Khush It Real Good

Today’s word, for all the vocabulary-expanders in the crowd, is khush. It means “ecstatic pleasure” in Urdu, as well as “happy” and “gay.” In recent years, South Asian lesbians and gays in the West have proudly claimed the expression to describe the complex experience of being a queer person of color — an expat identity that is explored with spunk and style to burn in Pratibha Parmar’s 1991 short documentary, Khush. The fourth annual Queer Women of Color Film Festival salutes the British-Indian filmmaker with a Saturday matinee program of three nonfiction shorts she made in the ’90s (including Khush, of course), followed by a panel discussion on “Representations of Queer Asian Pacific Islander Women in the Media” anchored by the director herself. In preparation, do your homework (with a study buddy, natch) and check out Parmar’s 2006 feature debut, the lesbian culture-clash romance Nina’s Heavenly Delights.
June 13-15, 2 p.m., 2008