Mumbai's Queer Film Festival: Lisa Ray's 'I Can't Think Straight'

If you're a theatre buff or a movie buff, this is a great weekend to look forward to. There's the Queer Festival underway in Mumbai - pictured above, a still from Lisa Ray starrer I Can't Think Straight - which will see the screening of some of the best films on lesbian, bisexual, gay, transgender issues. For literature lovers, there's a three day festival on Swedish Crime Fiction as well. More on theatre with Celebrating Pearl Padamsee's work, as you shall read below. Enjoy your weekend!

Theatre
Good Morning Miss Katya
Scriptwriter and performer Delna Mody based this play on a talented but vicious professor she encountered while pursuing her BA in musical theatre at Sheridan College, Canada. Directed by Sam Kerawala, the play is about Katya Kewalramani, a teacher who was abandoned as a child by her father. Katya grows up looking after her fiery Anglo Indian mother Georgina, a failed artist. The mother resents Katya for sharing her artistic talent, and things come to a head when Katya’s debut art exhibition receives rave reviews.
6:30pm, Sunday 25 April, NCPA, Mumbai. Tickets Rs 200.

Malegalalli Madumagalu
58 scenes, 150 roles, five acts across as many stages and a running time of around 9 hours (with four 20-minute intervals). Director C Basavalingaiah’s attempt to put Kuvempu’s 750 page behemoth of a novel by the Malegalalli Madumagalu (The Bride of the Mountains) on stage is in many ways Kannada theatre’s most ambitious endeavour in a long time.
7pm. 23 April – 11 May. The play will be screened only on alternate days. Rangayana, Kalamandira Complex, Vinoba Road, Mysore. Tickets Rs 40. Call – 0821 – 2512639

Hair
This is the first production in India of this famous musical about 1960s counter culture. The original Broadway production was controversial because of its on-stage profanity, flaunting of drug use, portrayal of sexuality, anti-establishment stance – including opposition to the Vietnam War – and most famously, a brief nude scene.
23-24 April. Amphitheatre, The Garden of Five Senses, Gate no.3, Said-ul-Ajaib, near Saket, New Delhi. For tickets and timing, email [email protected] Entry charges Rs 15.

1947
1947 deals with two perennially sensitive topics: Partition and Pakistan. But it also laces the story with humor and wit, with Saleem Shah essaying the role of a man twice his age, Ghazanfar Hussain.
7:30pm 24 April. Stein Auditorium, India Habitat Centre, Lodhi Road, New Delhi. (24682222).Tickets Rs 50-300

Celebrating Pearl
To mark 10 years of Pearl Padamsee’s death, her daughter Raell Padamsee stages a tribute, with excerpts from some of her best known plays. The performance will also incorporate anecdotes about Pearl Padamsee’s work from some of her long-time collaborators such as Sabira Merchant. ‘Celebrating Pearl’ includes a song from ‘Godspell’, Mumbai’s first musical, which Pearl staged in 1971. Other excerpts in the tribute are from ‘The Wiz’, ‘Duet for One’, ‘Arturo Ui’, ‘The Collector’ and Pearl’s Last Play in 1989, ‘Betrayal’.
7pm. 23 April. Experimental Theatre, NCPA, near Hilton Towers, Nariman Point (66223737, 66588997). Tickets Rs 200.

Happenings
Swedish Crime Fiction
Swedish Crime Fiction – The Redefining of a Literary Genre is a three-city festival organised by Swedish embassy, featuring a discussion on modern crime fiction. The festival also includes a theatrical reading of parts of Stieg Larsson’s The Millenium Trilogy by Zafar Karachiwala and Hakan Nesser’s Woman with Birthmark by the author himself. This will be followed by a panel discussion on modern crime fiction featuring Nesser, playwright Ramu Ramanathan and others.
6:30pm. 24 April. Vie Lounge and Deck, 102 Juhu Tara Road, opposite Little Italy, Juhu (26603003)

Never Mind The Bull Fish, Here’s a Spot of ‘T’
A solo exhibition by Tarun Jung Rawat, curated by Alka Pande. Many of Rawat’s interactive and mixed-media works are fitted with sensors that set pieces in motion when viewers approach them. The characters in his works are strangely familiar from the world of birds, animals and humans, and sometimes a crossover between those worlds.
10am-8pm. Till 27 April. Visual Arts Gallery, India Habitat Centre, Lodhi Road, Delhi. (011-43662009).

Film
Mumbai International Queer Film Festival
The largest queer film festival for the very first time in India presents 110 films across from 25 countries. All the films screened highlight gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender characters and stories, exploring the diverse realities, complexities, joys and sorrows that make up their experiences in India and across the world.
22-25 April, Alliance Française, Marine Lines and PVR Cinemas, Juhu.  Schedule and timings http://www.mumbaiqueerfest.com

Ajantrik
Film-maker Ritwik Ghatak’s 1958 road movie in Bengali is about Bimal, a crotchety taxi-driver in a small provincial town who lives alone and devotes most of his attention to his battered Chevrolet, named Jagaddal. Ghatak takes the industrial wasteland that Bimal ferries his customers across as a backdrop for a tale of attachment focussed on the inanimate, rickety jalopy.
6:30pm, 23 April. Bangalore Film Society, 26, 17th Main, HAL 2nd Stage, Bangalore. (Call 25493705). For members only: annual membership, Rs 700. For details call Siddharth at 9886213516.

Claude Chabrol Festival
Alliance Francaise de Bengale features Claude Chabrol, a Parisian director from the French New Wave (nouvelle vague) film-makers who came to prominence at the end of the 1950s. La Ceremonie (1995) and La Fleur du Mal (2002) are the films being screened.
6pm, 23-24 April. Alliance Francaise de Bengale, Khaleel Munzil, 217, AJC Bose Road, Kolkata (Call 22815538/5198).ID proof required, with institutional Ids for students and academics

Music
Xerox & Illumination (Israel): Electronia, techno
Xerox & Illumination are Moshe Keinan and Amir Dvir from Israel. The duo joined forces in 2002 and since then released tracks in leading compilations of labels such as T.I.P world, HOMmega, Spun and Crystal Matrix. The mix of psychedelic trance with metallic sounds was outstanding and it was not long before the biggest names in the scene Like Astrix, 1200mics, Etnica, Domestic & X-noiZe came knocking for remixes.
10:30pm onwards, 23 April. Blue Frog, Mathuradas Mills, Lower Parel, Mumbai. Call 40332300

Ballantine's Retro Night: The Other People + DJ Monty
The Other People are hugely popular for their Rock n’ Roll renditions. Edgy and experimental, the band moves into covering classic artists such as Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Neil Diamond, Frank Sinatra, Louis Amstrong, Pink Floyd, The Beatles, The Doors, Bon Jovi, U2, Bob Marley, Billy Joel, Billy Idol, Police, Status Quo, The Eagles, Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, B.B. King, Bee Gees etc.
Following them is DJ Monty, South Bombay's prince of Retro. It is pure mainstream retro fun.
9:30pm onwards, 24 April. Blue Frog, Mathuradas Mills, Lower Parel, Mumbai.

(Courtesy: Time-Out)

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