Professor makes powerful, personal film

By Tom Gresham

Near the outset of VCU professor Sonali Gulati’s moving new film, “I Am,” we see a snapshot of Gulati at her college graduation. In the picture, Gulati’s mother, Sushma, has her arms wrapped around Gulati – her hands locked tightly together – and she has pressed her face close to her daughter, as though she is going to whisper into her ear. She looks at Gulati with a faint smile that is melancholy and adoring. In contrast, Gulati, decked out in her cap and gown, looks intently and seriously into the camera – at us. In Gulati’s voice-over narration, we learn that she felt resentment at that moment. She actually wanted to be with her friends instead, celebrating before they left their college lives behind. We also learn that Sushma has since died. The picture expresses intimacy and separation at once, and it is only the first of many haunting images that will suffuse the film and linger with us long after it has finished.

“I Am,” which has its Richmond premiere on Friday at 6:30 p.m. at the Leslie Cheek Theater of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, tracks Gulati’s attempt to explore a boundary that will eternally remain between her and her mother, who died in 1997. Gulati, a lesbian, never came out to Sushma. It is an absence of personal history that wracked Gulati in the years after her mother’s death. As a way of coming to terms with that forever unresolvable point, Gulati, who grew up in New Delhi, examines the experiences of several openly homosexual men and women in India. She focuses on their relationship with their parents, particularly their coming-out stories and the subsequent responses from family, which ranged from loving embrace to slow acceptance to violent denial.

The result is a film that contains a great deal. It is an intensely personal memoir that also addresses broad, societal issues, encompassing, among other topics, homosexuality’s place in modern India and, perhaps most potently, the complicated relationship that exists between parents and their progeny.

“I Am” debuted in April and it has since played in venues around the world, having been selected for a host of film festivals. It won major awards at the Indian Film Festival in Los Angeles and at the Kashish Film Festival in Mumbai.

The plaudits have proved particularly rewarding for Gulati because the making of the film was an emotionally grueling five-year process. In fact, Gulati took an 18-month break from the project in the middle of it when she realized that she could not bring herself to ask questions of other parents that she had not asked of her own.

“The response to the film has been over and beyond what I could possibly have imagined,” said Gulati, an associate professor in the Department of Photography and Film in the VCU School of the Arts. “People have embraced it, sent emails from all over the world, including from India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Germany, Switzerland, Greece, Spain, writing about how much they appreciate this film.”

“I Am” is organized around a series of interviews, but simple shots of sitting subjects looking into the camera are relatively rare, reserved for when they are most effective. Instead Gulati more often shows her subjects performing everyday tasks – cooking, walking the dog, shopping, socializing – while the viewer hears their words in a voiceover. The film also brims with beautifully shot scenes of India’s urban landscapes. The juxtaposition of images and stories achieves an ethereal tone that is hypnotic.

Gulati’s refusal to fall back on orthodox filmmaking is a result of her enduring interest in experimental techniques – an interest that was on display in the short films that preceded “I Am.”

“I wanted to push the documentary genre itself in terms of form and content and didn't want to make a film that comprised of talking heads,” Gulati said. “I wanted to create unique sound-image relationships, create a film within a film, use actors for a certain segment and incorporate fictional elements. So I've tried to create visual poetry while storytelling.”

Gulati herself appears in the film, though typically it is in brief, glancing moments. An exception is a clip from her appearance under the stark studio lights of a major Indian talk show – seen by millions, the host says – in which Gulati talks about her experiences, including her relationship with her mother. She urges any viewers in a situation similar to her own to live honestly and openly, as long as their circumstances allow them to.

Gulati made the talk-show appearance in the midst of a nationwide debate over India’s Section 377, a remnant from British colonial rule that made homosexuality a criminal offense. The country’s highest court was reconsidering the law, and it had sparked public interest in India’s gay and lesbian population. Gulati was in the country for the tempest, including during the nation’s first-ever gay pride parades, which Gulati helped organize and filmed.

Absences reverberate throughout “I Am.” Several parents, mostly mothers, appear, but we also notice the ones that do not show up. They are the ones who separated themselves from the life of their child.

Sushma’s absence is the most glaring, despite the fact that there are times when Gulati’s voiceover speaks directly to her mother and we feel as though we are eavesdropping on them. In one sequence, Gulati attempts to summon her with actresses, who dramatize a series of possible reactions to Gulati’s coming out.

Gulati will never know for sure how her mother would have responded, but speaking with other mothers brought her comfort that it would have been OK. Among the more touching moments in the film are two instances when mothers reach out to Gulati during their interviews to reassure her. The women’s instinctive, genuine care for her -- someone else’s daughter -- and their instant understanding of her specific struggle exudes warmth and wisdom.

“Making the film definitely helped me a lot,” Gulati said. “I met parents over the course of five years who were not very accepting of their children at first but over time came to not only understand and accept their child's sexuality but even to advocate very publicly for equal rights. Witnessing their journey helped me imagine my own mother's possible journey of acceptance and understanding.”

Intermittently during the film, we visit Gulati’s childhood home, which had been left locked and untouched in the years following Sushma’s passing. Early in the film, the house is filled with old stuff and is in disrepair. Later, workmen carry furniture and other belongings to a moving truck and haul them away. Finally, near the film’s finish, the house is empty and under restoration.

The film concludes at a street celebration of the overturning of Section 377 in 2009. The crowd includes several grinning mothers carrying signs of support. It also includes Gulati, a solemn and subdued presence throughout the film, who is now suddenly joyous, dancing and shouting in triumph, as if relieved of a burden.