Renton Pavilion Event Center -- Fri, Oct 31st -- 8:00pm

My Dear Americans

On the patriotic 4th of July, a Sikh couple have an unsavory racist encounter. What the wife does next is both defiant and re­defines the couple's marriage ­if only momentarily.

My Dear Americans is about a Sikh woman’s defiant spirit. A recent immigrant to the U.S, Tejpreet is reluctant to embrace her new American identity. In contrast, her husband celebrates everything that mildly reeks of America. On America’s most patriotic holiday, the fourth of July, they have a threatening racist encounter that crushes the Sikh man’s enthusiastic spirit. Witnessing her husband’s devastation, Tejpreet makes a choice against hate and turns the situation around, if only momentarily.

FU377

An adorable Indian mother & her queer daughter spring into action due to the Supreme Court’s latest decision on the anti-gay law, Section 377.  

Basic dignity of queer people in India is under attack, yet again. The scorching IPC Section 377 is re-unleashed to police to criminalise “gay sex” in India. While the law and the Supreme Court dated themselves back a few hundred years, an adorable Indian mother has her knowledge of “gay sex” in mint condition, wheeling out a tidbit or two for her heartbroken queer daughter in an effort to cheer her up. The pair are shocked into action by the Supreme Court's latest rejection.

Director's Statement

“Queer rights! Human rights! 377! Quit India!” is still ringing in my ears from the protest I participated in at London’s Global Day of Rage in December 2013. It brought to the forefront my childhood days rallying with my grandfather and father protesting for farmer’s rights in the South Indian towns of Tirupathi and Madanapalle. Having made a short experimental documentary in 2010 around the subject of queerness and whole-hearted acceptance by the Indian family, I found this judgment by the Indian Supreme Court extremely removed from the social reality. With FU377, I wanted to highlight this divide between complete acceptance of queerness in all its wonderful incarnations at home and the rejection of gayness by the state using banned “unnatural gay sex” as the comedic political medium. The other aspect I wanted to approach with FU377 is bisexual invisibility in both gay and straight spaces. Cynthia Nixon recently stated that she felt she couldn’t identify as bisexual because she wouldn’t be heard as a legimate contributor to LGBT civil rights. Despite clearly expressing his attractions for both men and women, Vikram Seth is often referred to by the media as gay. From these and my own personal experiences, I wanted to give voice to the identity that is seen as dubious."

What Remains

A woman returns to her childhood home only to discover her unsettling past.

What Remains is a play on the traditional ghost story. A woman returns to her childhood home only to discover her unsettling past. Inspired by the experimental narratives films of Maya Deren and 1960s and 70s Bollywood cinema and song, What Remains uses visual elements of Ganesh’s work and Khurana’s storytelling, drawing upon their shared interests in memory, the construction of the self, and psychic trauma.

Director's Statement

"What Remains is a play on the traditional ghost story.  The protagonist returns to her childhood home, only to discover a ghost living there.  As in many supernatural narratives, the ghost exists in response to past traumas that continue to bind her to the human world.  Often times she is not even aware that she has died. Also known as "intelligent hauntings," such ghosts remain in a limbo state, haunting the scene of death or places that were meaningful to them in life.  They are, on some level, aware of the living and react to being seen on the occasions that they materialize.

A woman returns to her childhood home and the floodgates of memory open.  In this process she discovers a presence that’s all too familiar – her childhood self.  As children, we may hear, witness or experience trauma that remains unexplained, which are in turn hidden, forgotten or internalized as a means of coping.  Unresolved or unacknowledged, such traumatic experience transforms into memories that linger at and haunt the edges of our adult lives.  These ghosts inside us persist, and ultimately need to be set free."