TU assistant professor Harjant Gill earned the May Filmmaker of the Month award from the District of Columbia Office of Motion Picture and Television Development.
Towson University professor Harjant Gill accumulated enough anecdotes growing up as a first-generation American to film his own story. Instead, the TU assistant professor of anthropology researches and relates the stories of others – particularly Punjabi men.
His body of work earned him the The District of Columbia Office of Motion Picture and Television Development’s (MPTD) May Filmmaker of the Month, in honor of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.
Gill’s most recent project is the ethnographic film Sent Away Boys, which explores the effects of transnational migration on Indian families. His research earned him the Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Fellowship and the Fejos Postdoctoral Fellowship by the Wenner Gren Foundation, which support continuing work on the film next year.
“Fortunately, I am from India, so I speak the language very well. I can assimilate into the culture,” Gill says. “That allows me to be able to talk to my participants in a personal way. We spend a lot of time building those connections and those relationships before we even introduce the camera.”
It is these personal connections that form the heart of Gill’s work – a trilogy of ethnographic films exploring what it means to be a man in the India. The first film in the trilogy, “Roots of Love,” documents the changing relationship between Indian men and their hair and turbans. The second film, “Mardistan,” which recently screened at the Ethnografilm Festival in Paris and the 2015 Asian Pacific American Film Festival, follows Indian men who are dealing with issues of manhood including sexual violence, son preference and homophobia. Milind Soman Made Me Gay explores the notion of home and belonging among gay South Asians.
Gill founded Tilotama Productions to explore the intersections of gender, sexuality, religion, citizenship, transnationality, and notions of belonging with a particular focus on Indian and South Asian diasporic masculinities. His films air on Doordarshan, the national TV station of India, as well as on BBC and PBS.
He was selected as a Youth Action Net Fellow (2003) and Point Foundation alum (2006-11). He also has served on the board of directors of Society for Visual Anthropology (SVA) and co-directed the SVA Film Festival (2012-14).
“My hope is that people see these films in India and start a healthy discussion about what it means to be a man, which nobody seems to be having,” Gill says.
Because India is so divided along gender lines, Gill explains that as a male, he is in the perfect position to start a conversation about masculinity.
“It’s easier to gain access to a space that is more masculine,” he says. “So I saw this as an opportunity to actually go and talk to young men in India and see what’s going on in their lives.”
MPTD launched the Filmmaker of the Month initiative to elevate the national and international profile of the city’s most talented filmmakers. Previous filmmakers honored include veteran filmmaker Judy Hallet; Emmy Award-winning producer/director Dave Lilling; 20/20 Productions and DC Web Fest founder Otessa Ghadar; and award-winning comedian, filmmaker and actor Tommy Taylor, Jr.
You can visit the Filmmaker of the Month section to learn more about Harjant and previous Filmmaker of the Month recipients.
