Take the case of a senior medical officer in Behrampore district, who was invited to the Siddhartha Gautama Film Festival last year when it took mobile film screening to the district. When asked for a few words, the officer was left fumbling for words and was visibly uncomfortable talking about issues on sexuality and HIV.

“Though he didn’t talk about it, he backed our efforts and asked us to educate him on the work we do, our issues etc,” says Pawan Dhall of Solidarity and Action Against The HIV Infection in India (SAATHII), which takes the festival to Siliguri this year, besides Bhadrak, Titlagarh and Bolangir in Orissa.

This year’s film festival also includes screenings in Kolkata.

SAATHII, with support from organisations spread across districts, plans to take films on homosexuality and transgender issues to more districts.

“We also hope that the film festival will be able to contribute to social action around the petition and the larger campaign against Section 377 IPC,” says Dhall.

“Unlike in a metropolis, there’s quite a bit of inhibition in the districts. Since most of these screenings are done also for HIV positive people and their families, people from gay and trans-gender communities, there is a general fear among people which comes from ignorance,” says Dhall.

The festival will try to rope in government officials, whose presence might break the ice for people in towns in both Orissa and Bengal. Film screenings exclusively for college students are also on the cards.

“Several mass communication and medical students have shot films on HIV activism on campus. We hope more students take the cue from them,” says Dhall.

“We have invited submission of films made on relevant issues. We have almost a 500-film library now. But if we still find something interesting, we will try and screen it,” says Dhall.

Among the films that will be screened are Amitava Sarkar’s 26-minute film Bengali Rupantar that talks about the hurdles faced by male-to-female trans-gender people in developing countries.

Sridhar Rangayan’s “68 pages” in Hindi rips open the hypocritical underbelly of the Indian society, which keeps HIV positive people at an arm’s length.

Tirthankar Guha Thakurta’s autobiographical Piku Is Fine and Debashish Ghosh Ray’s Shuru are among the other films to be screened.