Breaking Free
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Images
Girish
Breaking Free
Urmi
Sridhar
Queer Freedom March 2008
a drag queen @ d march
Website
http://www.indiegogo.com/Breaking-Free
Topics
Health: HIV/AIDS
Human Development: Capacity Building
Human Rights: Civil Rights, Gender, Indigenous Rights, Sexuality
Information & Media: Freedom of Expression
Politics: Activism, Civil Society, Democracy, Ethics & Value Systems, Globalization, Law
Project Geography
International: Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, South America
Identity Niches
Asian, Gay/Lesbian/Bi/Transgender
Budget
Raised to date: $45,140.00
Estimate to complete: $20,000.00
Total Estimated Budget: $65,140.00
The budget numbers above are accurate as of 01/01/2010
Status
Production
Media Type
Video
Project End Use
Other: Theater, TV, Internet, Community Screenings, Film Festivals, Educational and Advocacy screenings
Key Personnel
Sridhar Rangayan
Director / Producer
Sridhar Rangayan is a Bombay-based writer/director whose films present hard-hitting social issues and critique with warmth, compassion, and humour. His award-winning films The Pink Mirror, Yours Emotionally, and 68 Pages are at the forefront of India’s emergent queer cinema movement – ground-breaking in a country where homosexuality is still illegal and socially unacceptable. In 2006, he was awarded the South Asian & Foreign Achievers Award - which honours 50 achievers from around the world who have made an outstanding contribution in the global mainstream media. When not busy making films, Sridhar is an active member in several LGBT and HIV/AIDS community organizations in India.
Vivek Anand
Executive Producer
CEO, The Humsafar Trust
The Humsafar Trust works with sexual minorities providing counseling, HIV testing and treatment facilities. Its Center for Excellence(CEFE) emphasizes on research, capacity building of communities and media advocacy. The Advocacy unit of Humsafar works on creating awareness and sensitization on issues of sexuality and HIV/AIDS through street plays, IEC materials and films. It has recently produced “Bridges of Hope” a 25 minute educational film on issues of homosexuality and TG issues for health care providers and State AIDS Control Societies in India.
Paul Lee
Associate Producer
Paul Lee has produced, co-produced, and associate-produced over 20 films, including San Francisco filmmaker Jenni Olson’s Berlin-premiered BLUE DIARY and Sundance-premiered THE JOY OFLIFE, and the Berlin-premiered BELOW THE BELT by Toronto filmmakers Dominique Cardona and Laurie Colbert. Since 1991 Paul has organized, programmed, and curated film festivals in Canada, the U.S., Mexico,Peru, Colombia, Argentina, Spain, Italy, Germany, Poland, Romania, Moldova, Mauritius, Iran, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Thailand, Japan and the Philippines. Paul has also produced and directed award winning films Thick Lips Thin Lips, These Shoes Weren’t Made For Walking, The Offering. When not making his own films or producing films for other independent filmmakers, Paul takes care of International Marketing for the Cinema Development Fund in Kyrgyzstan, and for the Swedish film distributor Glimz AB.
Outreach/Engagement Plan(s)
National Outreach
The film would follow the very succesful model of dissemination that the director's previous film 68 Pages followed. This film has had a very wide grassroots level penetration both within the lGBT community and mainstream auidences.
In India, we will be working with various human rights groups, NGOs, CBOs, the National AIDS Control Organization, and the various State AIDS Control Societies, to organize country-wide free screenings of the film, along with post-screening discussions and workshops on LGBT rights, safer-sex, legal protection, and community healthcare, to deliver relevant information to the largest target audience possible. Whenever possible, the workshops will be conducted by a joint team of experts and local grassroots community organizers, to ensure relevance and accessibility to the local communities.
We will also be partnering with The Humsafar Trust, Lakshya Trust and INFOSEM (a coalition of more than 120 LGBT CBOs in India), to present free grassroots screenings of the film in villages and small towns across India. Whether rural or urban, after each screening and post-screening discussion, we will be leaving behind DVD copies of the film, along with printed information brochures (in local languages), with the local coordinators, so that rights based awareness and outreach within the local communities can continue, and the resources are there for further community screenings and discussions.
The main language of the film and the film’s website will be English, with just three or four interviewees speaking in Hindi – which will be subtitled in English. We will be working with the various NGOs, CBOs, and government agencies, to find adequate financial support for dubbing the film into various Indian languages, to ensure accessibility to illiterate audiences too.
By accessing local communities via both grassroots and government partners, our national outreach campaign will ensure that the film reaches the largest possible audience across the country, and that the local communities engaged in rights based activism embrace by the film and spread outthe messages in it.
International Outreach
Theatrical screenings, film festival screenings and screenings by various LGBT and human rights organizations across the world would ensure a wide network to both promote the film and ensure adequate exposure to the film and its issues.
Using the model set up by Sandi Dubowski for his pathbreaking films Trembling Before G_D and Jihad For Love and collaborating with his company would ensure that the film would be reached far and wide – both in the media and public debate as well as to the grassroots audiences.
Educational Distribution opportunities like the Documentary Educational Resources (USA), Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre (Canada), Magic Lantern Foundation (India), etc will be tapped to ensure that the film becomes part of university libraries andacademic discourses.
Funders
| Name | Amount | Date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| United Nations Development Program (UNDP) | $45,100.00 | 10/28/2009 |
Location
solaris.pictures.india@gmail.com
Mumbai, 400095
Short Synopsis
BREAKING FREE, for the first time, brings in front of the camera gay, lesbians and transgenders from the closeted Indian queer community to share their stories of pain and hope, of the legal and social atrocities they suffer and their cry for a life of equality and dignity. The film captures a community in indignation, a society in transition and the euphoria around the recent decriminalizing of homosexuality in India.
Description/Treatment
“The fear of the law is real… fear of the people who abuse the law… the policemen, the bigoted politicians… they constantly tell me that I’m a second class citizen… that I should be ashamed… and afraid” says filmmaker Sridhar who is out, gay and anxious – he thinks an Indian Stonewall is imminent.
Using the filmmaker’s own personal point of view and reflections to connect and comment upon various narrative strands in the film, BREAKING FREE weaves together poignant tales of the closeted Indian queer community; the injustice and violence against them, the legal battle to repeal a law that criminalizes them and the push within India for a more open and tolerant society even as homophobia and the call by moral policemen for queer-quashing becomes more strident.
The film primarily follows stories of three people:
Gauri, a transgender who went through sex reassignment surgery to become a woman and is now heading an organization for transgenders and hijras (eunuchs) and fighting for their rights; Girish, a transgender who ran away from the hijra clan, now identifies himself as a kothi (effeminate gay man) and works tirelessly to provide health care and treatment for HIV positive kothis; and Sridhar, a gay man who started off as a confused introverted youth in a conservative small town who now makes films on homosexuals and transsexuals.
Three people from there different social, economic and class backgrounds who claim three different queer identities: transgender, kothi and gay; each with its own circle of issues and travails.
Weaving interviews and day-to-day life with these three people, the film captures how the legal and social oppression of sexual minorities affect their lives and loves; the dissatisfaction and discontent brewing within these communities and how they are all on verge of a revolt, BREAKING FREE from their shackles of ignominy.
The film thematically focuses on five main segments: An Unforgiving Society, Identity Crisis, In the Clutches of a Monster Law, Legal and Social Wars, Winds of Change. The film will not follow a distinctly demarcated structure, but will flow into each other and sometimes even intrude or overlapinto other segments.
Even in the face of growing national and international outcry for overturning of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, a colonial-era law dating to 1861, which states: “Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature, with any man, woman or animal, shall be punished with imprisonment for life…”. The law has been used to persecute, blackmail, arrest and terrorize sexual minorities. It has spawned public intolerance and abuse, forcing millions of gay and bisexual men and women to live in fear and secrecy, at tragic cost to themselves and their families. Scared, ashamed and mentally scarred, many lead a schizophrenic existence and some have even committed suicide.
Kokila, a eunuch gang-raped by goons, but was refused justice and brutalized by the police, Urmi and Gauri, transgendered men who are regularly arrested and threatened; a gay man who was arrested, raped and beaten up; Desmond Hope, a white gay man arrested and threatened even when he was having consensual sex with another man; Pottai, a eunuch from South India, who committed suicide due to harassment and torture at the hands of police officers – these are some of the cases that have been filed. Many more are buried –everyday, across India.
Through verité footage, short reconstructions, news clips and interviews with men and women who were accused (often without adequate proof), as well as interviews with several lawyers, activists and people from the closeted Indian LGBT community, the film drives home a poignant tale.
The film culminates with the historic July 2nd verdict by Delhi High Court decrminalizing consensual same sex love in private, which led to nationwide euphoria and celebration among the LGBT community. But the moral brigade - politicians, religious fundamentalists and hate-mongers - have come out in a public outcry of hate and possible violence. Where will all this lead to?
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