National award-winning Indian filmmaker Lipika Singh has made a new documentary, B and S, a transwomen-centric story which is the third in Lipika’s 'Letters to my late Grand Aunt' series, inspired by her childhood memories and imaginary conversations with her late grand aunt.
The previous entries in this series were Dragonfly and Snake (2014) and Night and Fear (2023). An FTII alumna, Lipika has won four National Awards, including the Silver Lotus for A Tree a Man a Sea (2013) and Best Director for The Waterfall (2017).
Edited excerpts from an interview with THE WEEK:
How did you come to think of a documentary featuring trans-women?
In the film essay B and S, B is Biraja, my dearest friend, who is over a decade younger than me. We have been friends for five years, having lived in the same city, Bhubaneswar, back then. We bonded over films, our shared quest of “who are we?”, and the intention to look at the world with compassion. We would talk for hours about it. I have seen her leave the city that suffocated her, I have seen her desperately search for friends and love, and I’ve also seen how she found trust and confidence in and from S—Saesha, who is from Surat.
I witnessed and experienced B and S’s journey—experiencing the new city of Delhi, searching for work, finding their new home, making their first kitchen, fighting over silly things, and discovering deep realities about themselves. Mostly, I saw this from a distance, through hours-long video calls with Biraja, day after day. Because of this, my film also features a vertical image space in many parts, holding the same space that used to be our go-to space on the phone to meet each other and share our lives for years.
The beautiful experience of witnessing this tender friendship from a physical distance, yet very intimately, made me realise I needed to keep it close to me in a safe space that B, S, or I could revisit when in need of reassurance of love. I needed to have this conversation with my grand-aunt, and starting that conversation took me through many personal questions about gender, sexuality, love, friendship, and life.
The innate focus of this film essay is to explore and record this friendship, not to feature two transwomen, so to speak. However, they are trans, and the film will likely be viewed through that lens, which is expected. But I am happy that we created a beautiful space in the film to explore both our friendship and our transness and also how relationships are or could be imagined in contemporary India.
Were there any particular societal challenges you faced during the filmmaking process?
As the film is about my friends and myself, I decided to make it even more personal by doing the cinematography myself for the first time. I didn’t want to bring in someone new who would start everything from scratch. We only had one person helping with shooting and production—Navya, who is gentle and informed. We shot in limited locations, mostly at home, so we hardly faced any major challenges during the production process.
However, alongside the filmmaking, our daily lives continued, and there have been — and continue to be — never-ending challenges surrounding trans identity for both B and S and for me as a woman. The city has been quite rough for both Biraja and Saesha, and they are best suited to speak about the challenges.
This happens to be the third film in the series 'Letters to my late Grand Aunt'. Tell us about the conceptualisation of the series itself, about your relationship with your grand aunt and more.
'Letters to my late Grand Aunt' is just a name I loosely gave to the series last year, to help people easily refer to the letters—film essays I’ve written, all addressed to my late grand aunt. Yes, I will continue writing letters to her, but it may happen that, years later, I address a few letters to someone else.
You know, everyone has—or tries to find—a safe space to return to at the end of the day. It can be physical or mental. Even today at 40, I find myself smiling with my late grand-aunt and walking through the paddy fields in my maternal village in Odisha. That memory space helps keep my childhood, my primal self, in a nurturing space, rooting me to where I come from. As a filmmaker, I try to explore this safe space to have conversations with her, capturing it in the form of a film essay.
I belong to the Adivasi community called Ho from Mayurbhanj. My grand-aunt lived in her maternal home, single, until the end of her life. She nurtured her brother’s household, loving all his children and grandchildren, while also being a lifelong friend to my grandmother after my grandfather left home. I bonded with her deeply, though I didn’t fully realise it as a child. I spent most of my summer and winter vacations in the village, and in fact, a lot of time there even when I was an infant. I think, as people, we shared a similar spirit—or perhaps I just imbibed a lot from her. A tiny woman with immense strength, she was a pillar for the household. She taught me so much about nature and our connection to it—not through lessons, but through the everyday ethos of an Adivasi household.
I thought she was born only to love me—and she did. That assurance gave me my first understanding of love: it's a continuous feeling, it doesn’t stop or die. Of course, as a child, how could I have known that love can also be a choice?
Your previous films, Dragonfly and Snake, Night and Fear, and The Waterfall, have all been very different...What is the kind of filmmaker you'd like to describe yourself as? What are the subjects that appeal to you?
I don't consider the letter series as "films" in the conventional sense, with the usual aspirations that films typically have. I deliberately keep them separate from those aspirations, competitions, commerce, or any pressure to conform to the idea of a "film." These are my personal extensions. The other films I have made are mostly commissioned, but all the subjects have been chosen by me, driven by my deep interest in them.
Those films are meant to participate in society and have a purpose. Most of them feature my voice narration, which may be a prominent style in my work, but I am constantly exploring new possibilities. I don't see myself as someone seeking a particular form or style of filmmaking. Changing visual cultures and ideas in response to the changes we as people undergo in terms of our perceptions have a significant impact on how I want to construct a narrative — or, whether I even want to construct one at all, or simply hold onto fragments.
When I moved to Odisha in 2013 and began making films, there wasn’t particularly anyone practising documentary filmmaking. Yes, there were a few men making films occasionally, and one or two documentaries by women could be heard about, apart from television productions where a few women were producers.
But as an independent practising women filmmaker, there was none. So, I began by looking around, engaging with my space, and exploring the language of filmmaking. I made two long documentaries: Some Stories Around Witches, on witch-hunting cases in Odisha; and Backstage, on all forms of puppetry and the last generation of puppeteers in the state. I think understanding the socio-cultural canvas of a space and recording it—whether through non-fiction or fictional means—appeals to me.
Tell us about your growing up years and the influence of cinema as a youngster.
I lived in many small towns across Odisha because my father was a bank manager. I never lived in a city, so I was somewhat distant from a lot of things like films, books, and music. We had a TV, and my mother would buy storybooks and magazines. I think I was the busiest as a child—attending school, training in Hindustani classical music for seven years, learning dance and painting, and being very active in school. That left me with very little time to watch TV. My mother was strict, and our TV time was limited to half an hour per day, plus one film or anything of our choice on weekends. I still don’t have a TV at home, which people hardly believe.
I remember being strongly inclined towards films my parents would regard as "serious cinema." I wouldn’t blink an eye while watching a film, that others might consider boring, shown on National TV. My film-watching was mostly limited to what DD1 showed. Cheluvi by Girish Karnad, where a woman turns into a tree in a deep forest, or the scene from Bag Bahadur by Buddhadev Dasgupta, where a man-tiger dances to drumbeats while the villagers follow him were magical and powerful for me.
Naseeruddin Shah’s character in Ijaazat by Gulzar, Manthan by Shyam Benegal, and Masoom by Shekhar Kapur—all of these films and the characters stirred something deep within me. At that time, I didn’t know who directed or made these films, nor was I aware I was watching many National Award-winning films, as they would often be telecast on TV. But I knew that the ones I liked were different. They stayed with me, like memories I lived.
What is your opinion on films we see in Bollywood today?
Somehow, I was never really into watching Hindi films, so I don’t watch a lot of them. But, I absolutely love old Hindi songs and can dance madly to both old and contemporary numbers. Perhaps I can say that these days, directors are more aware and brave in shifting their style and perspective.
You already have four national awards in your kitty. What's next on your mind?
Awards have never been on my mind though they helped me a lot to establish my identity as a filmmaker. I’ve been working as an independent filmmaker from Odisha for the last decade. Cinema, or filmmaking, is my art practice. I consider it a beautiful opportunity to understand life and the world intensely and intimately.
In terms of developing projects and sustaining myself—considering the very limited scope for independent filmmaking (both documentary and fiction) in the country—I’ve recently started connecting with film communities around the world through festivals to expand the possibilities of my work.
I am about to start an experimental film this year with the support of IFA (India Foundation for the Arts), reworking a mid-length fiction film I’ve completed, and most importantly, I am working on my first Odia feature film, Birdwoman, which is a Hubert Bals Development Fund-selected project.
I’m currently looking for international co-production and have already embarked on a new journey of collaborating with international creative professionals.
