The recently concluded 22nd International Film Festival of Kerala in Thiruvananthapuram had an interesting screening programme curated under the title “Gender-Bender” with six films from USA, India, Chile-Argentina and Lithuania.. The term “gender-bender” is often misunderstood, misinterpreted or misrepresented specially in cinema. In dictionary parlance, ‘gender-bender’ stands for “a function at which the gender roles are reversed, or manipulated in various ways. It also refers to a person who explores the boundaries of gender roles, or outright denies their existence.”

The Gender Bender section at the festival covered all these areas and threw up  a rainbow-hued prism of blurred sexual and gender identities through different stories. The films were also included in other screening sections such as International Competition and World Cinema. It was curated by John Badalu, an Ashoka Fellow and an Indonesian from Jakarta. Badalu recalls that the very first film about homosexualitywas The Dickinson Experimental Sound and Film (1895) directed by William Kennedy Dickinson that showed two men dancing. But the first film that reflected a sympathetic portrayal of homosexuals was Germany’s Richard Oswald’s Different from the Others. The Nazis burnt all prints of the film in 1933.

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Tamara, directed by Elia K. Schneider, an American-Venezuelian-Israeli filmmaker, writer and theatre director, is an adaptation from the real life story of Tamara Adrian, Venezuela’s first transgender politician. He grows up to become a successful lawyer and academic and gets married and has children. But the desire to be honest with his feelings makes him opt for sex reassignment surgery to become Tamara. When the Venezuelan state refuses to accept this new identity, she turns political activist bringing her legal education and experience in her struggle for LGBT and women’s rights. She is finally elected to the Venezuelian Congress and is currently working towards proposed political reforms.

Among films in the gender-bender section was – Front Cover, an English-Mandarin film directed by Ray Yeung which evolves into a romantic drama between two men, a gay Chinese-American celebrity fashion stylist and an actor who arrives from Beijing in the US who gradually fall in love with each other but are faced with the constant struggle with the media’s discovery of the actor’s alternate sexual orientation. 

Love was the only Indian entry. Directed by Sudhanshu Saira filled with twists and turns in the relationships between and among Jai, a Wall Street deal maker who comes to Mumbai for two days of fun, Sahil, a music producer who joins him and Alex, Sahil’s boyfriend who turns up with a companion and what happens next.

Something Must Break, a Swedish film directed by Ester Martin Bergmark is an unusual story of two men, the androgynous Sebastian and easy-going Andreas who insists that he is not gay. But he falls in love with the self-abusive Sebastian who wants to be a woman and they elope defying social conventions. 

Spanish film Rara directed by Pepa San Martin is about a 13-year-old girl caught between her separated parents. She lives with her mother, younger sister and her mother’s new partner, also a woman. The film offers the audience an insight into the perceptions of teenagers towards homosexuality.

Quick Change directed by Eduardo W. Roy Junior is based in the Phillipines and was filmed in real locations with a hand-held camera. Doriina a middle-aged transgender, walks the tightrope between the struggles of her own identity and her illegal business in injecting substances into the bodies of transgender girls to beautify them. The film explores the lives of the transgender community in Manila and how their survival is dependent on their looks.

Lithuanian film The Summer of Sangaile unfolds the story of coming-of-age of two young teenage girls. Directed by Alante Kavaite, it is the story of a relationship between Sangaile who is an introvert obsessed with stunt planes and Auste, impulsive and bubbling with excitement and the two, pulled towards each other, bring effective changes in one another.

All these films shed light on the constant struggle of the protagonists to come to terms with their sexuality, to sustain the relationships they develop against social prejudice and ostracism and the need to be recognised and accepted by the so-called mainstream society.