Queer creative Indian city: queer film festivals, precarious cultural work and community making in Kolkata

Dasgupta, Rohit K. ORCID: 0000-0001-5837-0088 and Bakshi, Kaustav (2023) Queer creative Indian city: queer film festivals, precarious cultural work and community making in Kolkata. Cultural Trends, 32 (4). pp. 348-365. ISSN 0954-8963

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Abstract

In this article, we offer a new concept of the “queer creative city”, through a critical examination of how a regional queer Bengali film culture has emerged in Kolkata as a result of the convergence of certain urban policies, queer political organising and cultural activism. We explore two queer film festivals in Kolkata–the Siddharth Gautam Film Festival and Dialogues, both having a very significant impact in transforming LGBTQ + lives in Kolkata. Through archival research, autoethnography and conducting extensive interviews with organising committees, venue sponsors and owners, and viewers, we show how these film festivals and a pre-existing Bengali film culture engendered the emergence of a prolific creative queer city, which became a site of resistance, and community building that created a solid base for queer counterpublics. Queer film festivals, we argue, are critical sites for charting the dynamics of the public sphere in contemporary India.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2023 The Author(s)
Divisions:	LSE
Subjects:	N Fine Arts > NX Arts in general H Social Sciences
Date Deposited:	23 Jan 2025 09:42
Last Modified:	26 Oct 2025 04:45
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/127020

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