Curated for Pride Library, University of Western Ontorio, Canada
Copyright Sridhar Rangayan, 2009
Please write to us for permission to use any text on this site
DISCLAIMER: All interpretations and readings is by the author. All the images and videos on this site have been used only for reference, collated from sources on the internet.
CREDITS
Title: Chandni Bar
English Title: Moonlight Bar
Year: 2001
Language: Hindi
Subtitles : English
Genre: Feature / Popular Entertainer
Director: Madhur Bhandarkar
SYNOPSIS
Mumtaz is a village girl whose family is killed in communal riots and she is forced to move to Mumbai and become a bar girl at Chandni Bar. She hates it, but she forces herself to dance and flirt while her uncle squanders all the money she earns. He adds one final, unforgivable crime to the list when he gets drunk and rapes her. By this time she has caught the eye of a gangster Potiya Sawant. When she tells Potiya what her uncle did to her, Potiya decides to "defend her honor." Potiya shoots the uncle and offers to marry Mumtaz. She leaves the bar and stays home to raise her two children, whom she carefully protects from the world of prostitution and gangs. However, her world unravels again when Potiya is killed. She has to return to the bar to support her children. In the end, she cannot protect them from their sordid surroundings. Her son becomes a killer, her daughter becomes a bar dancer in her turn, and Mumtaz turns to prostitution in a tragic attempt to save her son.
QUEER NOTES
Mumtaz�s son Abhay gets caught in a minor robbery and is remanded to a juvenile prison. Here he gets raped by an elder boy, a local bully, who has a score to settle. Abhay, once out of prison seeks the bully and shoots him down.
ACTOR/S IN QUEER ROLE
Vishal Thakkar as Abhay, the victim and Javed Rizvi as the rapist
LINKS
Imdb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0267363/
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandni_Bar
queer portrayals in Indian films