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Director: Deepa Mehta. India 1996. 108 mins - speaker Geetha J.
Duke Of York's PictureHouse, 6.30pm.
Fire will be introduced by Geetha J. who will also lead the post-film discussion. A film critic and journalist, Geetha has written and produced television programmes on World Cinema and women’s issues, including an interview of Deepa Mehta when Fire had its first screening at the IFFK. She recently made her first independent film Woman with a Video Camera from Kerala, India.
One of the most controversial films to hit the Indian screens, Fire deals with the very simple story of two Indian daughters-in-law in a joint family, torn between duties and desires, feeling rejected by their husbands respectively and finding warmth and love in each other. But this causes a furore in the middleclass household and they leave turning their back on age-old stifling traditions and making a choice to be together. But the furore this film caused outside the cinema is probably unprecedented in India with an organised right-wing attack becoming personal and violent against the film.
But Fire became a success in spite of the riots and has been hailed as the most daring film ever to be made in India where no one is willing to recognise lesbianism as a reality in life or cinema, and as a film that has got together people from different walks of life to rally around freedom of expression. Finally though less conspicuously it did generate a critique of what the film meant in India. In retaliation to organised protests against references to Hindu mythology in the film, many progressive organisations campaigned to defend the film and fundamental issues of democratic rights and artistic freedom.
Deepa Mehta seen as both a bold and a provocative filmmaker, has this to say of Fire:
"I didn't make the film to shock somebody. I didn't make the film to do a thesis on lesbianism -- I am not interested in those things. It is a film about loneliness. It is a film about the hypocrisy of our society today. It is a film about how women don't have choices in a patriarchal set-up. Even though on the surface it looks like they have everything -- just because you have access to satellite televisions and cellular phones doesn't mean you have freedom of choice. Fire is about a lack of choices."
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