Tender Guerrillas: Self-Filming and Queer Becomings

Festival 2026

Curated by
Najrin Islam

Running time
105 mins

What happens when one turns the camera inward, only to find others already there?

Tender Guerrillas comprises a set of fiercely intimate and formally restless films from India that linger on the contradictions of queer image-making through self-filming. Made between 1996 and 2024 using modest means and improvised methods, these works hold space for difficult conversations with parents, perusing queer childhoods in photo albums and the quiet pressures of kinship and expectation. At once tool, crutch, and mirror, self-filming dissolves absolute authorship. Hovering between the self and its image, this programme proposes identity as something that is not owned but negotiated in public, forged in the charged space of being seen in relation with others.

This screening will be followed by a conversation with Sharan Dhaliwal, author and Founder of Burnt Roti.

Tickets

2 May 2026, 6:30 PM

Past Event

UCL East Community Cinema

BOMgAY

1996

Directed by
Riyad Vinci Wadia

Running time
11 mins

Often cited as India’s first openly queer film, BOMgAY uses an anthology format to explore queer life within the dense textures of Bombay city. Each section is accompanied by poems by R. Raj Rao and shot guerrilla-style with members of Bombay’s gay community, embodying a radical, DIY mode of early queer image-makin...

Boudinet’s Curtain

2024

Directed by
Maya.nk

Running time
27 mins

Taking Roland Barthes’ reflections on the indexical value of a photograph in La Chambre Claire as a starting point, Boudinet’s Curtain uses interviews with queer individuals whose stories are juxtaposed with their respective childhood photographs as a way to explore the silences and spectres of uncaptured subjectiv...

Little Things

2024

Directed by
Srishti Sharma

Running time
19 mins

Rooted in personal memory and quiet reflection, this documentary follows a young woman returning home to engage in intimate conversations with her family. Through shared stories and family archives, she confronts the gendered expectations of her childhood, unspoken struggles with identity, and the quiet resilience pass...

There is a Spider Living Between Us

2009

Directed by
Tejal Shah

Running time
7 mins

This experimental short considers desire and the yearning to become one with the other through techniques such as photo collage, stop motion, and cell drawing animation. We wander through layers of language and lesbian sexuality, and in the end, are delivered into a void—a space to reflect on the nature of our intima...

Summer In My Veins

1999

Directed by
Nishit Saran

Running time
40 mins

A gay Indian filmmaker travels across America with his mother and aunts, who are visiting from India. He was tested for HIV before he left for the trip and will not receive his results until they return. Under the threat of this diagnosis, the filmmaker explores the dynamics of secrecy and love that mark this close fam...

Curator and Facilitator Bios

Najrin Islam is a London-based film critic and film programmer whose interests encompass South Asian independent and experimental cinema, archival titles, and creative nonfiction. Her writings have featured in Sight and Sound, Time Out, ArtReview Asia, and Art Monthly, among other publications.

Sharan Dhaliwal (she/they) is an author and journalist, who founded Middlesex Pride and the South Asian magazine Burnt Roti—a platform for young creatives to showcase their talent, find safe spaces, and de-stigmatise topics around mental health and sexuality.

Additional info

Content note: contains depictions of nudity and violence