year-old Chini are very far from the repressed, burqa-clad characters that mainstream discourse typecasts them as "" they have short hair, dress as men when they go out and aggressively stand up to the men who jeer at them for looking the way they do. And for all its revolutionary, even subversive elements, it's neither preachy nor sensational but a fun film with a poignant strain running as a subtext.

Then there is Blood on My Hands by Anandana Kapur, Manak Matiyani and Surabhi Saral, another student film but only in the sense that it was made when the three were still students at MCRC (it was commissioned by PSBT).

The "blood" here refers to menstruation, primarily the hypocrisy inherent in Indian society's attitude to it "" celebrating it as a marker of fertility while at the same time condemning a menstruating woman as impure.

Beyond Reflection by Umesh Bisht, another product of MCRC, is another "bold" documentary on Tista Das, who underwent sex reassignment surgery to become a woman.

There are few more MCRC alumni on the programme list of the current festival "" Saba Dewan (Delhi-Mumbai-Delhi on the dancing-bar girls), Sukanya Sen, Pawas Bisht (inaugural film, A Body That Will Speak), Kuber Sharma (student film, All About Our Mothers, with Manak Matiyani).

"That's because in our main masters programme the focus has always been on non-fiction film-making. Representation of gender, ways of looking at men and women are important issues discussed in class. Every year, there are at least a couple of student films that deal with gender/sexuality," says Sabina Gadihoke, a lecturer in TV and video production. More important is the creative freedom "" "there's no editorial control on student films", as Ambarein points out.

But for all the films being made, making documentaries is not an easy business in India. Bisht had been sitting on the proposal for 3-4 years, and had almost given up before he got funding from PSBT.

"If it was difficult to get funding earlier, it has become almost impossible now," says Bisht. Jayashree's film was in gestation for four years, and then shot in just 10 days "" all that she could afford in the funds that she raised. Most filmmakers thus work on more commercially viable ventures to support themselves or fund their ventures.

Then there is the problem of getting an audience. Earlier, Doordarshan had several slots on its many channels on which documentaries were screened. But now it has just two, tucked away at odd hours in the morning and late evening.

Jayashree's film has had extensive screenings, "but it's the same people again and again". Platforms like the current PSBT fest, she feels, help films likes hers provide a wider platform, and go beyond the "small clique" of festival goers.

But some, like Anandana Kapur, take heart from the growing number of festival and media collectives. And then there are the audiences among interest groups. Kapur, for example, hopes to show Blood on My Hands in schools and colleges to get young men and women to question the secrecy forced upon menstruation.

Perhaps it is by reaching such an audience, an audience which empathises with the film because of a similar situation or experience in life, that documentary-makers can hope to be heard.