Hi! I'm Nisha Ganatra. I was born in Vancouver Canada and I'm a writer-director. When I was
younger, I aspired to be Madonna - I think that was what I aspired to be - and then my
mom quickly put an end to that, and said: "Here are your three choices: doctor, lawyer, engineer." And I was
like, hmm... Although she was a nurse, and she was like, don't be a doctor. She didn't
like living all her days in the hospital. And I think she also felt like she worked really
hard, and became a nurse so she could come to this country and give us opportunities. So she didn't
want to see us just... sort of perpetuating what she did. Even though she didn't know it, I think even
by being unsupportive at times, she was secretly supportive, because she would make me aware of how
much I wanted it, if I ever had a moment where I said: "This is incredibly difficult and I don't know if
it's gonna work out," she'd say: "Just don't do that then." You know, and it just made you realize: oh my
god, what! I'm not giving up. No, I can't do that! So even when she didn't know she was being my
biggest supporter, she was. But she has been really supportive of the fact that I'm not following a
traditional path. I remember there was like... it was another one of those year, the women - like Hollywood
decided it was the year of the women - it's in the 90s, and I remember reading these magazines of
Meryl Streep and Glenn Close were talking about how there were no opportunities for women, and how
they were having a really hard time finding roles, and I remember just thinking: oh my god, if they
were having a hard time, what am I gonna do? Like I didn't see any Indian actresses in those magazines
saying, you know, I get to do whatever I want to do as well. So I kind of thought, let me just tell
stories, and then create roles. I had a group of friends that were really politically active, and
we had gone to Washington DC. We went to the march on Washington. And I remember there was so many
people at the march on Washington, and everybody was marching. It was for gay rights, and we were all
there, and then the next day, the newspaper said "10,000 people." It was some
horrifyingly misrepresentation at a lower number. And friends had a lesbian wedding on their TV show,
and everybody was talking about lesbian weddings. And I remember thinking: Wow, you can really shift
culture if you tell stories in television. That medium is so much more powerful, for me, as a sort
of political activist. It seemed like this will be a much faster way to affect change in our
culture. So my first movie was "Chutney Popcorn," and it really came from this desire to just represent
Indian Americans on the screen. I had seen lots of movies with Indian people, I had seen movies
with Indian people with accents, but I hadn't seen an American family that was Indian, like a real
Indian American family that just gripped here, and that wasn't part of the dilemma of the plot
of the movie. And my co-writer, Susan Carnival, was having the same problem with lesbian movies. She was
like: Every lesbian movie I see is people coming out, and the heartache of being a lesbian,
and trying to negotiate that identity. And so we both decided that we would combine our stories,
and that we could stand on the shoulders of all of those who came before us, and not tell the story of
coming out, and not tell the story of how hard it is to be Indian. So it was interesting, cuz I
actually made that movie, which is a lot about my feeling of not being a part of the Indian American
community, because of being a lesbian. And then that movie came out, and was so embraced by the
Indian American community, and I think probably because there's so few representations that it
was still incredibly embraced. And I would go to these screenings and these festivals, and I'd be
so afraid to see all these uncles and aunties lined up in the theater, and I was like: Oh god,
they're going to be really disappointed. And everybody would say: Oh we're so proud of you!
We love this movie. And I was so genuinely shocked and stunned. And then I realized, oh, we
just don't have enough stories, and we just haven't told them enough, and there's so little to choose
from. And weirdly, this movie that I made about not feeling a part of the Indian community, made me a
huge part of the Indian community! And actually like a spokesperson for the Indian community.
And it was a... it was kind of a beautiful healing journey that it all came full circle like that.
So I just finished directing a movie called "Late Night," which premiered at Sundance, and it stars
Mindy Kaling and Emma Thompson. Kim Yutani is the head programmer at Sundance this year, and she made
it the first year that the festival had, I think, 50% people of color and women represented in the
films. And it was a pretty stellar year, because, just thinking of how when "Chutney Popcorn" came
out, I had to meet with distributors, and they were either concerned that it was too Indian,
or too gay, or who was gonna see it, and how do we market it, and that's something we've never seen -
that's really hard. Going back with "Late Night," the whole feeling was: Hey, we've never seen this
before. That's amazing. Let's buy it. And it broke records - It was the highest sale that Sundance has
ever made. It was a pretty exciting year. So lately I've been directing a lot of television, and I've
been lucky enough to do some amazing television shows. And one thing that happens on set, is often
the first AD will yell out the word "action!" and I often lean on the first AD to do that, because I
just don't have a very loud voice. But what happened was - I was directing an episode of television,
and I said the word action, and the crew kind of turned towards me, and after I said cut,
some women came up from different departments, and they said: "This is the first time I've ever
heard a female voice say the word "action," and they had been working in this industry for
decades. And so once I realized that happened, and I said: "Oh my god, that's so... moving, and
sad, and inspiring, all in the same way. So now I feel like it's a political act just
to have a female voice and say the word "action." And I don't lean on the first AD - unless it's a
female first AD - to say it, because I realized, just the more I say it, the more people will get
used to hearing a woman in the director seat, and then the more it will be normal in our industry.