Fire (1996 film)

This article is about the Indo-Canadian film. For the Pakistani film of the same name, see Fire (2002 film).

Fire
Film poster
Directed byDeepa Mehta
Written byDeepa Mehta
Produced byBobby Bedi
Deepa Mehta
StarringNandita Das
Shabana Azmi
CinematographyGiles Nuttgens
Edited byBarry Farrell
Music byA. R. Rahman
Production
companies
Kaleidoscope Entertainment
Trial by Fire Films
Distributed byZeitgeist Films
Release dates
  • 6 September 1996 (1996-09-06) (TIFF)
  • 5 November 1998 (1998-11-05) (India)
Running time
108 minutes[1]
CountriesIndia
Canada
LanguageEnglish
Budget$800,000
Box office$501,533[2]

Fire is a 1996 Indo-Canadian erotic romantic drama film written and directed by Deepa Mehta, starring Shabana Azmi and Nandita Das. It is the first installment of Mehta's Elements trilogy; it is succeeded by Earth (1998) and Water (2005).

The film is loosely based on Ismat Chughtai's 1942 story, "Lihaaf" ("The Quilt").[3] Fire is one of the first mainstream Bollywood films to explicitly show homosexual relations, and the first to feature a lesbian relationship.[4][5] After its 1998 release in India, activists staged several protests, setting off a flurry of public dialogue around issues such as homosexuality and freedom of speech.[6][7][4]

  1. ^ "Fire (15)". British Board of Film Classification. 1 October 1998. Retrieved 30 November 2014.
  2. ^ "Fire (1997) - Financial Information". The Numbers. Retrieved 30 November 2016.
  3. ^ Gopinath, Gayatri (2005). Impossible Desires. Durham and London: Duke University press. ISBN 9780822386537.
  4. ^ a b Choudhury, Aishwarya (25 November 2015). "So, This Is What Went into The Making of Bollywood's First-Ever Lesbian Kiss Back in The '90s". ScoopWhoop. Retrieved 4 July 2019.
  5. ^ Darren, Alison (2000). Lesbian Film Guide (1st ed.). London: Cassell. pp. 74–75. ISBN 030433376X. LCCN 99043640.
  6. ^ North, Madline (10 December 1998). "Women: Fighting Fire; Last week, activists ran riot at a cinema in Delhi in protest at the screening of Fire, a film about lesbians. Shabana Azmi a member of both India's parliament and the film's cast, explains why it should be shown". The Guardian (London).
  7. ^ Gopinath, Gayatri (2005). Impossible desires: Queer diasporas and south asian public cultures. Durham: Duke University Press. p. 131. ISBN 0822335018.