(Animation) Do Lesbians even exist in India?

Credits:
Animation by : Rhea Dease
Concept & Script by : Priya Gangwani & Rhea Dease
Produced by : Gaysi Family
Voice Over by : Rohini Ramnathan & Harish Iyer
Sound by : Rhea Mahule
Special Thanks : Karishma Dorai

“Rainbow In A Brown World” is an entertaining, an educative and an animated film that depicts a day-in-the-life of a queer Indian woman as she goes about her daily routine and encounters various people who question her regarding her sexuality. The protagonist ‘Aarti’ is a young, queer woman who finds herself at the receiving end of an absurd, often hilarious albeit well intentioned questions about being LGBT. However, she answers these wittily and is often amused by them.Growing up LGBT means that one finds oneself facing similar scenarios at some point or another; however these are seldom addressed or talked about in the mainstream.Being queer, I personally saw this as a great opportunity to tell our stories in a manner that makes them accessible to a rather conservative audience that is gradually growing increasingly aware of the LGBT issues. This film, undertaken as a final year degree project, is a humble attempt to seek to fill the void of representation of queer women in the media, to address common misconceptions regarding people of alternate sexualities in a light hearted manner and to create awareness and sensitization about the same.To be as authentic as possible with Aarti’s responses, a number of LBT women were interviewed and recorded and the script is the outcome of their individual reactions.

Research for the film included going through survey findings of batch mates on attitudes towards the LGBT community, conducting and recording in depth interviews of LBT women in Ahmedabad and generating mind maps on the findings, and watching short films, documentaries and video interviews that dealt with the same issue.

Generation of film concept was done once I had visually represented my research findings in the form of flow charts and mind maps. The concept had to cover various aspects that were unearthed during the research phase.

An animated film is certainly a labour of love; ‘Rainbow in a Brown World’ is a culmination of six months of hard work; right from pre production to compositing and exporting the final film. I am indebted to the Gaysi Family team for helping me actualize this project, and to a number of enterprising and wonderful LGBT individuals I was privileged enough to be able to interact with during my research.

Making this short film has been an enriching and a collaborative process, made superlative thanks to those who generously lent their talents to make this project a success. It has made me more disciplined professionally and has, more importantly, made me realize that as a minority, it is imperative that we tell our stories fearlessly and fiercely, that we may be better understood both by those within the community, and by the larger society we are an inextricable part of.

Bio:
Rhea Dease is a student of Animation at the National Institute of Design, India. She graduated in Mass Media (Advertising) from St Xavier’s College, Mumbai and is now the proud and relieved holder of an M. Des. Degree, specializing in Animation Film Design from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. She is an avid watcher of all kinds of films, an unabashed graphic novel fan girl, and loves writing fiction and illustrating in her spare time. She also has a rather morbid sense of humour and an affinity for mismatched socks.