Jehangir Jani's 'Urmi', a film on transgenders, bagged the Best Indian Short Narrative film award at Kashish Mumbai International Queer Film Festival this year. Vishal Tondon interviews Jani on the experience of making and sharing this film.
JJ: It felt great. I was happy that my fellowship from TISS under their Urban Aspirations in Global Cities collaborative program with PUKAR and the Max Planck Institute of Germany was validated.
VT: How did the project take off? Who were your collaborators on the project?
JJ: While the subject was ever present in my head, the fellowship kick-started the film. All my friends and well wishers were collaborators because they all contributed their talent, resources as well as inputs.
VT: There are quite a few LGBT film festivals and pride parades happening now across the country. Do you think the LGBT scene has arrived?
JJ: It is heartening that such changes are becoming part of the cultural calendars. However, we still have a long way to go before we can say that the LGBT scene has arrived.
VT: Please tell us about the character Urmi. How did you come to conceptualize her?
JJ: Urmi is very sure as to who she is. It is only when she has to deal with the outside that she becomes anxious or vulnerable. She resists being defined by her birth or biology or physiology. Overarching is her dignity which makes her character empowering.
VT: The film complicates issues of gender and sexuality. It also makes no clear distinction between sexual desire and love. There are a lot of ambiguities about the character. Is this deliberate?
JJ: While sex is intrinsic to gender identity, it is not necessary to be sexual to be of a particular gender. There are a plethora of dimensions within desire like behaviour, thought process, culture, domesticity, etc., which make for a composite identity. I feel it is facetious to classify people in the narrow frame of sex. I find a more enriching reading of gender identity when it is seen as a spectrum.
VT: The film also questions the issue of loss of identity. Would you please tell us more about this?
JJ: I see Urmi as self gendered where she retains her privilege to be female as well as feel or masquerade as a male. Therefore she is a transgressor who defies definition. In a sense she loses one identity, but is not in a rush to assume another.
VT: There is a scene towards the end of the movie, where Urmi and her friends are seated behind a longish table; it reminds us of The Last Supper. Can you please enlighten us about the significance of this scene?
JJ: I have studied in a Christian school and its preachings and iconography are ingrained into my consciousness. The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci is also a signature art work. While it talks of a last rite of passage to Jesus’s life as a human being, and presages lament, I have shown Urmi as a survivor and the party being first rite of passage to a choice of existence.
VT: Can you please tell us more about the style of the film ‘Urmi’? It is clearly different in its treatment from your earlier film, ‘Make Ups’.
JJ: Both the films dealt with lives of people in cities. While Make Ups was brooding and languid in its unfolding with a restrained finale, Urmi has an upward pitch from start to finish. The celebration in Make Ups is internal to the characters but Urmi is out and assertive in the world.
VT: Some people think gay activism is overshadowing the efforts of the other groups such as lesbians and the transgendered. In that light, it is interesting that you and some other film directors should focus on depicting the subjective experience of transgendered characters…
JJ: This may have been the case before the internet and other media were not so ubiquitous. I don’t think one struggle dominates another anymore. Maybe gay people are more vociferous and therefore highly visible. I am sure the others are equally active. Anyways, we all have our femininity to speak for and so the transgender character arises from a self desire, sometimes like a schizophrenia.
VT: Personal to you, what is the message you wish to give to people who watch 'Urmi'?
JJ: Watch it and love it.
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| Copyright: Vishal Tondon and Jehangir Jani, 2013. No part of this interview may be published without written permission of the copyright owners. |
