Leena Manimekalai, who is facing outrage and two FIRs in India after she shared a poster for her performance documentary Kaali, has said, “I do not feel safe anywhere at this moment."
She told Guardian, “It feels like the whole nation – that has now deteriorated from the largest democracy to the largest hate machine – wants to censor me."
She also said, “In rural Tamil Nadu, the state I come from, Kaali is believed to be a pagan goddess. She eats meat cooked in goat's blood, drinks arrack, smokes beedi (cigarettes) and dances wild… that is the Kaali I had embodied for the film.”
In her poster, a woman dressed as the goddess Kaali can be seen smoking. A pride flag can also be seen in the background. Twitter has since withheld the tweet with the poster in India.
In response to the outrage on social media, Leena had earlier tweeted, “"I want to be with a voice that speaks without fear of anything until it is. If the price is my life, I will give it.”
“My Kaali is inspired from Tamil and Telugu village rituals where she comes on people as a spirit and eats meat, smokes ganja, drinks country arrack, urinates in the middle of the village, spits on filth and dances wild,” the filmmaker told The Wire.
Leena Manimekalai had also told The Quint, “These people have nothing to do with faith. Their fuel is hate. These are the elements backed by the current fascist Hindutva fundamentalist regime and their only aim is to divide the people of this country and harvest the hate as votes.”
She further said, “Kaali in my film chooses love and champions humanity. She embraces people from varied ethnicities, race, and colour while she walks across the streets of downtown Toronto.”
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