My Kaali is queer that spits at patriarchy: Leena amid poster row

CHENNAI: Amid the raging controversy over the poster of her documentary film, filmmaker Leena Manimekalai, in an interview with Voice of America, said she saw Kaali as herself in the movie.

"My Kaali is queer. She is a free spirit. She spits at the patriarchy. She dismantles Hindutva. She destroys capitalism. She embraces everyone with all her thousand hands," the director said.

The image that kindled public outrage among Indians appears in a poster promoting new short film Kaali by the Canadian-based Indian filmmaker.

The poster depicts Hindu goddess Kaali smoking a cigarette and holding an LGBTQ+ flag.

Leena Manimekalai is pursuing a Master of Fine Arts course at Canada's York University on a full scholarship. Though the screening of her documentary by the Aga Khan Museum and the Toronto Metropolitan University got cancelled in the wake of the controversy, Leena's university expressed support to her artistic freedom.

Kaali is a movie about Manimekalai in whose body goddess Kaali inhabits and roams around the city streets. In a scene, the goddess in her body shares a cigarette with a homeless man.

Manimekalai who identifies herself as bisexual and atheist, said: “In rural Tamil Nadu, the state I come from, Kaali is believed to be a pagan goddess. She eats meat cooked in goat’s blood, drinks arrack, smokes beedi [cigarettes] and dances wild … that is the Kaali I had embodied for the film," she said in an interview with the Guardian.