Fire (1996 film)

Fire
Fire
	Film poster
Directed by	Deepa Mehta
Written by	Deepa Mehta
Produced by	Bobby Bedi ; Deepa Mehta
Starring	Nandita Das ; Shabana Azmi
Cinematography	Giles Nuttgens
Edited by	Barry Farrell
Music by	A. R. Rahman
Production; companies	Kaleidoscope Entertainment ; Trial by Fire Films
Distributed by	Zeitgeist Films
Release dates	6 September 1996 (TIFF); 5 November 1998 (India);
Running time	108 minutes
Countries	India ; Canada
Language	English
Budget	$800,000
Box office	$501,533

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]

^ "Fire (15)". British Board of Film Classification. 1 October 1998. Retrieved 30 November 2014.
^ "Fire (1997) - Financial Information". The Numbers. Retrieved 30 November 2016.
^ Gopinath, Gayatri (2005). Impossible Desires. Durham and London: Duke University press. ISBN 9780822386537.
^ ^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.
^ Darren, Alison (2000). Lesbian Film Guide (1st ed.). London: Cassell. pp. 74–75. ISBN 030433376X. LCCN 99043640.
^ 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).
^ Gopinath, Gayatri (2005). Impossible desires: Queer diasporas and south asian public cultures. Durham: Duke University Press. p. 131. ISBN 0822335018.

[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.

[Choudhury-4] 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.

[Darren-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.

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