Holger Bernhard Bruno Mischwitzky, known professionally as Rosa von Praunheim, is a German film director, author, painter and one of the most famous gay rights activists in the German-speaking world. In over 50 years, von Praunheim has made more than 150 films. His works influenced the development of LGBTQ+ rights movements worldwide.
Yours Emotionally is a United Kingdom-Indian co-produced film written by Niranjan Kamatkar & Sridhar Rangayan and produced by arts charity Wise Thoughts (UK) & Solaris Pictures and directed by Rangayan. It stars Premjit, Pratik Gandhi, Jack Lamport, Ikhlaq Khan, and Ajai Rohilla. The film was selected for participation in LGBT film festivals in San Francisco, New York (NewFest), and others.
Sridhar Rangayan is an Indian filmmaker who has made films with special focus on queer subjects. His queer films, The Pink Mirror and Yours Emotionally, have been considered groundbreaking because of their realistic and sympathetic portrayal of the largely closeted Indian gay community. His film The Pink Mirror remains banned in India by the Indian Censor Board because of its homosexual content.
Ananth Narayan Mahadevan, also credited as Anant Mahadevan, is an Indian screenwriter, actor, and film director of Hindi and Marathi as well as Tamil Films and television shows. Having been an integral part of the Indian television serials and Hindi films since the 1980s, he is also involved in the professional English and Hindi theatre.
Trikone is a non-profit support, social, and political organization for South Asian bisexual, lesbian, gay, and transgender people. It was founded in 1986 in the San Francisco Bay Area and is one of the oldest groups of its kind in the world. South Asians affiliated with Trikone are from or trace their ancestry to the following countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Burma, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Tibet. Trikone published an eponymous magazine with an international base of subscribers several times a year. The magazine was the oldest South Asian LGBT magazine in the U.S., and ran from 1986 to 2014.
68 Pages is a 2007 Indian film about an HIV/AIDS counselor and five of her clients who are from marginalized communities. The film is directed by Sridhar Rangayan and produced by Humsafar Trust in association with Solaris Pictures. It had its world premiere at the International Film Festival of Kerala and screened at several international film festivals. It won the Silver Remi award at WorldFest Houston International Film Festival 2008, USA. The film was also screened in the Pink Ribbon Express, a National AIDS Control Organisation initiative.
Solaris Pictures is an Indian film production company based in Mumbai. It was created by Sridhar Rangayan, and Saagar Gupta in 2001. The two have gone on to create several award-winning films under Solaris Pictures' banner, focusing on LGBT issues and HIV/AIDS.
The KASHISH Pride Film Festival is an annual LGBTQ event that has been held in Mumbai, India, since 2010. The film festival screens gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer films from India and around the world. It is voted as one of the top five LGBT film festivals in the world.
Riyad Vinci Wadia was an Indian independent filmmaker from Bombay, known for his short film, BOMgAY (1996), possibly the very first gay themed movie from India. Born into the filmmaking Wadia family, he inherited the production company Wadia Movietone which is known for the Fearless Nadia movies which are one of their kind in the superwoman and stunt genre when other movies of their time usually portrayed women in submissive roles. Wadia is also known for his award-winning documentary on Nadia, Fearless: The Hunterwali Story (1993), which was written about in Time magazine and made a name for Riyad at the very outset of his brief but impactful career.
India's LGBTQ culture has recently progressed in its cities due to the growing acceptance of the LGBTQ community in urban India in the 21st century.
Humsafar Trust is an NGO in Mumbai that promotes LGBT rights. Founded by Ashok Row Kavi, Suhail Abbasi, and Sridhar Rangayan in 1994, it is one of the largest and most active of such organisations in India. It provides counselling, advocacy and healthcare to LGBT communities and has helped reduce violence, discrimination and stigma against them. Humsafar Trust is the convenor member of Integrated Network for Sexual Minorities (INFOSEM).
This is a timeline of notable events in the history of non-heterosexual conforming people of South Asian ancestry, who may identify as LGBTIQGNC, men who have sex with men, or related culturally-specific identities such as Hijra, Aravani, Thirunangaigal, Khwajasara, Kothi, Thirunambigal, Jogappa, Jogatha, or Shiva Shakti. The recorded history traces back at least two millennia.
The International Queer Film Festival Merlinka or Merlinka Festival is an annual LGBT-themed film festival which is annually organized in Belgrade, Sarajevo and Podgorica. The Belgrade edition is organized in the Belgrade Youth Center during the second week of December, and it lasts for five days. The Sarajevo and Podgorica editions are organized in January and February of each year, with the former being organized in the Art Cinema Kriterion, and the latter being organized in the PR Centre. The festival was founded in 2009 by the Gay Lesbian Info Centre and Belgrade Youth Center. It screens feature, documentary and short films from all over the world that deal with gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, intersex and queer issues.
Chennai International Queer Film Festival is a three-day LGBT- event that usually takes places on the last weekend of July as a part of the city's pride events. The main organizers are SAATHII and Orinam in partnership with Goethe-Institut, Chennai. The other volunteers include various community groups and NGOs, including Nirangal, East-West Center for Counselling, and RIOV. The last day is usually performances along with a panel discussion, usually to discuss and bring out the challenges faced by community members.
Purple Skies is a 2014 movie directed by Sridhar Rangayan and produced by Public Service Broadcasting Trust and Solaris Pictures. It documents the opinions of lesbians, bisexuals and trans men in India. It was broadcast on Doordarshan in 2015.
The following list is a partially completed compilation of events considered to have a profound effect on the welfare or image of Tamil sexual minorities. The use of bold typeface indicates that the event is widely considered to be landmark:
Evening Shadows is a 2018 Indian Hindi-language drama film directed by Sridhar Rangayan. The film stars Mona Ambegaonkar, Ananth Narayan Mahadevan, Devansh Doshi, Arpit Chaudhary, Yamini Singh, Abhay Kulkarni, Veena Nair, Kala Ramnathan, Disha Thakur, Sushant Divgikar and Faredoon Bhujwala.
Bindumadhav Khire is an LGBTQ+ rights activist from Pune, Maharashtra, India. He runs Samapathik Trust, an NGO which works on LGBTQ+ issues in Pune district. He founded Samapathik Trust in 2002 to cater the men having sex with men (MSM) community in Pune city. He has also written on the issues on sexuality in fictional and non-fictional forms including edited anthologies, plays, short-stories, and informative booklets.
Breaking Free is a 2015 film directed by Sridhar Rangayan and produced by Solaris Pictures. In this documentary, filmmaker and gay activist Sridhar Rangayan embarks on a personal journey to expose the human rights violations faced by the LGBTQ community in India due to a draconian law Section 377 and homophobic social mores of a patriarchal society. The film was selected to be part of the Indian Panorama (non-Fiction) and screened at International Film Festival of India in 2015.
Saagar Gupta is an Indian screenwriter, lyricist and film producer.
