Prem Kapoor's Badnam Basti
Tuesday, January 28, 2025 at 7:30pm
361 Stagg Street, Suite 407, Brooklyn
Introduced by Shai Heredia
Badnam Basti, Prem Kapoor, 1971, digital projection, 108 minutes
The first queer film produced in India, Prem Kapoor's debut Badnam Basti (Street of Ill-Repute) played briefly to international audiences after its completion in 1971, and then disappeared; the print was long thought lost, and even references to its title in official histories are scarce. But in 2019, curators stumbled upon a copy in the archives of Arsenal in Berlin, spurring renewed interest. Now, a digital restoration of Kapoor's groundbreaking feature has been created using additional elements more recently found, and Light Industry will present Badnam Basti's long-delayed New York premiere. The film will be introduced by Shai Heredia, the director of Experimenta in Bangalore, one of the world's great festivals for experimental cinema, where Heredia just showcased Badnam Basti as the closing night film.
A musical melodrama adapted from Kamleshwar Prasad Saxena's controversial 1950s novel A Street with 57 Lanes, the film revolves around a bisexual love triangle. Its protagonist is an erstwhile bandit turned truck driver in Uttar Pradesh, whose thoughts drift between his present romance with a younger man and his earlier affair with a woman, whom he spared during one of his raids. This inner tension is outwardly manifest through the film's disjunctive narrative style, and a visually arresting design that has far more in common with the global new waves of its moment than Bollywood. "It presents queerness in a nuanced way, which is how we in India have always lived with and experienced it," Heredia explained to the Guardian. "It was way ahead of its time. I think that's the real reason it was discarded and neglected, not the subject matter. It's hectic, right? That's what I say when I introduce the film: it's queer, yes, but ultimately it's crazy and amazing!"
Tickets - Pay what you can ($10 suggested donation), available at door.
Please note: seating is limited. First-come, first-served. Box office opens at 7pm. No entry 10 minutes after start of show.