VALENTINE@ 3

Valentine @ 3 started with the idea- ‘love is love’. Love has no gender, caste, religion, racism or any discrimination. I strongly believe that this is the right time to tell people that no human being is alike. Like all fingers are not the same in a hand, human beings too differ. Feelings is common for any human and generalizing human emotions with social stigma is not fair.

Today many queer people are coming out of closet with confidence and expressing themselves out loud and clear. Their emotions and voices has to be respected . Love is very natural and so the love a queer person develops is also natural. Many people are in ignorance that if a homosexual man keeps friendship with a heterosexual person then the heterosexual person might turn homosexual. This never happens. Homosexuality , asexuality is not by choice . It is a natural born feeling. Like heterosexual person cannot be converted homosexual , homosexual person also cannot be converted as heterosexual .

Love is always tabooed in the society. Today so many honor killing cases are registered because of the ignorance in people's mind to treat people equally. A gay love is always compared with lust . If a gay person comes out open in public and expresses his feelings towards a person , people treat it with sex . They generalize that the gay person is perverted and wants a chance to hook up with other men . It has to be clarified here that gay men also have true love and their feelings are as normal as any heterosexual person. It's easy for a heterosexual person to express his/her love to the family and friends but for a gay man conversing about his feelings with family and friends itself is a huge task as it is too difficult to make others think from their perspective.

Statistical data clarifies that one in hundred people committing suicide are from LGBTIQA+ community. The main reason for the suicide are insecurity in family and society, depression , betrayal and lack of acceptance . The time has come to accept everyone as equal.

I thought to discuss extactly this aspect in my film . The real emotions of gay men and their internal conflicts . In the first chapter , I wanted to show a mother’s acceptance towards her son ‘s sexuality.The second chapter dealt with discussion on legalizing gay marriages and permanence in same-sex relationship. The third chapter discussed about break up and brutal murder of a gay man in police custody .

Like we know actors are more hesitant accepting LGBTIQA+ characters, I waited for a very long time to get right actors to cast in my film. I wanted my actor to feel the character and behave, not just act. However, I was very fortunate to get extremely talented actors like Shylaja Chetlur, Shriviyas, Raj Kumar, Mohan Kumar Malika, Pradeep Vijayan, Rakesh . All these actors came on board trusting me and my script. They give me the freedom and an opportunity to experiment. I wanted to show the audience in the form of gratitude , their acting potential and so I came with the idea to shoot the film in long takes, with no cuts . Also the idea helped me to create a candid feeling of watching the film like seeing an uninterrupted live performance and conversation. The realism was more visible in the performances and conversations with this technique. To give additional support to this technique, I avoided adding background score in the film .

We have treated the film and subject with utmost dignity. We have experimented technically with long takes and no background score . Now we are waiting to know the feedback and responses from the people . I look forward in future to make more films in this topic as well as working more closer to realism.