Anirban Dhar, or Onir, as he is known ever since he directed the Sanjay Suri-Juhi Chawla-starrer My Brother Nikhil, was back in the city of his university years during the Pride month. The city premiere of his latest film Pine Cone took place at American Center, organised by Engendered, a transnational arts and human rights organisation. The screening at Lincoln Room also marked their I-View World Film Festival’s foray into Calcutta.

Myna Mukherjee, director of Engendered, said: “As an arts and rights organisation, we use arts’ critically disruptive and emancipatory potential to showcase multi-disciplinary programming that acts as a catalyst to engage, uplift and transform viewer perceptions around issues pertaining to human rights and contemporary culture across the globe, particularly South Asia. We do this by putting queer and other marginal voices at the centre. We believe art can change the way we think about culture and ourselves. Artists like Onir, who think about themselves within the narrative of the larger world of cinema, create new places for us to see and understand. The I-View World Salon is a platform where art would provide a space for dialogue.”

L - R Aniket Ghosh and Hanun Bawra

She asked viewers to reflect back to the juncture in time when Onir’s debut film My Brother Nikhil, a sensitive portrayal of a homosexual sportsman diagnosed with AIDS, had released (in 2005). “Today we are privileged to have a Pride month that is widely celebrated in our cities,” said Mukherjee.

“This film is very special for me. I was frustrated after a script on another film I was trying to make (a true-to-life account of a gay Army major) got banned by the ministry of defence. Then I shot this on an iPhone. It is about queer desire,” Onir said, introducing the film.

The full house, which got to pick from a bunch of stickers in rainbow colours as takeaways, sat through the story told in three parts of an out-and-proud filmmaker, Sid Mehra, falling in love for the first time and over the next two decades becoming cynical about love in the backdrop of landmark moments in shifting queer rights in India, from 1999 to 2019.

Arpita Chatterjee

The screening was followed by a panel discussion featuring Onir, Mukherjee, American Center director Elizabeth Lee and Sandeepta Das. Cast members Hanun Bawra, who played Sid, and city boy Aniket Ghosh attended the screening.