The American Center hosts the screening of filmmaker Onir's film

Engendered, the Transnational Arts and Human Rights organization and the American Center, Kolkata, US Embassy, on the occasion of Pride Month, showcased Onir’s new film Pine Cone, on June 26 to mark I-View World Film Festival’s foray in Kolkata. The screening was followed by an intimate panel discussion around the film that has received accolades at the BFI-FLARE 2024. Pine Cone is a semi-autobiographical film that narrates the story of an out-and-proud filmmaker Sid Mehra falling in love for the first time and over two decades becoming cynical about love. The backdrop of the story is the changing landscape of queer rights in India: the year 1999, when the first gay pride took place in Kolkata; 2009, when the Delhi High Court decriminalized homosexuality (a ruling overturned in 2012); and finally in 2019 when homosexuality had again been decriminalized by the Supreme Court of India. Besides Elizabeth Lee, director of American Center and the filmmaker, the screening and panel discussion was attended by Riddhi Sen, Sandeepta Das, Arpita Chatterjee, Sujoy Prasad Chatterjee, Ranjan Ghosh, Suman Mukhopadhyay, among many others.