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Malini Jeevarathnam on directing Ladies and Gentlewomen (2017), the first Tamil language documentary on lesbians in India:

  • “The research took about one-and-a-half years and shooting the documentary took a year. I have been fighting for the rights of LGBT people and campaigning against them committing suicide. Last year alone, there were 17 deaths of LGBT persons in Chennai. These are the ones that have come to our knowledge and there are more men and women who are either committing suicide or losing their lives to honour killing because of their sexual orientation. I hope this documentary acts a platform to bring such incidents to light.” [x]
  • “I was told that I would be labelled as a ‘lesbian filmmaker’. But, I don’t see anything wrong in that. In the initial phase, no one agreed to do the film — the cameraman, the editor and so on. But, finally I am glad I was able to start work with a wonderful and supportive team.” [x]
  • “I have come across many people who believe that women are born solely for the pleasure of men. Women are a minority and most people think that feminism and lesbianism is a foreign concept. It isn’t! We can find so many stories in ancient texts. In fact, in the documentary, an activist says that she sees most lesbian couples coming from smaller cities in Tamil Nadu like Madurai, Salem, Coimbatore and Dindigul. This is not because of some western influence.” [x]
  • “Many bisexual women have spoken in this documentary, but only two lesbians, that too from north India, agreed to be part of it,” she rues. She feels that Tamil girls still do not have the freedom to come out and proclaim their identity. “When Tamil girls’ rights are being refused even when they are in the womb, they clearly do not have the right to choose their love life, and for many, coming out means risking their lives,” she says. [x]
  • “When the film was being screened at the Chennai Rainbow Film Festival, some women whom I had met earlier came for it. They watched the documentary and later they came up to me and said that they loved the film and shouldn’t have hesitated to be interviewed. They asked me to give them the film so that they could show it to their parents. This is the kind of impact I want the film to have.” [x]
  • “I also spoke to psychologists and common people to show how the society sees this. When I asked them if they would accept a lesbian relationship if a girl in their family tries to commit suicide for it, the only reply I got was, ‘Let her die.’”[x]