Durgapur director wins Swarna Kamal at nat'l awards for short film on gender identity
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Kolkata: A Durgapur director's Hindi short film—'Flowering Man'— which explores a daughter's gradual acceptance of her father's queerness, won the top honour (Swarna Kamal) in the non-feature film category at the 71st National Film Awards.
The award includes a cash prize of Rs 3 lakh, with the citation praising the director, Soumyajit Ghosh Dastidar. Notably, the citation avoids directly referencing the film's engagement with queer themes, instead stating that its "cohesive narrative allows it to resonate on multiple levels." Speaking to TOI, Dastidar said, "I would love to go back and make a film in Bangla, not necessarily in Kolkata. I feel that so much of Bengal is still unexplored in cinema.
" Born in Chinsurah, Ghosh Dastidar calls Durgapur his hometown, though he now works as a freelance writer in Mumbai. While growing up in Durgapur, he was warned never to swallow the seeds of an orange, else a plant would start growing inside his stomach. The idea prompted him to doodle a figure with a flowering plant growing from his mouth. He used that visual imagery and synergised it with his observations of gender identity and sexuality while writing the screenplay of this film.
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The film employs the metaphor of a growing flower to symbolise the protagonist's desire to embrace the true identity as a woman. "Making this diploma film with Avirat Patil, PR Manikandan, Anurag Pant, and Aritra Majumdar was a wonderful experience. My FTII batchmate, Amartya Ray, composed the music. The cast includes Tanishka Meesala and Rajeev Gaursingh," he said.
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However, the director does not wish to categorise his film as one intended solely for the queer community.
"We unfairly associate gender with things like clothes and jewellery. Our conditioning ignores the fact that each of us is fluid in our gender preferences. A human being, at any stage in life, can discover that they are fluid," he said.
He also emphasised that much of what happens in our lives finds no reflection in contemporary Indian cinema. Speaking about the controversy over 'The Kerala Story' receiving a National Award, Dastidar said, "Celebrating a film that promotes a certain propaganda creates an atmosphere of fear."
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