Simran Bhalla is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Division of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Southern California. She has a PhD in Screen Cultures from Northwestern University. Her research focuses on postcolonial and pre-Revolutionary nonfiction films from Indian and Iran. She is the curator of multiple film series on Indian, Iranian, and Arab cinema. In 2020, film programmers discovered a print of Badnam Basti (1971) in a German archive — the movie is thought to be the first to openly portray a gay relationship in Indian cinema. However, it was considered lost or destroyed for several decades. In this lecture, Bhalla emphasizes the value of film preservation and archives in unearthing and contextualizing this hidden LGBT history. Bhalla shares examples of queer sensibilities in Indian cinema history, from 1920s cross-dressing and gender play to bisexual intimations in the 1970s and 1980s. This event is free, RSVP at www.wehopride.com/artsfestival.
