Khush on AllMovie

One of the central figures of the British independent media movement, Pratiba Parmar, has spent the last decade making challenging and important documentaries to which Khush is no exception. Khush, taken from the Urdu meaning "ecstatic pleasure," deals with the lives of South Asian lesbians and gay men as they negotiate their existences in Britain, North America, and India. In their interviews, these men and women explore what it means to be queer and of color in their particular locale. What emerges from the interviews is a sense of a commonly held identity, across geographical boundaries, based in their collective experiences of isolation and difference. Parmar intercuts this interview footage with dreamlike reveries and interpretative dance sequences which are intended as an artistic commentary. The film concludes on an uplifting note underscoring the sense of pleasure inherent in the etymology of khush.