Don't Interrupt While We Dance
As six queer & trans friends celebrate their friend's birthday, they are interrupted by the police. We see the mundanity of joy, the frivolity of it's interruption, violence of a police state-coming back to, who is allowed to be angry? And how much?
As six queer & trans friends celebrate their friend's birthday, they are interrupted by the police. We see the mundanity of joy, the frivolity of it's interruption, violence of a police state-coming back to, who is allowed to be angry? And how much?
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The Story
The film begins with a dilly dallying camera. In one room a tender romance unfolds, in the next, we are amidst heated passion, then the kitchen, where two trans women are making a cup of tea. We delve into their mundanity arriving at a birthday party. But their party is interrupted by the police, who barge in and hound them all for kidnapping themselves - and enforcing them to be back with their natal family - a place of violence. They are all taken to the police station. While the six of them try to defend their themselves, they are scrutinized and dehumanized, painted as deviants and criminals. As the friends lose in the face of the state machinery, Safia, with nothing left to reason with, picks up a gun. What follows is the simple question of anger - who is allowed to be angry, and how much? But the film doesn’t end at the police station, instead it ends in a parallel future - what would have happened if the party had not been interrupted, how would the mundanity of joy played out.
About Filmmaker
ANUREET WATTA
Anureet Watta is a poet, writer and filmmaker living in New Delhi. Their works are informed by their lived experiences as a queer person and they attempt to delve into narratives that explore queerness outside of the omnipresent heteropatriarchal gaze. It weaves the themes of queerness, social justice and free speech, always coming back to not just making art that is political but making the art politically.
As a filmmaker, they have delved extensively into screenwriting and adopted a stylistic direction for their films, while being in touch with the realities of those that inhabit the margins. Their first film, ‘Kinaara’ was made on a zero budget, using a phone camera and a crew of one person. The experimental five minute short, encapsulates the story of two queer women who are separated during the partition of 1947. It was screened in 14 international film festivals, including the Oscar Qualifying film festival, Bengaluru International Short Film Festival. It won a Jury mention for the best emerging director at KASHISH international Queer film festival Mumbai (South Asia’s largest queer film festival) and also bagged other awards at other film festival such as ‘Best Film on Women and Women’s Issues’ and ‘Best Screenplay for Experimental Film’.
They completed their second short experimental film, ‘Oranges in the Winter Sun’ which was produced by Lotus Visual Productions. The film, completed in October 2022 and has been showcased in sixteen international film festivals so far, including the Images Festival, Toronto and Fringe! in London. It was created to explore the limitations of memory vis a vis a love story and attempted to spectate at queer people outside of the realm of the heternormative gaze and consciousness. Further, it attempts to explore the city of New Delhi through a queer lens.
They are a Writer’s Ink Lab Fellow, where they developed the script for their first feature length fiction project. Informed by their time doing street theatre, their art mainly develops from exploring the political not as a circumstance but as a catalyst which leads to personal misery. They have also lent their art as a lyricist and co-wrote a feature film with Faraz Arif Ansari (Sheer Qorma, 2021) and also assisted writing ‘Bun Tikki’ produced by Jio Studios and Stage 5 productions.
They are currently in the process of making their first docu-fiction film, ‘Kiski Hai Chandani?’which captures the infamous nights of Delhi. It is an in-progress documentary-fiction feature film that maps the notorious nights of Delhi where contestations for space, thresholds of access and drizzles of liberation bounce off each other’s shores.
A published poet, their first collection of poems, 'Lustre of a Burning Corpse' came out in 2022, and is centred around the theme of violence, in confluence with the self and the languages of power we adopt today. Through 56 poems is written with a pulsating nerve of contemporary consciousness is highly sensory and heavy on imagery. It experiments with form, using unconventional structures, fragmented sentences, and unique poetic devices while adopted freer verses to create heightened intimacy. It is lush with descriptive detail, painting vivid pictures of landscapes, characters, and cultural settings while blending personal stories with larger societal and historical contexts.
They run the Delhi based artists' collective, Forbidden Verses. Their work has been published in the Bombay Review, Gulmohur Quarterly and several others. They were a part of the ‘Language is a Queer Thing’ fellowship by the Queer Muslim Project, as well as in an exchange programme with the BBC for their ‘BBC Contains Strong Language Festival’ in the United Kingdom in 2023.
As a filmmaker, they have delved extensively into screenwriting and adopted a stylistic direction for their films, while being in touch with the realities of those that inhabit the margins. Their first film, ‘Kinaara’ was made on a zero budget, using a phone camera and a crew of one person. The experimental five minute short, encapsulates the story of two queer women who are separated during the partition of 1947. It was screened in 14 international film festivals, including the Oscar Qualifying film festival, Bengaluru International Short Film Festival. It won a Jury mention for the best emerging director at KASHISH international Queer film festival Mumbai (South Asia’s largest queer film festival) and also bagged other awards at other film festival such as ‘Best Film on Women and Women’s Issues’ and ‘Best Screenplay for Experimental Film’.
They completed their second short experimental film, ‘Oranges in the Winter Sun’ which was produced by Lotus Visual Productions. The film, completed in October 2022 and has been showcased in sixteen international film festivals so far, including the Images Festival, Toronto and Fringe! in London. It was created to explore the limitations of memory vis a vis a love story and attempted to spectate at queer people outside of the realm of the heternormative gaze and consciousness. Further, it attempts to explore the city of New Delhi through a queer lens.
They are a Writer’s Ink Lab Fellow, where they developed the script for their first feature length fiction project. Informed by their time doing street theatre, their art mainly develops from exploring the political not as a circumstance but as a catalyst which leads to personal misery. They have also lent their art as a lyricist and co-wrote a feature film with Faraz Arif Ansari (Sheer Qorma, 2021) and also assisted writing ‘Bun Tikki’ produced by Jio Studios and Stage 5 productions.
They are currently in the process of making their first docu-fiction film, ‘Kiski Hai Chandani?’which captures the infamous nights of Delhi. It is an in-progress documentary-fiction feature film that maps the notorious nights of Delhi where contestations for space, thresholds of access and drizzles of liberation bounce off each other’s shores.
A published poet, their first collection of poems, 'Lustre of a Burning Corpse' came out in 2022, and is centred around the theme of violence, in confluence with the self and the languages of power we adopt today. Through 56 poems is written with a pulsating nerve of contemporary consciousness is highly sensory and heavy on imagery. It experiments with form, using unconventional structures, fragmented sentences, and unique poetic devices while adopted freer verses to create heightened intimacy. It is lush with descriptive detail, painting vivid pictures of landscapes, characters, and cultural settings while blending personal stories with larger societal and historical contexts.
They run the Delhi based artists' collective, Forbidden Verses. Their work has been published in the Bombay Review, Gulmohur Quarterly and several others. They were a part of the ‘Language is a Queer Thing’ fellowship by the Queer Muslim Project, as well as in an exchange programme with the BBC for their ‘BBC Contains Strong Language Festival’ in the United Kingdom in 2023.
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