Pakistani-Canadian filmmaker Arshad Khan describes the relationship with his father Wasi Khan as a very difficult one. “Because he was a devout Pakistani Muslim and I am gay,” says Khan, in a phone conversation from Montreal. Khan has condensed almost four decades of his life, in which his father features prominently, into the 80-minute documentary Abu.
Initially based in Pakistan, Khan’s parents lived with the wounds of Partition. But they were a happy, well-heeled family that enjoyed a liberal life in their Islamabad bubble. But a few decades later, after their immigration to Canada, Khan’s mother, who once danced freely to Bollywood songs, becomes a conservative hijab-clad woman. What changed?
When the family of eight moves to Mississauga, Ontario in the early 90s for a better life, Khan comes to terms with homosexuality, memories of child abuse, and the Islamophobia after 9/11, and watches his parents gravitate towards religious conservatism. Khan would not have contemplated these rapid and gradual changes in his life if it were not for a five-minute memorial video he made after his father’s death in 2012.
Culture gap
Khan was surprised at how his father’s death affected him. After discovering a trove of home videos and photographs, he set out to make a film on his father but it eventually became a cinematic self-portrait of a queer Muslim brown man.
Narrated in the first person, the introspective documentarycomments on social dichotomies and intersectional identities, which find a strong relevance in the rise of white supremacy under the Trump administration, Islamophobia in the West, and the #MeToo movement. Khan and his parents don’t just exemplify a generation gap but also the growing divide between cultures, religions and sexualities.
The 9/11 attacks were a watershed moment for Khan. He describes America’s war against terror as another wave of colonisation against the Muslim world. After the attacks, the 43-year-old Khan left architecture school and started making films to dispel the bigotry against South Asians. “I was very angry with this war on brown bodies and the criminalisation of Muslims,” he says. “And I realised there was no proper representation of us in the media.”
But for Khan, Abu is about reconciliation. “It has painful memories but it is also healing,” he says. Khan, therefore, keeps the tone of the film light by injecting it with animation, dramatic clips from Bollywood films, and speech bubbles. You also witness typical ‘dad moments’ like Khan’s father capturing videos only in portrait mode and taking selfies where half his face is cropped out. “You connect to people more with humour than sadness,” says Khan.
Honour matters
The changing format of the film — from grainy VHS footage to iPhone videos — lends not just a visually engaging texture to it but also juxtaposes the evolution of technology against the regression of ideologies.
Apart from sourcing footage, getting permissions from the family proved a cumbersome task. Khan’s mother initially assumed it was a documentary glorifying her husband but once she realised that it was also about her son’s sexuality, she protested saying it would bring shame to the family. “But I told her kaunsi humari royal family hai (we are not the royal family ),” he laughs.
In the making for five years, Khan’s debut had its world premiere at the Los Angeles Film Festival last year and won the best documentary award at New York Indian Film Festival last month. To reach out to non-English speaking queer audiences in India and Pakistan, Khan has now dubbed the documentary in Hindi and Urdu as well.