"Bent Bollywood": Bending Gender Through Dance

Combining Indian classical dancing with the camp theatrics of Bollywood through a queer lens, Bent Bollywood was a definite must-see show during Midsumma Festival this year. Created and Performed by queer performance artists Raina Peterson and Govind Pillai, the show explored how different sexualities, genders and cultures can co-exist and complement each other.

Bent Bollywood began with a nod to traditional dancing and gradually grew in its exploration of queerness within these heavily steeped traditions. "Raina particularly was using lots of gendered mudras (hand gestures) in their spiritual solo opening piece, doing the gesture for female and male repeatedly. They were working with those traditional gestures and dissolving them into dust to almost disestablish the notion of binary genders," Pillai tells me.

The Bombay Talkies exhibition

Peter Dietze opening The Bombay Talkies

There is much to experience during the inaugural Asia TOPA Festival, a festival which celebrates the artistic and creative talent of our neighbouring Asian countries and Australia's connection with these countries. One such event is The Bombay Talkies exhibition that is currently on at ACMI, which offers a glimpse into a movie studio that changed the film industry in India.

Founded in 1934 by Himanshu Rai - a pioneer of Indian cinema - and Devika Rani - an actress who has been widely acknowledged as the first lady of Indian cinema, The Bombay Talkies produced 40 films in 20 years and lifted Indian films to that of international standards. 

This free exhibition consists of over 3,000 cultural artefacts once owned by Rai and highlights the impact that the studio had on the country during this time. The multitude of newspaper clippings, letters, invitations, stills and photographs all show the fascination (and even obsession) that audiences had for its films and actors, including Ashok Kumar, who became the star of the studio and an icon of Indian cinema.