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Director Mira Nair is one of the key talents to emerge from global cinema over the last few decades. Her debut feature film, the black-and-white Salaam Bombay, was a sprawling view of Bombay seen through the eyes of a street child, equal parts greyness and iridescent sparkle. The film reaped prizes at festivals everywhere, even cracking a Hollywood nod with an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Picture. She didn’t get the Oscar, but cracked Hollywood anyway with The Perez Family, Mississippi Masala and the controversial Kama Sutra, all minor hits big enough to keep the studios happy. Then, In 2001, she won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival for her colourful and immaculately tender portrayal of an Indian middle-class wedding during monsoon season. In the wake of her Venice award, I spoke to Mira about Bollywood and Hollywood, and also about Durban, the city where she lived for a year and one of the places on the planet where those two movie-making Meccas collide most intimately in terms of audiences.
Peter Machen: What led you to live in Durban?
Mira Nair: My husband is an academic and he was teaching at the University of Durban-Westville in 1993 for six months. He was a visiting professor, and I was being a good wife.And I have been fairly obsessed with South Africa, way before, just the whole struggle period and the whole literature and politics. Soit was a great opportunity for me to be actually living there.
PM: And how did you find it?
MN: It was a very interesting and dramatic time. It was the year that Chris Hani was assassinated that I lived in Durban. I actually made a 10-minute fiction film about that experience, which has hardly been shown – I showed it privately a couple of times in South Africa – called The Day the Mercedes became a Hat. It’s a fiction documentary about what happened in Durban and South Africa on the day of the Hani funeral.
PM: Were you working on any feature films while you were living in South Africa?
MN: No I wasn’t making any features.I was writing one which was based in India, but which did not become Monsoon Wedding. I did make a feature, but not in South Africa, in America, called My Own Country, which I edited in my office in my house in Cape Town (where Nair lived for two years, again following in the wake of her husband’s academic career).
PM: How do you place yourself in relation to Bollywood?
MN: Now?
PM: Now, and while you were making the movie.
MN: You know, Bollywood is an inextricable part of our culture. It’s like eating and breathing.When I was growing up, I loved Bollywood classic films, like the films of Guru Dutt and Raj Kapoor. Those were the films that I have been inspired by in some way – not so much the Raj Kapoor films as the Guru Dutt films. You know who he is?
PM: I know the name.
Director Mira Nair is one of the key talents to emerge from global cinema over the last few decades. Her debut feature film, the black-and-white Salaam Bombay, was a sprawling view of Bombay seen through the eyes of a street child, equal parts greyness and iridescent sparkle. The film reaped prizes at festivals everywhere, even cracking a Hollywood nod with an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Picture. She didn’t get the Oscar, but cracked Hollywood anyway with The Perez Family, Mississippi Masala and the controversial Kama Sutra, all minor hits big enough to keep the studios happy. Then, In 2001, she won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival for her colourful and immaculately tender portrayal of an Indian middle-class wedding during monsoon season. In the wake of her Venice award, I spoke to Mira about Bollywood and Hollywood, and also about Durban, the city where she lived for a year and one of the places on the planet where those two movie-making Meccas collide most intimately in terms of audiences.
Peter Machen: What led you to live in Durban?
Mira Nair: My husband is an academic and he was teaching at the University of Durban-Westville in 1993 for six months. He was a visiting professor, and I was being a good wife.And I have been fairly obsessed with South Africa, way before, just the whole struggle period and the whole literature and politics. Soit was a great opportunity for me to be actually living there.
PM: And how did you find it?
MN: It was a very interesting and dramatic time. It was the year that Chris Hani was assassinated that I lived in Durban. I actually made a 10-minute fiction film about that experience, which has hardly been shown – I showed it privately a couple of times in South Africa – called The Day the Mercedes became a Hat. It’s a fiction documentary about what happened in Durban and South Africa on the day of the Hani funeral.
PM: Were you working on any feature films while you were living in South Africa?
MN: No I wasn’t making any features.I was writing one which was based in India, but which did not become Monsoon Wedding. I did make a feature, but not in South Africa, in America, called My Own Country, which I edited in my office in my house in Cape Town (where Nair lived for two years, again following in the wake of her husband’s academic career).
PM: How do you place yourself in relation to Bollywood?
MN: Now?
PM: Now, and while you were making the movie.
MN: You know, Bollywood is an inextricable part of our culture. It’s like eating and breathing.When I was growing up, I loved Bollywood classic films, like the films of Guru Dutt and Raj Kapoor. Those were the films that I have been inspired by in some way – not so much the Raj Kapoor films as the Guru Dutt films. You know who he is?
PM: I know the name.
MN: Guru Dutt is an unusual director, sort of like Orson Welles in a way. He worked in the Bollywood mainstream but made highly artistic pictures, but in the commercial way. They never were successful in his life – he committed suicide at 39 – but are deemed as classics now. Anyway, those were the films I used to love to see. But, I otherwise had a bit of snobbery about the high kitsch of Bollywood, as I looked at it, when I was growing up in the ’60s and ’70s.
But now Bollywood has changed enormously, and has become really slick and hip and very much part of the cultural fabric of any class of Indian life. In Monsoon Wedding, which is about another middle-class family like my own, Bollywood has entered the fabric of a wedding.
So a young babe in my family would definitely imitate a Bollywood movie star on one of the nights to entertain us. That would be normal. That would not be absurd. In my young days that would never be thought of. So definitely it has entered part of our life. Besides just going as entertainment, it's accepted in family ceremonies.
I revel in that now. It’s a load of fun. Monsoon Wedding is a bit of a Bollywood movie on my terms in a way, because I can’t be a Bollywood director in that style. I mean, I can, I guess, if I put my mind to it, but ... Everybody’s begging me to do it. And I might just do it. But only as long as they’re willing to do it on my terms.
PM: What does Bollywood think of you? Are they fond of you?
MN: Well, now I’m a lioness of India they say (a reference to Nair winning a Golden Lion). Now the president of India calls me up, now I’m in the good books. Twoyears ago I wasn’t. It comes and it goes.
PM: And when you made Salaam Bombay?
MN: Then I was first in the good books. Now I’m back.
PM: Was it the making of Kama Sutra which made you fall from favour?
MN: Yes, it was basically Kama Sutra.You know, the sex and controversy and censorship – and all that battle that I sort of won and lost and won and all that stuff.
PM: In the few years since Kama Sutra,do you think that India has kind of loosened up?
MN: Oh, yes. I think so. I think so.
PM: Because Monsoon Wedding is quite salacious. It’s quite sexual in parts.
MN: It’s unbelievably sort of almost amoral. I shouldn’t say that to the press, I don’t mean it that way. But it’s like, free. On a certain level, what’s going down in Delhi society or Bombay urban life, it almost startles me, it shocks me.
But, you know Sabrina, my writer, she is much more in touch with the young. And she brought that aspect,she opened my eyes to what’s really going on – she and my niece and nephew (who are also in the film). They’re the ones who are telling me. This is exactly what it’s like. There’s a lot of sexuality in the young.
Like the daughter having a lover and then rebounding on a marriage and all that. That we knew – but there is a level to which young men and women are, in strict terms, getting out of hand.
And it is really amazing because it goes hand in hand with an absolute love of ritual and tradition and what the family wants from you and all that.
PM: OK. From Bollywood to Hollywood - one of the things that really impresses me about you is that you manage to go there without being appropriated.
MN: Yes.
PM: Well, how did you do that? I mean I think of Lee Tamahori (who made the New Zealand box-office smash hit Once Were Warriors and then disappeared into diametrically opposed Hollywood action flicks). He singularly failed to maintain his artistic integrity.
MN: Well, I guess that I’m a fiercely independent spirit or something. I have a healthy disrespect for authority (she laughs zealously). I can’t bear it actually. I’m very open and very collaborative, so long as I’m the boss. That’s very bad. But so long as I have control. Really, I mean that. BecauseI do take the best ideas – I’m totally humble about that and I’m totally ruthless also, not sentimental at all, not territorial.
But the point is that I have to retain independence because there is a type of instinct that informs my work, and everybody can offer me ideas and take me much further than what I know. And that is the intention of working with such brilliant people like Declan Quinn, the cinematographer, or Sabrina Dhawan, thewriter, or Mychael Danna, with music. You know I work very well with people. They’re great people and they really contribute and make the film richer and richer. And that’s the idea.
But I have to kind of take them on a journey, take them with me and, if I don’t always know where I’m going, I have to find out where I’m going. But what I have to rely on that distinguishes me from anybody else is instinct. And I think the idea in life is to keep one’s mind and heart empty and open to the reception of that instinct.
So if I have to work with a lot of people who tell me the way they have to have it, I think it interferes with that. Although sometimes it helps. Anyway, I’m not anti-Hollywood at all. It’s just that I’ve had a couple of iffy experiences there and I’m just happier, even with the struggle of it, to do my own work.
Hollywood depends on who you get to work with there, and there are fantastic people there too. I just haven’t had the good fortune of working with them yet (laughs). I’ve just finished something that has been a pleasure to do – an American film with Uma Thurman, Juliette Lewis and Gena Rowlands called Hysterical Blindness, which I’m just mixing this month. It has been a hectic year between Monsoon Wedding and this movie.
So I’m definitely open right now. But I’m also happy to be able to constantly have the elasticity within me to do my work. Because – you know what it is like living in Durban – if we don’t tell our stories, then nobody else is going to.
And you have to do it in a way that is inimitable, your own way. And do it yet with the style and standard for them too. So they can see that the craft of film-making is alive and well in India.
The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.
A rich text element can be used with static or dynamic content. For static content, just drop it into any page and begin editing. For dynamic content, add a rich text field to any collection and then connect a rich text element to that field in the settings panel. Voila!
Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.
The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.
A rich text element can be used with static or dynamic content. For static content, just drop it into any page and begin editing. For dynamic content, add a rich text field to any collection and then connect a rich text element to that field in the settings panel. Voila!
Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.
You can contact Peter on hello@talktopeter.com or get in touch on any of the platforms below. If you are having technical difficulties with the site, please send an email to tech@talktopeter.com
A big thank you to Kirsten Machen and Linda Leow for both suggesting, within days of each other, that I start interviewing people again, and also for the numerous feedback requests. Thanks also to Debbie Sykes for some on-point UX suggestions and to Lorna McDowell for the frequent iPhone testing, Mitzi Pedersen for her eagle eyes, and Travis Lyle for always being there with sensible advice. Thanks to Sharlene Versfeld and Nashen Moodley for helping me to get access to so many amazing people over the years, and to Mirah Von Wicht for all the hugs and support. Special thanks to all my past editors, especially Cyril Madlada, for his immediate faith in me, Debbie Reynolds, for some wonderful working years at the Independent on Saturday and for giving me free reign to produce such eclectic content, to Yves Vanderhaeghen at the Weekend Witness for doing likewise, and to David Daley for our sadly brief working relationship at Salon. And, of course, a massive thank you to everyone who has spoken to me over the years. And finally, warm and appreciative thanks to YOU for reading, watching, and listening, and to my mother Astrid Machen for her boundless and endless love and encouragement.
*It would be remiss of me not to thank the hundreds of generous souls who's contribution to Stackoverflow and other forums provided the knowledge I needed to build this site. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The impulse to share knowledge and solutions is the best thing about the internet.
A big thank you to Kirsten Machen and Linda Leow for both suggesting, within days of each other, that I start interviewing people again, and also for the numerous feedback requests. Thanks also to Debbie Sykes for some on-point UX suggestions and to Lorna McDowell for the frequent iPhone testing. Thanks to Sharlene Versfeld and Nashen Moodley for helping me to get access to so many amazing people over the years, and to Mirah Von Wicht for all the hugs and support. Special thanks to all my past editors, especially Cyril Madlada, for his immediate faith in me, Debbie Reynolds, for some wonderful working years at the Independent on Saturday and for giving me free reign to produce such eclectic content, and to Yves Vanderhaeghen at the Weekend Witness for doing likewise. And, of course, a massive thank you to everyone who has spoken to me over the years. And finally, warm and appreciative thanks to YOU for reading, watching, and listening, and to my mother Astrid Machen for her boundless and endless love and encouragement.
A big thank you to Kirsten Machen and Linda Leow for both suggesting, within days of each other, that I start interviewing people again, and also for the numerous feedback requests. Thanks also to Debbie Sykes for some on-point UX suggestions and to Lorna McDowell for the frequent iPhone testing. Thanks to Sharlene Versfeld and Nashen Moodley for helping me to get access to so many amazing people over the years, and to Mirah Von Wicht for all the hugs and support. Special thanks to all my past editors, especially Cyril Madlada, for his immediate faith in me, Debbie Reynolds, for some wonderful working years at the Independent on Saturday and for giving me free reign to produce such eclectic content, and to Yves Vanderhaeghen at the Weekend Witness for doing likewise. And, of course, a massive thank you to everyone who has spoken to me over the years. And finally, warm and appreciative thanks to YOU for reading, watching, and listening, and to my mother Astrid Machen for her boundless and endless love and encouragement.
A big thank you to Kirsten Machen and Linda Leow for both suggesting, within days of each other, that I start interviewing people again, and also for the numerous feedback requests. Thanks also to Debbie Sykes for some on-point UX suggestions and to Lorna McDowell for the frequent iPhone testing. Thanks to Sharlene Versfeld and Nashen Moodley for helping me to get access to so many amazing people over the years, and to Mirah Von Wicht for all the hugs and support. Special thanks to all my past editors, especially Cyril Madlada, for his immediate faith in me, Debbie Reynolds, for some wonderful working years at the Independent on Saturday and for giving me free reign to produce such eclectic content, and to Yves Vanderhaeghen at the Weekend Witness for doing likewise. And, of course, a massive thank you to everyone who has spoken to me over the years. And finally, warm and appreciative thanks to YOU for reading, watching, and listening, and to my mother Astrid Machen for her boundless and endless love and encouragement.
