Blogs Rabble Rouser RABBLE ROUSER: Indian Lesbian Love Story Generates Hot Internet Buzz | RABBLE ROUSER: Indian Lesbian Love Story Generates Hot Internet Buzz |
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| Written by Rabble Rouser | ||||||||||||
| Monday, 03 March 2008 | ||||||||||||
 Kelli Holsopple and Chriselle Almeida "An audience is already aware and excited about this movie," said its co-writer and director, Manan Singh Katohora. India-born Katohora came to the USA a decade ago and has proactively used the internet, particularly news groups, to create a networking vessel for artists of Indian-descent living around the world, particularly in North America. Katohora, 32, has built a database of more than 100,000 people, and each already has varying degrees of awareness about When Kiran Met Karen (WKMK) and the film has yet to play a single festival or ink a distribution deal. See When Kiran Met Karen Trailer #1. See Trailer #2. "It won't surprise me that there will be some people who will be critical and who will say things that are hurtful. But I'm trying to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, that we live in a more progressive world," said Chriselle Almeida, an Indian-born New York-based actress who plays Kiran.  Director - Manan Katohora But for the film to be seen in India, Katohora reluctantly accepts the fact that he will need to compromise and trim the film to appease Indian censors. I'm sure they will ask us to tone it down and remove a few things here and there," Katohora said. "And I will to some degree, as long as they don't take away the heart and soul of the film I will be open to (cuts)." Katohora said awareness of the film created by internet hype cannot be leveraged to persuade Indian censors to leave the movie alone. "Because none of these people are the decision-makers when it comes to India censorship," Katohora said. And even with the film's growing profile, the Indian film establishment has not stepped up to champion WKMK. "I didn't get encouragement from Industry folks in India," Katohora said, adding that talk of the film within India is mostly "hush, hush." The film received a burst of publicity in India two years ago when Katohora first began guiding the project toward production and a major Bollywood actress - Perizaad Zorabian - was attached to play Kiran. Zorabian's involvement in the project created international buzz and proved that the film could not escape controversy. "She loves the script," Katohora said of Zorabian, and added that the actress soon dropped out of the project, deferring to the societal, family and career pressures generated by an Indian movie star of her profile becoming involved in a lesbian love story that contained a frank sex scene. "It was difficult to get actors for the roles - particularly the actresses because of the strong sexuality of the film," Katohora said. "Not many Indian actresses were willing to take on the role." Katohora found his leads in Almeida, and in Kelli Holsopple, who plays the out-lesbian journalist. None of the principal collaborators in front of or behind the camera are gay or lesbian in real life. Almeida, whose family is of Portuguese descent, lived in India until she was 14 years old. She is Catholic and now lives in the USA, but did grow up amidst traditional India and Hinduism. She says that her Indian-American parents are forward-thinking, and that they once saw her perform a same-sex kiss in a college play, and that they have not raised objections to their daughter's participation in WKMK. "I keep waiting for them to go 'I don't know about this,' but they've been really wonderful," Almeida said. Because the Kiran character is inexperienced in matters of same-sex love, the two actresses did not rehearse the sex scene prior to filming in order to interject their own personal awkwardness into their onscreen selves. "That was something that was truly organic," Almeida said. "Not rehearsing was a good idea because rehearsing might have made it too clean (graceful)." Katohora is proud of the artistic quality of the sex scene. "Very raw and very sexual. It's as normal as watching any male-female sex scene," he said. Almeida and Holsopple shared a bedroom in the Long Island mansion where much of the filming was done and where the cast stayed during production. The women developed a fast friendship off-screen and Almeida said it had the tone that exists in a relationship between two high school girls who are best friends. "I tried to remember what it felt like to have a best friend who is a girl when growing up….All I had to do was add in the physical," she said. "Here is a person that I connect with so much who is so physically lovely, so why not. What's the difference that she's a woman?" Indian audiences are not completely unfamiliar with lesbian film stories. An earlier film - Fire (1996) - had a lesbian story line and was released in India. "And there were bans and protests," Katohora said. He said the strategy to win acceptance in India for WKMK was to make a realistic film that told a human love story in a mature and un-sensationalistic way. "It's a movie with substance - that's the way we approached it," Katohora said. Tushar Unadkat is the film's production designer and acts onscreen in a supporting role. Unadkat lived in India until age 25 and was raised a Hindu. He now lives in Toronto and describes himself as more "spiritual" than traditional Hindu. Unadkat said the project was an enlightening journey for everybody who worked on it, particularly those who had been raised under the guidance of traditional Indian culture. Unadkat said the experience taught him to "be more human, and less of a hypocrite." "It was nice to see how people who might have been uncomfortable (at the start of production) find their comfort by the end of the project," Unadkat said. In the beginning of the film, Kiran is involved in a heterosexual relationship (her boyfriend is played by actor Samrat Chakrabarti) in which she is unfulfilled. By the end of the film, Kiran has learned a lot from meeting Karen. "She finds that love she is looking for in Karen," Katohora said. He hopes that a distribution deal for the film in his native India will generate reasoned debate on the subject of same-sex love in a diverse but conservative country of 1 billion people. "We might be able to win some hearts," the director said. Unadkat agreed. "It's controversial. And people are shy in talking about it. But we want to generate discussion. The debate is very healthy and I think it's going to open up a lot of minds that have been closed for years," Unadkat said. Share It!               
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The Rabble Rouser
Kent Victor Schuelke is The Rabble Rouser. He is an actor and filmmaker, and the editor of www.independentfilmsdirect.com. He has acted in several independent films and on-stage in Los Angeles, and he plans to direct from his own script (but not act in) a digital feature in 2008. He has a long history in film and television production (check him out on IMDb), and also worked in the video game biz. He got his start in journalism as a college freshman in 1981. In 1986, he interviewed movie legend Cary Grant for his little college paper and when the actor died a couple months later Schuelke sold his Grant talk to Andy Warhol's Interview magazine. He is a product of Hollywood's last Golden Era (1967-1980). As a child, Schuelke remembers seeing Bonnie and Clyde on the big screen at about age six. Schuelke watched American Graffiti about 30 times on the big screen at the little single screen movie house in the tiny Iowa farming village where he was reared. He has been almost singularly obsessed by movies since age four. His favorite films are the ultra realistic ones — Dog Day Afternoon is among his favorites and the purest description of the type of filmmaking he holds in highest regard. Schuelke lives in Los Angeles, and loves it. His current professional life is focused on acting, making films and writing about movies, and he is so happy with his life path that he might even consider dropping his therapist. But the Rouser will not go off his medication — his co-workers at IFD will see to that, for everybody's sakes. 
