Kashish film fest back with fourth edition (With Image)

The Kashish Mumbai International Queer Film Festival is back with its fourth edition to encourage greater visibility of domestic and international queer cinema. It will screen as many as 132 movies.

The five-day event, starting May 22 at the Cinemax in Versova here, has a new theme "Towards Change" where forty countries, including Iran, Pakistan, Uganda and Serbia, will participate.

This year the Country in Focus is China with more than 12 films from there, while "Filmmaker in Focus" is American filmmaker-activist Jim Hubbard, who is set to attend the fest, said a statement.

Late filmmaker Shamin Desai's film "Auroville", one of the first LGBT feature films from the 1990s, is one of the highlights of the fest, which will also have LGBT films made by women filmmakers.

The films in the competition section will be judged by eminent international jury Panel comprising filmmaker Aruna Raje, actor-model Simone Singh, theater director Quasar Thakore Padamsee, author-poet Jerry Pinto and Berwyn Rowlands, director of Iris Prize festival.

Serbian film "The Parade" will open the fest, while Rituparno Ghosh's "Chitrangada: The Crowning Wish" will be the closing movie.

The fest will pay tribute to India's first queer filmmaker, late Riyadh Wadia, on his 10th death anniversary.