Gitanjali Rao | Printed Rainbow / 2006 [animated film]

into the rainbow

by Douglas Messerli

 

Gitanjali Rao (screenwriter, animator, and director) Printed Rainbow / 2006 [15 minutes] [animated film]

 

Indian director Gitanjali Rao’s short animated film is a true treasure and won awards at the Kodak short film award and Critic’s Award at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival.

    It begins in gray and muted tones of black and white as an elderly woman wakens, feeds the cat, and proceeds to go about her business in the Mumbi rain. She is friendly, waving to an elderly man across the way. But it is a dreary existence without much to offer.

     This woman, however, happens to also be phillumenist, a collector of matchboxes, some of which are delivered to her quite often by the kind gentleman to whom she has waved across the way.

      Unlike the world around her, these colored matchboxes bring her an entire rainbow world, as when she picks them up their bright colored covers take her to imaginary worlds totally unlike the gray, rainy world of the film, suddenly turns her life into a extraordinary adventures, beginning with her riding an elephant through a jungle, taking her to a stream where she suddenly floats down river to a palace wherein the owner’s concubines gather to smoke hukkahs and later to bathe together in lesbian splendor in the pools.

 

     Soon after, her friend comes for a visit, delivering her up some more matchbooks which he has ordered especially for her collection. She, taking one of them out, becomes a temporary truck driver, speeding, exhilarated down the highway.

 

    It again begins to rain again, and she returns to her matchbox collection, this time taking up residence on a farm, milking cows and doing chores that she obviously finds fulfilling.

      Her gentlemen friend again stops by for a visit, but this time there is no answer. He gently opens the door to see her either asleep in her dreams or perhaps dead. He picks up a box of matches nearby to see her now depicted in the farm where she has evidently found her paradise.

      This is a beautiful film that Rao has dedicated to her grandmother, filled with dreams and new possibilities. Although it cannot be described as specifically a gay film, there are enough clues that this elderly woman is out to explore all possibilities, including the sexual, the feminist, and simply a world where she controls her own destiny. At no point does she settle down with a man, but through her imagination visits worlds where she and other women are basically in control of their societies and activities. This is most definitely, as the title suggests, a kind of rainbow world, something clearly outside of normative society.

 

Los Angeles, July 21, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2026).