Mumbai: The Kashish Pride Film Festival kicked-off with a star-studded opening on Wednesday at the iconic Liberty Cinema in Mumbai. Inauguration of the queer film festival drew a massive crowd in the presence of celebrities from the film industry.
Kashish Pride Film Festival has turned out to be South Asia’s biggest LGBTQ+ film festival. It is an attempt to encourage greater visibility of Indian and International queer cinema among both queer and mainstream audiences as a means to foster better understanding of queer thoughts, desires and expressions.
Kiran Rao presents Jeo Baby with the Rainbow Voices Award at KASHISH 2024 |
The inaugural session of the film festival, which was organised on Wednesday at the Liberty Cinema, was lined up with announcements for special awards, spectacular performance of standup comedy and a Lavni-Kathak jugalbandi. Celebrities and socialites like Kiran Rao, Shweta Prasad Basu, Sonali Kulkarni, Barun Sobti, Lillete Dubey, Dolly Thakore and Anu Menon among others were present at the event.
Sridhar Rangayan, festival director of KASHISH, mentioned that the 15th edition of the film festival is special as the recent change in the name of the festival indicated the festival’s new mission of being inclusive of the non-queer community too.
KASHISH 2024 Catalog reveal |
Saagar Gupta, director of programming, said, “You know the mystery behind the missing ‘I’ in the word KASHISH, the letters of which are placed outside in the Liberty compound? “ He happily answered by saying that it is the audience, the guests, and everyone who has made it here today. It is them who complete KASHISH, as they stand to pose with the letters, they form the ‘I’.”
Sithesh C. Govind was declared as the winner of the International Poster Contest with the theme Unfurl Your Pride. He was awarded the KASHISH butterfly trophy and a cash prize of Rs. 25,000 and the award was handed over to him by jury member Sonali Kulkarni. Actor Rajshree Deshpande felicitated the runner ups Sangeetha Nandakumar and Vaibhav Tanna.
Aditi Bhagwat & troupe perform at KASHISH 2024 |
Mrinali Gole of Liberty Cinema dedicated her association with KASHISH to her late husband, Nazir Hoosein. KASHISH has been held at the same venue since 2014.
The KASHISH Rainbow Voices Award was awarded to director Jeo Baby for his film Kaathal The Core. This award was presented by Laapata Ladies director Kiran Rao, who is also a jury member for the festival this year. Actor and jury member Barun Sobhti presented the Rainbow Champion Award to Manvendra Singh Gohil, the founder of Lakshya Trust in Gujarat for his extensive work for the LGBTQ+ community especially for the transgender individuals.
