Screening from Series Present Past 2025: A Celebration of Film Preservation
Down and Out in America
$5
Sun, Dec 21, 2025
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Badnam Basti
The debut feature of director Prem Kapoor, this is considered the first Indian film to openly portray queer relationships. Based on the Hindi novel by Kamleshwar Prasad Saxena, the film focuses on truck driver and “dacoit” Sarnam Singh (Nitin Sethi), and his intimate bonds with dancer Bansuri (Nandita Thakur) and cleaner Shivraj (Amar Kakkad). Beyond its representation of bisexuality, Badnam Basti’s radical formal experimentation makes it exceptional even within the context of India’s New Wave movement. Long thought lost, a film print was discovered in 2019, and Badnam Basti has been restored to a new digital version by the Arsenal archive.
Note by Simran Bhalla, Curatorial Assistant of Curatorial, Academy Museum.
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