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A film by Anureet Watta
A birthday party, six queer and trans flatmates, a kidnapping case and a gun.My name is Anureet Watta, I am a queer poet and filmmaker living in Delhi, India. I am currently editing my next short film, 'Don't Interrupt While We Dance' this year. I am looking for your support in completing this entirely crowdfunded, entirely independent community based project.
We have completed shooting this film (you can view some of our stills below).
We are currently crowdfunding to complete editing, music and coloring for this film as well as to pay our beautiful cast and crew fairly! We are looking to raise INR 60,000 for the same.
As six queer and trans college students celebrate their 18 year old friend's birthday, the party is interrupted by the police who accuse them of a kidnapping. As the film unfolds, we see the police in opposition to transgender people as the grim realities of dehumanization, violence and lack of rights of queer and trans people are brought to light.
Here are some stills from our film.
International donations: please use my Paypal to make a direct donation - https://www.paypal.com/ncp/payment/5N65HF2BEKY3AIt is imperative there be stories where queer and trans individuals are seen as vivid and multifaceted individuals who deserve mundanity and whose anger is reasonable. Thus, through this ensemble of characters, I attempt to paint a landscape of multiplicity, where each character is different from the other. The center of the film is anger, how anger is often not afforded by those at the margins but seen as held hostage by the oppressors instead. Such a primal emotion like anger must be allowed to exist in the hands of our people if we are ever to realize their full personhood.
While sure, love is love etc, there is much more than that. Anger as an emotion has been denied to all of us, to be angry at our abusive families, our fatigued workplaces, our bloodthirsty government. And to be angry is to be human. Ofcourse, the queer and trans experience is not singular, and neither is our anger, so I can only attempt to paint a sliver of the bigger picture.
This crux of this story is something I lived through my flat in Delhi one fine night. And thus, while it is aspirational, it is also very personal.
I am not interested in the market economy of making films. I am not interested in telling you how it will be alright in the end, I don’t know really. Joy is interrupted, yes. Dancing is interrupted, yes. Lives are interrupted, yes.
I do want to make a film where my actors get paid. The people holding up the lights get paid. And we manage to have half-a-decent camera. The people behind the camera get paid. Indie cinema is radical but the radicality is generated by underpaid labor and I know so many of us can simply not sustain it. But that doesn’t mean the radicality of our films should disappear. It has been a task getting producers for this, it’s angry and thus not profitable Anger is often not afforded in only respectable forms, governments are allowed to be angry with their guns and khaki, people aren’t. So in such a case a communal way of making films has to emerge. It would be nice to see what we can do, uncensored and unrestricted.
I am asking you, if you have the means to help me raise money for this film. I have started a crowd fund and it would be lovely if you could donate any amount - maybe as much as you’d pay for a ‘real’ movie ticket. Or that you’d pay for a drink, or maybe two drinks.
For international donations: please use my Paypal to make a direct donation - https://www.paypal.com/ncp/payment/5N65HF2BEKY3A
Please reach out to me at anureetwatta.work@gmail.com for any questions, queries or communication.
