Vikram Johri: 'Our' side of the story

The intentions are laudable, the hard work clearly visible. In its fifth edition, Kashish, the annual Mumbai-based queer film festival, has made a name for itself as a must for serious film-goers. In a year that has been bitter-sweet for the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community - the Supreme Court recognised transgenders as the third sex, even as it refused to decriminalise homosexuality - the importance of Kashish in presenting "our" side of the story is much appreciated.

Unlike previous years, when the focus was on big names - the Palme d'Or-winning Blue is the Warmest Colour was the opening film in 2013 - this year the line-up was more broad-based. Nowhere was the personal more political than in the festival's opening film, Out in the Dark. Set along West Asia's biggest fault line, it is the love story of an Israeli lawyer and a Palestinian student of psychology. The easy conviviality of the gay party at which they meet soon turns into dread when a common (gay) friend of theirs is caught in the crossfire of the two countries' intelligence war.

The movie is deeply layered, bringing out distinctions in perceptions of homosexuality between two kinds of people who live cheek by jowl. Roy, an Israeli lawyer, is out to his family, while Nimer, a Palestinian, cannot even utter the word "gay" at home for fear that his brother would kill him. The movie focuses on the lack of choices for gay men in many parts of the world, with no legal or financial assistance available to them under duress.

Several films in this edition were similarly relevant, but were they art? For every Brokeback Mountain that cuts a harrowing wound into bigotry or an Hours that celebrates the sublime (both films were nominated for multiple Oscars), there are hundreds of gay films that are made, watched by a few, shown in film festivals and proceed to die a quiet death. They are deeply imagined films - smart and witty, acerbic and poignant - but do they speak to a straight audience? I am not sure they do.

In The Falls: Testament of Love, a closeted gay man spends a summer of bliss with an out cadet in military school but returns to a straight life bookended by religion and family. Director Jon Garcia makes a serious attempt to locate tolerance for homosexuality in the scripture, with elaborate scenes devoted to discussions of the Bible. To a gay man, such scenes might spell the difference between real and imagined life, but to the unsuspecting viewer, a position that, as a critic, I am forced to assume, they can seem gratuitous. Why suffer so much on account of Jesus, I had half a mind to tell the protagonist, when you can choose happiness?

Likewise, Bridegroom, a documentary about a gay man who has lost his lover, can appear either great or generic. To the gay viewer in me, the death of a gay lover was the unacceptable culmination of a life defined by so many struggles, from coming out onwards. For the faux straight critic in me, it was no more than a soppy, straightforward telling.

Why make art? Homosexuality is different. We speak about it because it needs to be mainstreamed. We fight for equality. We use art to convey its pains and struggles. But our sensibilities about what makes for good art stem from notions that are not as self-referential. How one who bears this difference chooses to articulate it can separate great art from the ordinary. In that respect at least, my experience was underwhelming.

Notwithstanding this somewhat jaundiced viewpoint, nearly every film that I saw at Kashish was received uproariously by the (mostly gay) audience. One man told me how The Falls reminded him of his own religious struggle with homosexuality, until he decided to keep these two - equally important - worlds separate.

Part of the dissonance I felt at the festival may have to do with how Kashish has grown from infancy into a sturdy animal in the course of a half-decade. While earlier the selections were restricted in scope since the festival was low-scale, this time films from as far as Chile were shown. It is promising to see films from amateurs and first-time directors, such as Michael Mayer (Out in the Dark), finding space. Whether, going forward, the festival will pump out art or relevance is a moot point.

Every week, Eye Culture features writers with an entertaining critical take on art, music, dance, film and sport