trying to get our heads around it…

As it was described in our last blog, the more we immerse ourselves into our project, the more we realize we don’t know. The more we get to know our subjects, the more we realize they live a complex, multi-layered life. This consequently only continues us to ask more questions, rather then giving us the answers we want to get.

And as much as this might seem frustrating I’m extremely happy that this is happening, because this seriously forces us to think of what we want to show and for what reasons. Many people always ask us, ‘so why Hijras? What brought you here to do this?’ This answer is pretty simple since after having visited Bangladesh, we heard a bit about them. While doing research back home little information was found, but what we did find was extremely fascinating and vague. All the elements of mystery that shrouded the Bangladeshi Hijras made us believe that they would be perfect subjects for our documentary. We were excited to be get information that no one had previously gotten and even more excited to show it the way we wanted.

Amongst all of this we’ve come to realize that we are faced with a huge dilemma. We want to create a documentary that is told like a fictional story, i.e. no interviews, no one looking at the camera describing facts.. etc.. The last thing we wanted were specialists describing and categorizing facts. So this said, in order to create a compelling story with a narrative arc;  we’ll therefore need, to a certain extent, to romanticize the story, i.e. create mystery and above all entertainment.  

But this is where our problem lies; we continue to preach that we want to show that the Hijras are individuals just like us, who are in search of love, friendship and above all happiness. Filming them through our narrative story-telling lens might only personify them into exactly what we don’t want them to be shown as: mysterious secretive and different.

Although I often lose sleep thinking about what I have just expressed, I’m still confident that we can cross this fine line between demystification and romantization and give the audience something representational as well as entertaining.

Only time will tell, inchallah!

Joya reads out the rules and duties to the new elected members of the hijra group (Shojeton Shilpi Shanga)