In October 2001 I had been in Toronto for less than a year, was single, still identifying as straight and renting a room in the home of a wonderful dyke and her two little girls. The launch of Rewriting The Script caught my attention - queer Brown people were assembling for queer brown things. I went alone. I was curious. I barely knew anyone in the city and I found this anonymity to be comforting, especially at events like these. The launch took place at the Innis Hall theatre which I sat in every Wednesday morning all year for Film Studies 101.

Rewriting the Script: A Love Letter to Our Families is produced by Friday Night Productions, a volunteer collective of South Asians from queer communities, based in Toronto. The video was made over the course of four to five years as a resource for South Asians when coming out to family and loved ones with tiny grants from the City of Toronto and Community One Foundation (previously Gay and Lesbian Community Appeal) and private fundraising.

I don’t remember feeling any emotion as I watched the video, but I was glad that it existed and glad that I had attended the screening. I listened as questions were asked. Most notable was a remark about the lack of a word in Hindi or Urdu to describe gay or queer relationships. I purchased the video on VHS as a gift for one of my cousins. She married a man a year later.

I didn’t really think much about the video after that. Not even after coming out myself in 2004. I didn’t think about sharing it with my mother because my coming out process was simple and it was over the phone, she was on the other side of the planet.

Then in 2007 I landed the job of coordinating a wonderful project called Among Friends, to train service providers on how to work with queer and trans immigrants and refugees. I designed a three-hour workshop, in which I screened Rewriting the Script followed as a way to break the ice. It proved to be one of the more powerful tools used in workshops. The most common response from participants was that the video shed light on some of the struggles our families face when confronted with a queer child. Providers felt better equipped to respond, more aware of what people are facing.

Rewriting The Script is a hugely important video. It has brought the community along. It has given strength to so many who are isolated and struggling. For me, just being at the launch was a significant event, there was an energy in that space which I still remember. It felt like community. At the time it was not my community, but it was community. Queer South Asians (and anyone who experiences ‘otherness’) often lack community, and this is what we struggle with most. Visibility, validation, voice. Rewriting the Script has helped people to speak that voice.

Yet Rewriting the Script has not received the attention it deserves, so I wanted to do my bit and write about it. I posed a few questions to Farzana Doctor, one of the founding members of the Friday Night Productions collective, and here are her responses.

RC: Why did you decide to make this video tool?
FD: Many years ago (I think it was 1996 or 1997) a group of us started talking about how hard it was after we’d come out to our parents. We felt invisible. After coming out, many of our families went into denial, and it was like our proclamations hadn’t even happened. Unless we kept talking about our orientations, relationship etc., it seems like the issue didn’t exist.

So that year we decided to hold a workshop at Desh Pardesh (an annual queer, South Asian arts and culture festival held in Toronto until 2000 or so) called “I came out to my mother at the Dixie Mall Food Court. Now what?”

At the workshop, we had a couple of parents on the panel. The audience, mostly queer South Asians, talked about the need for some sort of resource to help with coming out, but also to talk about what can happen after coming out. They recognized that South Asian parents might not want to go to PFLAG and had no resources for processing the coming out announcements. So, we decided to create a video that straight family members could watch, with role models of other parents talking about their experiences.

RC: Who is the intended audience for the video?
FD: It’s intended mostly for families. But queer people use it too, and show it to their families. I have also used the video at Queer 101 trainings I’ve facilitated to offer examples of intersections between queer and South Asian identities.

RC: What was the initial response from the South Asian community, the queer community and mainstream community?
FD: We showed it to a packed audience most of whom were queers and queer allies. There was overwhelming support and celebration for the video. Since then I sometimes hear from young queer folks who found it helpful – it spoke to their experience. To mainstream audiences (at Queer 101 training) it’s mostly a hit (except for consistent complaining about the poor sound quality! I wish we had more money for higher production value)

RC: How was the project continued since then?
FD: The year after it came out we hired someone to do outreach to South Asian communities, to get the video out there. We later hired another person to distribute it to groups across Canada, the US and UK. We hired people to create a manual to use alongside the video. We made international versions and distributed them to groups in India. We’ve done closed captioning and updated to DVD. We still bring in sales money occasionally which is used to have more copies made. The manual is now also available in PDF form on our website. And we have a Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=info&ref=ts&gid=7943082239


RC: Can you share any stories from people who have watched the video with family, and received understanding or acceptance?
FD: One story I recall – a young woman was going to come out and she decided to show the video to her parents as part of the process. They all watched it together (nervously) and it seems to help them open up some dialogue. I recall she said that it was helpful that everyone in the video was South Asian and they we addressed the myth that ‘this is a White thing.”

RC: Do you have anything in the works for the future?
FD: Many of the Friday Night Productions members have since had children and we thought a video about South Asian queers with kids would be good. But right now we don’t have the resources or the time to commit, we sacrificed many Friday nights to get the first one done – hence the collective’s name. And other good films on the topics have since been made including the wonderful DVD “Brown Like Me” from ASAAP.

For me as a writer it’s important for me to engage these issues through literature, so that’s where my energies have moved. “Stealing Nasreen” which has queer South Asian characters came out in 2007 and “Six Metres of Pavement”, my second novel, will come out in winter 2011 with Dundurn, and it too addresses some of these themes.

RC: What do you think are the major challenges facing South Asian queers in North America today?
FD: I think visibility and community spaces continue to be challenges, even with the gains we’ve made in the last decade. It’s still hard for queers to come out to their families, and families still don’t have enough supports.
For more about Rewriting the Script and where to get the DVD visit their website: http://www.rewritingthescript.ca/index.html

Farzana Doctor is a Toronto-based author and social worker. Her novel, Stealing Nasreen (Inanna, 2007) has received critical acclaim from the Globe and Mail, Quill and Quire, and NOW Magazine. She has also co-written a manual for therapists and was part of the video collective that produced the documentary, “Rewriting the Script”. She is now working on revisions on her second novel, A Six Meter Stretch of Pavement. Check out her website at www.farzanadoctor.com