Wagging Tongues Productions

We are delighted to announce our Leeds International Film Festival win!
“A beautiful, well-crafted short which humanised a number of underrepresented intersectional identities.”
#LIFF2019 #LeedsShortFilmAwards

Our new short film is ready for the festival run!

https://www.leedsfilm.com/…/leeds-q…/ a-night-with-noorjehan/

'A Night with Noorjehan' behind the scenes

With the advent of the colonial rule in the 18th century the status of the ‘Hijra’ deteriorated. Michelraj notes - “Accounts of early European travellers showed that they were repulsed by the sight of Hijras and could not comprehend why they were given so much respect in the royal courts and other institutions. In the second half of the 19th century, the British colonial administration vigorously sought to criminalise the Hijra community and to deny them the civil rights.” Centuries later the stigma remains. They are subject to severe marginalisation and violence, expelled from their homes as children and left to fend for themselves. The community leaders ‘gurus’ maintain safe houses where the community lives and works.

On one hand there was the child protagonist and on the other discernment of repressing transgender. M. Michelraj states in his research paper titled, ‘Historical Evolution of Transgender Community in India’ that there is significant evidence of ‘recognition of the third sex’ in ancient text from the Indian Sub-Continent. ‘Hijras’ (transgender) held important roles in the royal courts of the Islamic world from the Ottoman to the Mughal empires.

The global film culture having birthed from Western capitalism dominates international cinema. Roy Armes notes the impact of this on postcolonial cinema in his book ‘Third World of Film Making and the West’, as a quote by Oswaldo Guayasmin, “...like a man who has lost his fingerprints. This is the danger we would all risk if, cursing our cultural identity and ceasing to defend it, we blindly accepted the bilateral assistance, foreign technicians and international cooperation, which corresponds to other mental patterns, other orientations and other objectives.”
Stills from 'A Night with Noorjehan'

Cinema continues to shape narratives and define cultural identities, but the embodiment of shared emotion through haptic visuality manifests towards far reaching consequences. Whether it is nationalistic propaganda or the charm of a spectacle, it begs to question the authenticity of representing realism. This is aptly put by Lucia Nagib in her book ‘World Cinema and the Ethics of Reality’ - “ ...making films is making history, entailing change in the real life of casts and crews, and therefore producing an ethical reality”. The quote sums up the ‘Noorjehan journey’ and raises the question whether there is such a thing as ‘responsible realism’ in film.

Since the Lumiere Brothers’ ‘Arrival of the Train’ in 1896, cinema, deeply rooted to our archaic need for storytelling, has been entangled with the human condition. It is worthy to note that the brothers’ first films were about children. - Stills from The Sprinkler Sprinkled 1895 - Louis Lumiere

“ …making films is making history, entailing change in the real life of casts and crews, and therefore producing an ethical reality”. _‘World Cinema and the Ethics of Reality’ by Lucia Nagib

10 minute short film - 'A Night with Noorjehan'.
Focused on the snapshot of human connection, A Night With Noorjehan is set around a vintage cinema of old Lahore, the microcosm depicts a clash of the authoritative jurisdiction of men and the other - child, woman and transgender.

All good things must come to an end. It is impossible to capture the whole experience of Aangan on film, the magnificent form of the rising helix, garments in flight like a raging dragon. The intricate heart rending messages stitched into the fabric by a hundred artisans, the haunting soundscape of whispers and hymns, the wailing of the flute punctuated by the tabla. The mist of words that follows you and the kaleidoscope of moving imagery of the mesmerising film and animation. Here's a peek as best as possible.