Gaysi Zine vol.2 Launch!

Urban Solace, 6 pm, 19th October.

With performances by Dolly, Mari, Haider, Not a Number and others!

Book Discussion - Because I Have A Voice

The Bangalore Queer Film Festival 2014 Call for Entries

The 6th Bangalore Queer Film Festival

Call for Entries

Last date for submissions: 15 January 2014

The Bangalore Queer Film Festival is open for submissions for 2014!

 We invite you to send us your short and full-length features, short and long documentaries, animation and experimental films. Please send us your entries and pass this call on to friends, lovers and colleagues who might want to send in theirs.

BQFF 2013 brought us a whole range of some-powerful, some-madcap, some-tear jerking cinematic numbers – a set of highly unusual Indian short films, such as Snarky Baudelaire,Item Number, Lonely Walls and Raat Baaki; exceptionally moving documentaries such asHow to Survive a Plague, Call me Kuchu, In-between Days, Madame and Lesbian Factory; Cary Cronenwett’s archival re-visioning of the Kronstadt Uprising of 1921 in Maggots and Men;  Ira Sachs’ portrayal of love and addiction in Keep the Lights On as our opening night premiere, the lesbian period drama The Night Watch as our centrepiece and Khavn De La Cruz’s fabulously intriguing Mondomanila as our closing night premiere.

Besides the films, the festival included an exhibition of politically engaging artwork by transgender artist Living Smile Vidya, and activist Sylvia Karpagam, as well as the photographs that were a part of the ManiFest drag photo project. Our performers also kept their yearly promise of packing the hall with a wildly applauding audience.

We hope to be able to bring the same kind of film-viewing experience to our ever-growing audiences this coming year as well.

Please submit your films for preview. The final schedule of films will be selected in the second week of February 2014.  (See contact details below to ask for submission forms.) Please note the following suggestions:

Films

We accept films made by directors on themes related to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and other queer populations. Films that challenge traditional gender and sex / sexuality notions are welcome.

Genres

Please submit films of any form: Features, Shorts, Documentaries, Animation or Experimental.

Preview copies

Submit preview copies of full films online (through vimeo, youtube etc. or by sending the full film via Dropbox or similar file transfers) or by sending us the DVD copies to our address. Preview copies submitted for selection will not be returned. Copies of all films will be kept with the BQFF Archives.

Format of Final Submission

Final submissions are expected on high-quality DVDs only. Contact the organisers if you require more information or want to use other formats.

Subtitles

Since accents vary even among English language films, all films should preferably have subtitles in English.

Submission/mailing costs

Mailing costs for the submissions have to be borne by the director/producer/distributor. The BQFF cannot, at this juncture, support the costs of receiving copies for preview. Please contact the organisers if you are unable to bear these costs so as to arrange for alternative ways to send your films to us.

Screening Costs

As always the BQFF is a FREE event and no charges are levied on submissions. Additionally, only films that do not charge screening fees will be accepted.

Submission Address

All preview copies should be sent to the following address.

Please write “BQFF 2014” on the cover of your submission.

SWABHAVA

4th Floor, M. S. Plaza

No. 1, 13th ‘A’ Cross

4th Main, Sampangiramnagar

Bangalore – 560 027

Karnataka, India

Phone: +91-80-22230959

Mobile: +91-9844181294

Decision making process

The festival organising committee and the BQFF Preview Committee will preview all films submitted. Directors or producers or the distributors will be contacted immediately on selection of their films and any additional requests for material or publicity may be made at the time. More information about selection of films will be made available soon. Films that have not been selected will be informed separately.

Contact BQFF

For any queries regarding the festival, submission, or any other matter please contact:

Email:             blrqueerfilmfest@gmail.com
Web:               http://blrqueerfilmfest.com

Phone:            +91-80-22230959 (Office) or +91-9844181294 (mobile)

Organisations involved

The Bangalore Queer Film Festival is organised by Good As You (GAY), SWABHAVA Trust, We’re Here and Queer (WHAQ!) and Pirat Dykes. GAY (www.goodasyou.in) is a support group (est. 1994) for LGBT people in Bangalore and is one of the oldest support groups in India. SWABHAVA Trust (est. 1999) is a non-profit, non-governmental organisation working with LGBT issues, including providing access to support services in Bangalore. Both GAY and Swabhava have co-hosted previous queer film festivals in Bangalore. We’re Here and Queer (WHAQ!), is a queer women’s support group (estd. 2009). GAY and WHAQ! regularly organise film screenings at their weekly meetings. Pirat Dykes is a group set up to screen films that do not generally get mainstream releases in India. All the groups are non-funded and depend on community donations to function.

Queer Reads Bangalore: first meeting: THE PREGNANT KING by Devdutt Pattanaik

QUEER READS BANGALORE is a reading group, open to anyone, everyone, age, gender, race, orientation, class, caste no bar - and we shall focus on novels, shorts, novellas, plays, poems - all that is written, and written in the creative sphere - that are concerned with Queer and Questioning, Unidentified, Intersexed, Lesbian, Transgender and Transsexual, Bisexual, Asexual, Gay and Genderqeer themes, people, communities and issues - no matter the orientation of the person who wrote them. On the other side of the coin, we shall read literature by Queer and Questioning, Unidentified, Intersexed, Lesbian, Transgender and Transsexual, Bisexual, Asexual, Gay and Genderqeer writers irrespective of how non-heteronormative their literature may seem on the surface.

Think QUILTBAG literature. :)

So - we meet on the 4th of November, at 4 pm. I suggest Swabhava for our first meet, and after that we can shift venues to other places we can choose. 4 to 6 pm.


To read:

THE PREGNANT KING is written by Devdutt Pattanaik. You can find it on Flipkart.

We're still feeling our way through this, but come, bring friends. Come if you love the book, HATE the book, didn't understand the book - disagreement is good, complete harmony is good, everything but you not saying anything is good.

From Devdutt Pattanaik's website

"The Hindu epic, Mahabharata, written over 2000 years ago, narrates the tale of one Yuvanashva, a childless king, who accidentally drinks the magic potion meant to make his queens pregnant. The child thus conceived in and delivered from his body grows up to be Mandhata, a ruler of great repute.

What does the son call Yuvanashva? Father or mother? Can mothers be kings? Can kings be mothers? In the ancient epic, and the sacred chronicles known as the Puranas, which hurry through this slip of a tale, nobody raises these uncomfortable questions. They do so in this book.

And so a new narrative emerges: a fiction fashioned out of mythological and imaginary tales where lines are blurred between men and women, sons and daughters, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers.

There is Pruthalashva, who must be father because he is a man, and Shilavati, who cannot be king because she is a woman. There is Sthunakarna, a Yaksha, who forsakes his manhood to make Shikhandi a husband and then reclaims it to make Somavat a wife. There is Arjuna, a great warrior with many wives, who is forced to masquerade as a woman after being castrated by a nymph. There is Ileshwar Mahadev, god on full moon days and goddess of new moon nights and Adi-Natha, the teacher of teachers, worshipped as a hermit by Yaja and an enchantress by Upayaja. And finally there is Yuvanashva, the hero, king of Vallabhi, who after marrying three times to three very different women, creates a life within him, as mothers do, and then a life outside him, as fathers do, and wonders if he is either, neither or both.

If biology is destiny, if gender is a cornerstone of dharma, then how does Yuvanashva make room for such disruptions in order? For a good king, who wants to be great, must be fair to all: those here, those there and all those in between."

Pride Mela details!

We are excited to announce that the 2^nd annual Bengaluru Pride Mela is scheduled for Saturday Nov 26^th, 2011.

 We are looking for:

PERFORMANCES

Skits, magic, dance (Bollywood, Tollywood, Kollywood, Hip hop, Classical, Latin American, Contemporary), drama, stand up comedy, poetry, etc.  All performance styles are welcome!

Performances should be under 10 minutes long.  Please email your name / the name of your group, along with a sentence description of the performance to Kareem: kareem.khubchandani@gmail.com.  Submission deadline is Nov 10^th. 

STALLS

We welcome NGOs and other LGBT friendly organizations, bookstores, arts and crafts, henna artists, tattoo artists, food and drink vendors, florists, gift vendors etc.

If you are interested in setting up a stall, please contact Rohini: romavenkat@gmail.com for further information.  Submission deadline is the 10th of November.

PICTURES

We are hosting a photography competition as part of the pride celebrations.  LGBTQ oriented photos that fit the theme “IN PUBLIC,” are invited for submission.   Interpretation of the theme is open to the photographer.  The winning photographs will be published in India’s queer magazines: Fun, and Pink Pages.

Please email your submissions to Prithvi: prithvijho@gmail.com.  Submissions should include a high-quality digital photograph, photographer’s name and contact info, and a title or one line description of the photo.  Submission deadline is Nov 10^th.

VOLUNTEERS

The mela is a big event and we need help making it run smoothly.  If you would like to help out, please email Krishna: krishnapatil22@gmail.com. 

Please do not hesitate to contact any of us for further information about the Mela!

Krishna, Kumar, Kareem, Rohini, Prithvi, and Sam

Quick and Dirty Update about Pride

Life has been kicking my ASS this last week or more, and I'm finally,  almost, free and back, and missing you girls like crazy.

This is a brief summary of what this year's Queer Pride Bangalore will (mostly) look like:

• November 19th, Saturday - a fund raising garage sale at ALF
• November 20th, Sunday - a cricket match? I wasn't at all interested, so I forgot, insensitively, that others might be. Will find out and update you guys.
• November 22nd, Tuesday - Transgender Day of Remembrance - probably a candlelight vigil at MG statue
• November 24th, Thursday - Hopefully something at the Swabhava office. Maybe Vinay will run a movie? I'm not sure anyone has actually spoken to him about it, so this might not happen at all, and might just be a little bit like a park bench stories thing, except without the park.
• November 25th, Friday - a panel discussion, but we're not sure what on just yet.
• November 26th, Saturday - a Mela, with stalls and performances, hopefully to be held at Ravindra Kalakshetra. And after, we party!*
• November 27th, Saturday - Pride March. As far as I know we haven't got permission for routes for the march yet, though we do have options.

The next planning meeting is on the 19th, next Wednesday, at ALF.  Probably at 6: 30. Everything is still a bit up in the air. I'm  setting up a WHaQ meeting on Sunday, so those of you who want more detailsshould contact me.

And lastly, venally and importantly: donations, we need them! Look at this adorable pig:

How can you resist that?


*Actually, I daresay there will be parties all over the place, but this one will happen after the Mela, so there!

WHaQ! meeting, April 10th 2011

As the poor sod who has the keys to the Swabhava office, I got to MS Plaza at around 3:40 to open the place. M.S. Plaza has one of those rolling-up garage doors, and its lock is a little bitch. I jiggled the key around until something stuck - it took me five whole minutes, it was a pain, I deserve a cookie. Three of us walked in around 4 - nice timing, ladies! -and more showed up by 4:30.

Altogether told, 13 people attended today's meeting, included two guests, Visitors! From foreign shores! Making movies!

• Two of us came armed with potential new members' email addresses - it's always great to be the person who is able to say, Yes, you should join WHaQ! and do the introducing both ways.
• I begged for people to write for/contribute to/heap praise on this blog. The last because I am a sensitive flower. Also, tomorrow or the day after I will blog about BQFF 2011, and what that was like.
• We've set the date, time, place and cover charge for the Lavender Nights Farmhouse style! party. (That's not its actual name, but this is more fun.) It's an all-night party, and those sturdy souls who feel up to it can play cricket the next day. We discussed music, food and blankets, and one of us is bringing a tent which apparently zips up.
• There's a Queerlicious party happening on the 24th!
• Details for both these parties to be linked from this blog as well as the usual sources.
• Labels and stereotypes - the Indian lesbian, the American, Emirates, Thai lesbians. I'm still thinking about the "Moderate Lesbian" (last mentioned here) and intend to blog about her sometime this week. Possibly alongside her Moderate Bi/Pan-sexual and transgender sisters. The tomboy, the girly girl - how we get treated, what people assume of us (bitches and pushovers, respectively?). The lines between "butch" and "I don't care about appearances and so shall wander around not prettifying myself".
• Movies. Lots of movies. Lesbian movies! Our founders have them, and are willing to share - next week they'll bring some, and we'll bring laptops, and give ourselves over to a little mindless entertainment. (On which note, those of us who watched The Kids Are Alright think it's got far too much straight sex, and very little, and very bad, dyke action. Way to not represent!)
• S is trying to raise funds to help set up a small business for a transgender man who has had a lot of bad luck recently. Raising funds is a slow, tiresome business, but she has made some headway - Our Lovely Ruler has updates, which she will send out on the mailing list.
• Some of us dissed Vinay's book shelves, since they do not hold enough women-targeted books. We can fix that, hopefully? Kind donations? Someone gave/sold OLR some women-targeted books back during BQFF, so there's potential there, at least. OLR and Vinay have plans!
• There was some discussion on the Christian church, and religion in general. Particularly we were discussing C.J. Mahaney who weirds us out when we wear our Women Hats, and Fred Phelps, whom I am not linking to, who weirds us out when we wear our Queer Hats. (Also, they both weird us out when we war out Thinking Hats, but that is all the time, so not very informative.)
• Our visitors-from-far-shores told us about the movie they intend to make, about certain sections of Indian society (not going to give away too much here since I'm not sure they'd want us to), and some of us had suggestions for people they should contact.

Then we all needed coffee. LOTS of coffee. So we locked up - that stupid garage door lock, I want to kick it, it obviously hates the world! - and went to Koshy's. Mmmmm.