Entertainment | Film & Cinema
Film as art
Director Mira Nair on making a difference through her movies - and getting Johnny Depp to do a Bollywood item number.
- By Jyoti Kalsi, Gulf News Report
- Published: 01:02 December 16, 2007
- Mira Nair lives between India, Uganda and the US and her films represent her global outlook and commitment to using art for social transformation.
- Image Credit: Ahmed Ramzan/Gulf News
Director Mira Nair on making a difference through her movies - and getting Johnny Depp to do a Bollywood item number.
Mira Nair lives between India, Uganda and the US and her films represent her global outlook and commitment to using art for social transformation. The filmmaker was at DIFF for the gala screening of Aids Jaago and expressed her views on various subjects in a discussion with the media.
Excerpts:
Can art make a difference?
I began making films with the lofty notion that art can change the world. It can, but it should be art, not flag-waving activism. In Uganda I have lost a third of my community to Aids. So when the Gates Foundation told me about the near pandemic proportions of the disease in India I wanted to help.
I invited my favourite directors and we made Aids Jaago, which comprises four short, riveting, star-studded films that aim to create awareness and clear misconceptions about the disease. The plan was to show it on Indian TV channels, but we have been invited by festivals around the world and have requests for prints from various countries.
I hope we can make a difference.
What is happening with your film Shantaram?
It is an over $90 million (Dh330.3 million) project. Johnny Depp is the producer of the film and he is definitely going to play Shantaram. Amitabh Bachchan is also committed to the film. We had to postpone the shooting due to the writers' strike in Hollywood, but we hope to start shooting in 2008. I plan to shoot 35 days in Mumbai and 35 days in New Mexico, which looks like the interiors of Australia. I think of Shantaram as a contemporary Salaam Bombay and want it to have the visceral quality of the street.
Will the movie have songs?
Johnny is a good singer, and I have him singing a Hindi film song in a scene. Based on the story, he will also do an "item number" as a Bollywood extra.
So what do you plan to do during this forced free time?
I plan to take Monsoon Wedding as a spectacular musical to Broadway. I started my career as an actor on stage and am looking forward to going back.
With international studios coming to India, where do you see Indian cinema heading?
Indian cinema has its own incredibly energetic vocabulary and we have preserved it despite the imperialism of Hollywood and I hope we never water it down to suit some unknown Hollywood palate. Technically we are on par with the best now. The studios are coming because Hollywood has now woken up to the economic reality of India. But I hope that international financing does not impact our vocabulary.
Out of Africa
Maisha is a film laboratory I set up in Uganda four years ago," director Mira Nair said. "My husband is Ugandan and I have lived there since 1989. I believe that the dignity and power of the [African] continent has never been shown on the screen.
If Africans don't tell their own stories nobody else will so we give 24 fellowships every year to students from Rwanda, Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda and get the best filmmakers from around the world to work one on one with these youngsters. Our goal is to create local cinema in East Africa," she said.
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