On thursday night I went to the screening of a documentary produced by my fellow GLBT Commission co-chair, Sarav Chithambaram. It's called It's My Life and is about being a queer south asian in the US - thus a minority within a minority. This is Sarav's first movie - an ambitious undertaking. It was rough in spots but it was pretty interesting. It was mostly interviews with straight and gay people from India. One of the interviewees was a very articulate women, Mrs Saigal, a journalist who was charming and spoke lots of sense (she appears at the beginning of the trailer at the above URL).
The screening was in the Kresge Little Theatre. Sarav and a bunch of people did good publicity with a number of groups co-sponsoring the event thus it was very well attended - the room just about full. Before the film there were several dance groups including one with some mesmerizing music (the instruments were in the back: I think 2 electric guitars, a goblet drum and 2 tablas) that was about oppression. I had a bit part in the event; as GLBT Commission co-chair I was the official introducer of Sarav before the film started.
He got some good feedback and plans on doing more work on it including producing versions not in english to show in India. He expects it to be shown many more times.
