Queering the Pitch: Life and Times of Saleem Kidwai is a short film that traces the legacy of historian and writer Saleem Kidwai. Best known for co-editing Same-Sex Love in India, a landmark text in the fight against Section 377, Saleem’s life also opened up quieter, radical possibilities of the queer lens — ones that transcended binaries, rewrote cultural hierarchies, and made room for joy, complexity, and chosen kinship. Saleem gave us a chance to see how queer life itself is: joyous.
The film shows the many ways in which Saleem challenged binaries. Parties thrown by Saleem and his friends in Delhi clearly went beyond the straight and LGBT divide. His recognition of history as an essential guide for the current moment gave the movement deeper foundations. His passion for Bollywood as well as for classical music queered the hierarchy between fine art and popular culture.
We hope that screenings of the film, produced by Nirantar Trust, a feminist organisation, will create a chance to remember Saleem — and perhaps to talk about what queerness and a feminist queer perspective means to us today, and what it has taken to get here.
PRODUCTION
Jaya Sharma
TEXT
Dhamini Ratnam
EDITOR
Shivam Rastogi
VOICE
Sohnee Harshey
DESIGN
Jyotsana Singh
Shivam Rastogi
TYPOGRAPHY
Aravind Ramachandran
POSTER
Ankita Dhar
