Mira Nair is one of the most successful Indian female directors who began filming documentaries before turning to movies.Her film debut Salaam Bombay wone the Golden Camera at Cannes before going on to be nominated for and Academy Award.On the promotion trail for her new film The Namesake, an adaption of the Pulitzer prize winning novel by Jhumpa Lahiri Mira had a quick chat with me about her new film and her career.

Your new movie Namesake was origionally a novel what attracted you to it because you bought the rights quite quickly?
I happened to read the story, the novel, on a plane when I was mourning for someone I had lost very close to me in New York city. I read this novel by chance and I felt that Jhumpa (the author) understood exactly what I was feeling and what it feels like to lose a parent in a country which is not actually home. Also it brought together the two cities Calcutta and New York which I have been born , and raised and grown up in. I just felt that I was born to make this film having experienced the loss but also having lived in these two worlds for so long.
Kal Penn would not have been many people's first choice for this role due to his role in Harold and Kumar what made you cast him?
My fifteen year old son made me cast him. Really, truely, he introduced me to him throught the internet. But was really paasionate about the part he wrote to me and told me he had become an actor because of Mississippi Masla, which he saw when he was eight years old. He also told me that he had read the book and empathised with the character Gogol

He flew all the way from LA to New York to read for me. And he was charming and every part of his charcter was right for the part.

Can you associate with this film as you were born in India and educated at Harvard?

And hallow by thy name. Yes very deeply I can but I'm not Ashima, I go home and have a break. I can also understand the pain of the separation I relate to that very much, very much.

But also, not just with Ashima, who struggles coping with her life in America and her percepctive on America is very different. But also, what I call a lovely bad ass, Moushumi, the young thing, who wants to be French. That's sort of the world around us and I love the fact that Jhumpa's story gave me the possibility to present a mulitiple character, which is what the world is like.

Your movies are very India based why have you stuck with this? Are you ever coming under pressure to shoot more commercial and western scripts?

Yeah all the time, you know I am inspired by India and know it very well but I also made a film on Hysterical Blindness on White Trash in New Jersey as well as Vanity Fair. So it's not that I look for things with India at the centre of them but I feel that if we don't tell our own stories no one else will. But I'm very open at the same time and very much at home in all the world.

Certainly I get offered alot of things like Harry Potter to do and I am doing a film called Shantaram with Johnny Depp in India as well as Australia. For me it's very important what I do, like in terms of one thing or another, it's what you choose to do. I think that there are enougj western film makers making films on American reality.

Do you think that western cinema is becoming more accepting of Indian cinema and Bollywood?

Erm, well I don't know about that question, I mean I'm certainly not Bollywood or in that category I have my own kind of category in that sense. I think that Hollywood cinema, western cinema is waking up to reality and the input, and the massive input of Indian cinema, which of course has been around for longer than western cinema has.

But these are very interesting time of much more global thinking you know the commercial reality is so massive today that the western community has to wake up to. I just hope that both cinemas can build great character and not just try to become each other you know Hollywood becoming Bollywood, and I hope that Bollywood doesn't become too Hollywood.

You began in this industry as an actor did you always want to act or was just a means to get to where you are now?

No no I just started as an actor in theatre, musical theatre, I never wanted to be a screen actor. So it was just the way I started it was not a dream to act or anyhting so no it doesn't interest me.

The movie industry is dominated by men is it difficult to survive as a female director?

I must say I have not operated within that realm of difficulty I have always been independent from the beginning and I have always pretty much carved my own little pie, not carved but I do what I do, I'm independent I just find a way to make my films happen.

As a result of that, and as a reslut of them becoming commercially successful like say Monsoon Wedding then it brings all kind of range of projects. Then it becomes a balancing act between doing the studio films and doing the independent films. That is the realm in which I work, but I do believe in traditional things like documentaries, I have a film school here in Kampala which supports east african young people. So I don't sit around waiting to get on an A-List in Hollywood.

There are plans to make Monsoon Wedding into a Broadway show are you in any way involved in that?

Yes very much, very much it's just kicking off the ground and we are hoping that it wil become a reality in a couple of years.

The Namesake is avaliable on DVD on 30 July.

Helen Earnshaw Femalefirst

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