Keeping in tune with its agenda on creating awareness on key issues among the youth in the country, Love Matters India launched the first 360/VR film on the issue of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) in Delhi and Mumbai on the 17th June 2017. The film ‘Kya Yahi Pyar Hai’ uses virtual reality to narrate a powerful story and connect with young people through immersive storytelling experience.
The film ‘Kya Yahi Pyar hai’ was conceptualized by Love Matters India to generate awareness against controlling relationships that are seen and understood by the young people as caring ones, reiterated by the popular culture. Intimate Partner is defined as “any behavior within an intimate relationship that causes physical, psychological or sexual harm to those in the relationship, including acts of physical aggression, sexual coercion, psychological abuse and controlling behaviors.” Social norms are identified as the dominant drivers for IPV in India. However, there is a high level of reluctance from both men and women victims to talk about violence in their relationship.
Bollywood celebrities like Swara Bhaskar, Gul Panag and Konkana Sensharma took to twitter to support the campaign and talk about this issue.
Speaking on the above initiative Vithika Yadav, Head of Love Matters India said”-“We managed the film launch in both Delhi and Mumbai simultaneously and it feels great. The response to the film has been very good. People are interested in knowing about more screenings that we’ll organize across the country. Next we”ll be organizing free screening of the film across Delhi Metro stations using VR booths, from 21st to 30th June (2017) . The panel discussion on popular culture was really engaging and though provoking views shared on how it can inspire, guide, motivate, rule the mind and even sometimes mislead people.”
Sharing her experience while making the film, Co-Director of the film, Gayatri Parameswaran said, “Directing this 360/VR experience was challenging on many levels. Firstly, we had to leave the scene every time we hit record because we couldn’t be in the film. In 360, everything is captured. So it helped that we trusted the actor, Arjun, quite a lot. And for him it was difficult too – acting with a camera as your opposing character, isn’t easy! But I’m glad about how it has all shaped up.”
As part of this campaign Love Matters India partnered with Social Offline in Delhi and Mumbai, a chain of pubs/ restaurants, to install 360 film viewing booth with VR headsets. The Delhi Metro will also have film viewing booths set up across 10 metro stations in Delhi for 10 days. The launch was kickstarted by a Panel discussion on the topic “Control and Care in popular Culture in India” followed by the screening of the film.
About Love Matters:
Love Matters is a global multimedia project engaging young people to talk about love, sex and relationships, with a presence in 5 countries around the world: India, Kenya, China, Latin America (Mexico and Venezuela) and Egypt. Love Matters believes love, sex and relationships should be a right, a choice, and a pleasure. The first step towards making this possible and having an impact on young people’s lives is offering access to information. LM India is the first bilingual sexual reproductive health (SRH) site to offer comprehensive youth-friendly information in English and Hindi. Since the launch of the bilingual site on January 14, 2014, it has had over 20 million yearly visitors, and has the current website monthly reach of 2 million visitors. Their Facebook community has a following of more than one million making it the most popular sexual health Facebook page in India.
By Love Matters India Team