190 Mumbai college students invited for KASHISH festival

Around 190 college students will get free entry to the KASHISH Mumbai International Queer Film Festival for the first time. The festival is being held in Mumbai at two Liberty and Metro cinema between May 23 and 28.The invitation is an attempt by the organisers to make students understand the challenges faced by members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) community.

“There are various notions that people have about the community, as a result of which the acceptance level towards the community is low. Films and documentaries screened at KASHISH convey identity issues faced by the community. So students will be able to understand their problems,” said Bhagirathi Raman, consultant, KASHISH Film Festival.

Vivek D’Souza, a masters student at Mumbai University said, “The festival can provide a very positive space for exchange of ideas, as one would get to know the perspective of people of different sexual orientations.”

Raman, who headed the student outreach programme for the festival, added that she reached out to colleges in South Mumbai, who were keen on engaging students to experience different kinds of films.

“We spoke to various college principals and BMM incharge and asked them to pass on the information. The response we got was quite good because the free tickets were sold out in no time,” Raman said.

While 190 students were given free entry on the basis of their ID cards, there were several others who were given access at a discounted rate.The festival is being held in Mumbai at two cinema halls between May 25 and 28.

Ashok Wadia, principal, Jai Hind college, said that students had often expressed concerns and have spoken about issues faced by LGBTQ community in various panel discussions that have taken place earlier.

“If a discussion is arranged with experts who can speak on scientific terms about the problems, it would help students and parents understand the problems better,” said Wadia.

“Over the years, we observed that a lot of students were unavailable to attend the festival because they couldn’t afford to pay for it, and were missing out on good cinema, which is why we decided to provide scholarship to college students,” said Parmesh Shahani, head, Godrej India Culture Lab.