That's Gurinder Chadha, who was born in Nairobi, Kenya, then moved to Southall (a district in West London). Meanwhile her family is of Indian descent. She started off as a news reporter for BBC, and eventually grew into an established filmmaker of her own. Her works are most often either multicultural or display ideas of feminism (for example: majority of people in the film being woman, main character(s) as woman, etc.), one of her first awards she's ever won was a documentary of young British Asian people.
This is a refreshing change from the patriarchal media basis that Bell Hooks talks notifies so frequently in her "Will to Change". If you compare movies such as The Incredible Hulk to one of Chadha's films, in the first you see "a man always on the run, unable to develop lasting ties or intimacy... when he experiences anger, he turns into a creature of color and commits violent acts. After committing violence he changes back to his normal white-man rational self.".
Understandably that is a bit too obvious of a patriarchal film, however an incredibly large amount of major films exhibit male-dominance and I just picked one specific one of the lot.
Now for Chadha's films, If you take for example Bhaji on the Beach (1993), which was Chadha's first film, the film is focused on a group of British woman of Indian descent traveling to a beach resort in England. The main character is woman and of the main characters, the majority are woman. You can also look to something more contemporary in Bend it Like Beckham (2002) which depicts an Indian woman with strict family being independent and playing soccer against her families wishes. The top two characters in the film are both woman.
This woman is definitely one of a kind and her works prove it. She now has her own production company and hopefully will continue making unique pieces of work like she's always done. She also won many awards, and even won woman of the year in India, even though she wasn't born there and does not even live there
Citations:
A little info and list of works from IMDb
A few awards to go along with that
And just one more
Hi Aram,
ReplyDeleteThis was a great read and I learn something new.
I had heard of the film, "Bend Like Beckham" and the rising stars to come out of it, but knew nothing about the film director or that it was directed by a female.
I wanted to know how did you go about your research and what influence to feature Gurinder Chadha, in particular? Do you find any other female directors of Indian descent in your research? If so, were they only in Bollywood or only in indie films?
M. Louis
Awesome! I chose Chadha too. It's interesting to compare and contrast the information we decided to include. You focused more on general themes throughout her work whereas I focused only on her most main-stream film. I also liked the juxtaposition between The Incredible Hulk and one of Chadha's films.
ReplyDeleteThanks guys! I knew a few things I picked up here and there about her works but I had to browse online first. I really enjoyed her work because some people would have tried to focus more on mainstream features of film we learned about in class before becoming popular, and sadly I only researched her as an Indian filmmaker.
ReplyDeleteand Anne thanks! I didn't see yours since it was so far ahead of everyone else (my apologies though, I should have seen it), I really enjoyed it and ill leave a comment in a wee bit!