Out in India

Out in India is a moving documentary about David Gere and Peter Carley, a long-term gay couple from Los Angeles and their two young children, Christopher and Isadora, and their experiences living for a year in India. David Gere is Associate Professor of World Arts and Cultures as UCLA, where he teaches on how art can be used in HIV/AIDS activism. David receives a Fulbright grant to travel to India for a year and work to organize artists working on HIV/AIDS education through their artwork into a national movement, culminating with a conference in Kolkata at the end of the year.

His partner, Peter Carley, a therapist, and his two young children set out with David to India, totally uprooting their lives in LA and immersing themselves in a culture that is in many ways alien and hostile to their family. The documentary follows them through their daily lives as well as David’s work organizing artists and activists and trying to forge a project that could potentially have a profound impact. The shots are generally informal using hand-held cameras, interviewing Peter and David in their homes, the people that they interact with in their daily lives and their reactions to a gay family, as well as David’s interaction with artists and the culminating conference. I thought that it captured very well the feel of being in India, and importantly it brought together the two related issues of HIV/AIDS and diversity and acceptance of diversity.