Acclaimed Director speaks to packed auditorium 

Decatur, Ga.-On March 26, one of this generation's most acclaimed directors spoke at the annual Sheth Endowed Lecture in Indian Studies at Emory University.

Mira Nair (photo: Eric Bomba-Ire)

Displaying gently wry humor and occasionally interjecting her take on world and state affairs, Nair recounted her career from her early beginnings in India at the University of Delhi-where she studied sociology and theater-to her entry at Harvard with a full scholarship.

"I basically wanted to go to Harvard after I saw Love Story," she said, smiling.

At Harvard her focus on sociology evolved into a concentration on documentary filmmaking. Her first documentary, Jama Masjid Street Journal, was made as part of her thesis in 1979. It examined the life of a community of Muslims in Old Delhi.

While living in New York in 1982, she met an Indian immigrant whose wife and son had been left behind in India. So Far From India became the story of this man, and his efforts to deal with his feelings at the enforced separation from his family.

Nair's most acclaimed documentary came in 1985 with India Cabaret, a portrayal of the aging strippers working a seedy club in Bombay, which earned the best documentary prize at the American Film Festival and the Global Village Film Festival that year.

In 1987, she completed Children of a Desired Sex-a 28-minute examination of the travails of pregnant Indian women who find through amniocentesis that they are carrying girls, and the subsequent pressure imposed on them to abort because of the importance placed on bearing male heirs.

Nair explained that in most of her documentary work, she spent a lot of time with her subjects, often convincing them to let her stay in their homes and live amongst their families. So Far From India took this approach, as did India Cabaret, for which she lived in the same quarters with the strippers for almost the duration of the filming of the documentary.

But, Nair said, at that time documentary films weren't receiving nearly as many accolades and as much attention as they often get these days. "You couldn't get a distribution deal or a theatrical release and your work couldn't be seen...so you had to work with the networks, BBC, and other channels."

Those factors influenced her decision to move toward fictional narratives, seeking worldwide access and a sustainable audience. Her debut as a dramatic filmmaker came in 1988 with Salaam Bombay!, which examined the lives of street children in Bombay-their daily struggles to survive through begging or menial jobs while trying to evade the depradations of the police.

For her first feature, Nair continued to use the methods that had made her documentaries so true-to-life: her cast, among whom she practically lived for an extended period, were drawn from Bombay's large population of rootless children.

"We recruited these kids from the streets and we spent a lot of time with them," she said. "We also created a center where we'd bring the kids, train them and coach them to find out who would fit the roles.

"No actor could have re-created their lives. They knew already what to do in certain situations."

Nair talked about the importance of films with cross-cultural themes. Many of her features, notably Mississippi Masala, which explored the conflicts and difficulties which beset the romance between a black Southerner (Denzel Washington) and a Ugandan-born Indian refugee (Sarita Choudhury) in a small city in the Mississippi Delta, touch upon the collisions between disparate cultures.

Following her talk, Nair shared with the audience one of her latest projects: her portion of the feature film 11.09.01.

"We [eleven directors] were assigned to make a short film of 11 minutes, nine seconds and one frame surrounding the attacks in New York. I based mine on the story of the missing Indian officer in New York during the attack who was suspected to be one of the terrorists before he was discovered dead under one of the towers.

"I met with his mother many times before we started production on the movie."

Mohammed Salman Hamdani was a Pakistani-born medical student who had trained as a New York Police Department cadet. He disappeared on the morning of the World Trade Center disaster, and a few weeks after the tragedy his mother Talmat received word that he was being sought by investigators for questioning in the attacks.

Convinced of his innocence-and believing that, somewhere, Salman was still alive, perhaps in Federal custody-Talmat fought emotional turmoil and disillusion as she searched desperately for her son, while all the time the community in which she lived in New York grew more and more foreign to her. Over six months later, she finally received word that her son's body-or part of it, at least-had been found beneath the ruins of the towers, and that in fact he had likely been heroically aiding victims when he was killed. Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the NYC police commissioner attended his funeral.

Very few in this country have seen Nair's contribution to the project, or indeed any of the film. "[It] was dubbed anti-American and hasn't been distributed in the States," she said.

After the screening, the director joined Good Day Atlanta anchor Suchita Vadlamani and Emory University film studies professor Matthew Bernstein for a conversation about her films before submitting to a Q&A with the audience.

During this confab, Nair described her unorthodox tactics for getting her films financed and distributed. "Scams," she unapologetically called them.

For instance, after rounding up part of the budget for her first feature from relatives, Nair went to the BBC's Channel 4, which was at that time broadcasting her documentaries, for the rest of the money. She fudged a bit when telling the BBC, which had agreed to match whatever funds she was able to accumulate, how much cash she had available. Nair had managed to persuade the Indian government to give her $150,000 in return for 25% ownership in the film. But she told the BBC that she had $300,000 on hand, and they matched that figure with $300,000 of their own. Even then, she found herself short of funds as the project neared completion.

"I didn't want to compromise on the quality of the film, so the budget for Salaam Bombay! went to making a quality film," she said. "In the end we were in the editing room without any money...we didn't know what to do until French [investors] came and we were able to get the film finished."

"What I do with a project," Nair continued "is I come up with some money and try to get the rest from different financiers. I get a bit from the French, a bit from the Chinese, a bit from Hollywood-so that I am able to have the creative control that I need and I can make the movie I want to make."

She also talked about the Maisha Film Lab, a training program she launched in Uganda, where she had shot part of Mississippi Masala.

Maisha, which means "life" in Swahili, boasts a roster of prominent filmmakers on its advisory committee, including directors Spike Lee, Sir Raoul Peck and Sofia Coppola, among many others. Nair established Maisha to give directors and screenwriters from East Africa (Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda) and South Asia (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh) access to the professional training and production resources necessary to put their own ideas on film.

"The program is intended to give these people the tools to articulate their own visions and tell their own stories, not a story with Kim Basinger in a nondescript location in Africa," Nair said.

On the subject of her turning down an offer to direct the most recent edition in the Harry Potter saga, Nair expressed a very powerful sentiment pertinent to every filmmaker.

"I always ask myself this question whenever I am offered a project," she said. "‘Will I be able to sustain that flame for a year? How would I feel about the film in the future?'

"I also didn't want to be part of franchise and inherit props and wardrobe. But it would have been good-for the money," she added, laughing.

Again invoking her fascination with cross-cultural influences, she mentioned her upcoming project Gangsta MD, a remake of an Indian comedy about a thug who pretends to be a doctor until a visit from his family forces him to become the man he pretended to be.

"I adapted the story for an African-American lead," Nair said. "The movie is very funny and so is the Indian version.

"The part was specifically written for [Decatur native] Chris Tucker-we are trying to schedule a meeting with his agents."

Nair closed the event with a commentary on the state of south Asian films,  the positive progression of Bollywood, and her thoughts on some her peers before taking the time for pictures and gracious chat with many of the admirers who came to see and hear her.

Eric Bomba-Ire is the founder of CinemATL.