Mira Nair Celebrates Life Through Cinema

Aug 15, 2002

Twenty Six, Buziga Hill Road. That is where Mira Nair’s heart lies, and where she comes to rest and recharge her batteries of life. It has a great view of Lake Victoria to the east, and the mushrooming residences that dot an otherwise very green area.

By Kalungi Kabuye-- The Indian international film director who is responsible for such critically acclaimed films as Mississippi Masala and Kama Sutra is married to a Ugandan, Prof. Mamdani and calls Buziga homeTwenty Six, Buziga Hill Road. That is where Mira Nair’s heart lies, and where she comes to rest and recharge her batteries of life. It has a great view of Lake Victoria to the east, and the mushrooming residences that dot an otherwise very green area.Here is where she comes to recover from the battles of making films. After a year spent flying over virtually all the oceans and continents in the world, and after hundreds of thousands of kilometres travelled while making films; and after appearances in hundreds of cities and towns all over the globe, this house near the top of Buziga Hill is where Nair comes back to get in touch with herself, her husband and son.“I just love this place, it’s magical” Nair told The New Vision on Wednesday when we visited her. “I love to come back here, get my hands into the soil and plant something. You know, get them dirty. I love it when I come here, and hate it that I will be leaving next week, back to the battle of making films.”Nair’s latest effort, Monsoon Wedding, has been a smashing commercial success all over the world. And today, it will premier at the Cineplex cinema here in Kampala.She has been making films for the last 14 years, and living in Uganda for about the same time, but this is the first of her films to show here.She made her debut as director in the highly acclaimed Salaam Bombay, about the life of street kids in Bombay. Although initially ignored by some, the film went on to win the Director’s Award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1988, and was nominated for an Oscar award for Best Foreign Film the next year.Next was Mississippi Massala, which is how she came to Uganda in the first place, and has never really left. “I didn’t know anything about Uganda. In fact, I had never set foot in Africa before,” she said. “I was doing research for my film, and that is why I came here.”Nair was trying to explore the line that exists between a white world, a black one, and then the one in between, the brown one. So came the story of an Indian family that left Uganda and was living in Mississippi, where the daughter falls in love with an African-American.The girl has India as her spiritual home, but has never been there, while Africa is the spiritual home for the American, but has never been there.One of the people Nair interviewed was Professor Mahmood Mamdani. Little was she to know that Cupid was out that day, shooting love arrows into their hearts. The two are married now, and have an eleven-year-old son, Zohran.In the meantime, she went on with her film-making. Why is she a filmmaker, we asked her?“I got into filming quite by accident,” she said. “I was on a scholarship in Harvard, where I thought I was going to study drama. The theatre there was uninspiring, so I stumbled into the making of documentaries.”She would go on to make six documentaries, including one of Indian strip-dancers, where she spent two months living with the girls.But she soon tired of the struggle to show them, and the effort to try and get a feedback from whoever watched them. So, she ventured into feature films, with Salaam Bombay as her first.“I like to hold up a mirror to society, to show them what the world is really like,” she said. “I make films that stay under one’s skin after watching them. I will not make a film until I am totally obsessed with it.”A film professor at Columbia University in New York, Nair loves film-making, because it gives her complete freedom to express herself in whatever medium she chooses. Whether it is music, dancing or any art form, she can put it in.And so, back to Monsoon Wedding. What is it about the film that will stay under people’s skins?“A wedding is the ultimate celebration of life,” she said. “Nothing exemplifies the intoxication of life more than a wedding. So we chose the premise of a Punjabi wedding to explore and make what was actually a meditation on life,” she says.She said the film is such a commercial success because everybody sees a little bit of themselves in it. Whether they are from Iceland, California or Brazil.And she plans to make a film about Uganda, or East Africa. She does not know the story yet, or when she will do it, but she intends to show the power and beauty of the region.What drives her, we asked? “I have a passion for life, and I like it that I can express myself through film,” she said. “I find a great privilege that I have the craft and visualisation to be able to express myself that way. I don’t abuse or defuse that by making films anyone can make, I choose very carefully.”And after all that, after living out of planes and hotel rooms for most of the year, she comes home to 26 Buziga Hill and re-charges her batteries. With her husband and son around her, she plants her flowers, checks out the great view of Lake Victoria, and all the battle scars of the past year melt away. And she is ready for yet another year of film-making.Ends

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