Excerpt from Shahana Dattagupta's article Personal is Political : South Asian Lens on Vibrant Love
When asked about this year’s theme and its relevance, one of the festival’s directors Farah Nousheen said, “The theme actually started out with a queer film focus, a very important genre in independent South Asian film. Last year, we had screened the experimental queer feature film Yours Emotionally by Sridhar Rangayan from India. There were several people who were confused by it or didn't like it. For me, this was a sign that our audience is not familiar enough with this genre or subject matter to understand and discuss this complex film … Our solution was to make the queer film genre the ISAFF theme....
... Most of the films being presented in ISAFF this year revolve around the politics of struggling love: Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender-Queer (LGBTQ) issues, cross-cultural love, arranged marriage and work being done in the HIV positive / AIDS arena. Titles of the films selected include A Jihad for Love, Before the Rains, Every Good Marriage Begins with Tears, Donkey in Lahore, The World Unseen, 68 Pages, Kissing Cousins, Kagbeni, and Milind Soman Made Me Gay. But ISAFF is not simply about screening films. It is about creating a safe, yet courageous space for all types of people to come together to talk about the emergent South Asian lens on love, sex, racism, queerness, marriage … what incredibly rich and complex feelings shall be revealed through this process … ?
