Mira Nair is an Indian film director, actress and producer based in New York. Her production
company is Mirabai Films. She was educated at Miranda House of Delhi
University and then at Harvard University. Her debut feature film, Salaam Bombay!, won
the Golden Camera award at the Cannes Film Festival and was a nominee for the Academy
Award for Best Foreign Language Film. She used the proceeds of the film to establish
an organisation for street children, called the Salaam Baalak Trust in India.
She has won a number of awards, including a National Film Award and various international
film festival awards, and was a nominee at the Academy Awards, Golden Globes, BAFTA Awards
and Filmfare Awards. She was also awarded the India Abroad Person of the Year-2007.
In 2012 she was awarded India's third highest civilian award the Padma Bhushan by President
of India, Pratibha Patil. Her most recent films include Vanity Fair
with Reese Witherspoon, The Namesake and Amelia.
Career
In 2001 she released Monsoon Wedding, a film about a chaotic Punjabi Indian wedding, with
a screenplay by Sabrina Dhawan. It was awarded the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival,
making Nair the first female recipient of the award. After the success of Monsoon Wedding,
Nair collaborated with writer Julian Fellowes on her 2004 adaptation of Thackeray's novel
Vanity Fair, starring Reese Witherspoon. The same year she also founded Maisha Film Lab
to help East Africans and South Asians learn to make films. Maisha is headquartered in
Nair's adopted home of Kampala, Uganda. Later that year she rejected an offer to direct
Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix saying, "... I would prefer someone else make it.
I am better suited to emotions, human beings, and less interested in special effects.".
Her next film, The Namesake, premiered in fall 2006 at Dartmouth College, where Nair
was presented with the Dartmouth Film Award. Another premiere was held in fall 2006 with
the Indo-American Arts Council in New York. The Namesake, adapted by Sooni Taraporevala
from the novel by Pulitzer Prize–winner Jhumpa Lahiri, was released in March 2007
and the same year she was honoured with the Pride of India award at the 9th Bollywood
Movie Awards for her contributions to the film industry.
She directed a short film in New York, I Love You, a romantic-drama anthology of love stories
set in New York and a 12-minute movie on AIDS awareness called Migration.
Her biographical film Amelia was released in October 2009 to predominantly negative
reviews. For several years, Nair was attached to a
big-budget adaptation of the novel Shantaram, but the production was shelved in 2009. Nair
has also purchased the rights to Mohsin Hamid's 2007 novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist.
Mira Nair has recently roped in Govinda to play the lead in her upcoming film "The Bengali
Detective". Earlier there was speculation that Shahrukh Khan will be part of this film.
But Mira has confirmed that Govinda is going to be part of this film. She said in an interview
with Times Of India Kolkata on 21 December 2013 that there was none better than Govinda
to play the role. Personal life
Mira Nair was born on 15 October 1957 in Rourkela, Odisha. Nair lives in New York City near Columbia
University, where she is an adjunct professor in the Film Division of the School of Arts,
and where her second husband, Professor Mahmood Mamdani, also teaches. Nair and her husband
first met in 1988, when she went to Uganda for the first time to research for the film
Mississippi Masala. She was earlier married to photographer Mitch Epstein. Nair has been
an enthusiastic yoga practitioner for decades; when making a film, she has the cast and crew
start the day with a yoga session. Nair and Mamdani have one son named Zohran.
In July 2013, Nair declined an invitation to the Haifa International Film Festival as
a "guest of honor" to protest Israel's policies toward Palestine. In postings on her Twitter
account, Nair stated "I will go to Israel when the walls come down. I will go to Israel
when occupation is gone...I will go to Israel when the state does not privilege one religion
over another. I will go to Israel when Apartheid is over. I will go to Israel, soon. I stand
w/ Palestine for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel & the larger Boycott, Divestment,
Sanctions Mov’t." Nair was subsequently praised by PACBI, which stated that her decision
to boycott Israel "helps to highlight the struggle against colonialism and apartheid."
She subsequently tweeted "I will go to Israel, soon."
See also List of Indian Film Selections and Winners
at Cannes Film Festival Filmography
Jama Street Masjid Journal So Far From India
India Cabaret Children of a Desired Sex
Salaam Bombay! Mississippi Masala
The Day the Mercedes Became a Hat The Perez Family
Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love My Own Country
Monsoon Wedding Hysterical Blindness
11'9"01 September 11 Still, The Children are Here
Vanity Fair The Namesake
Migration.. New York, I Love You
8 Amelia
The Reluctant Fundamentalist Words With Gods
The Bengali Detective Awards
Wins 1985: Best Documentary Film, Global Village
Film Festival: India Cabaret 1986: Golden Athena, Athens International
Film Festival: India Cabaret 1986: Blue Ribbon, American Film Festival:
India Cabaret 1988: Audience Award, Cannes Film Festival:
Salaam Bombay! 1988: Golden Camera, Cannes Film Festival:
Salaam Bombay! 1988: National Film Award for Best Feature
Film in Hindi: Salaam Bombay! 1988: National Board of Review Award for Top
Foreign Films: Salaam Bombay! 1988: "Jury Prize", "Most Popular Film" and
"Prize of the Ecumenical Jury" at Montreal World Film Festival: Salaam Bombay!
1988: New Generation Award, Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards
1988: Lilian Gish Award, Los Angeles Women in Film Festival: Salaam Bombay!
1991: Golden Osella, Venice Film Festival: Mississippi Masala
1991: Critics Special Award, São Paulo International Film Festival: Mississippi Masala
1992: Best Director, Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists: Mississippi Masala
1992: Asian Media Award, Asian American International Film Festival
1993: Independent Spirit Award for Best Feature: Mississippi Masala
2000: Special Mention, Biarritz International Festival of Audiovisual Programming: The Laughing
Club of India 2001: Golden Lion, Venice Film Festival: Monsoon
Wedding 2001: Laterna Magica Prize, Venice Film Festival:
Monsoon Wedding 2002: Audience Award, Canberra International
Film Festival: Monsoon Wedding 2002: Special Award for International Cinema,
Zee Cine Awards: Monsoon Wedding 2002: UNESCO Award, Venice Film Festival:
11'9"01 September 11 2004: Faith Hubley Web of Life Award, Rochester-High
Falls International Film Festival 2007: "Golden Aphrodite", Love is Folly International
Film Festival: The Namesake 2012 ; Padma Bhushan by Govt. of India
Nominations 1989: Academy Award for Best Foreign Language
Film: Salaam Bombay! 1989: César Award for Best Foreign Film:
Salaam Bombay! 1989: Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign
Language Film: Salaam Bombay! 1990: BAFTA Film Award Best Film not in the
English Language: Salaam Bombay! 1990: Filmfare Best Director Award: Salaam
Bombay! 1990: Filmfare Best Movie Award: Salaam Bombay!
1991: Golden Lion, Venice Film Festival: Mississippi Masala
1996: Golden Seashell, San Sebastián International Film Festival: Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love
1999: Best Film, Verzaubert International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival: My Own Country
2001: Screen International Award, European Film Awards: Monsoon Wedding
2001: Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film: Monsoon Wedding
2002: BAFTA Film Award Best Film not in the English Language: Monsoon Wedding
2003: Golden Star, International Film Festival of Marrakech: Hysterical Blindness
2003: César Award for Best Film from the European Union: 11'9"01 September 11
2004: Golden Lion, Venice Film Festival: Vanity Fair
2007: Gotham Award for Best Film: The Namesake Further reading
Jigna Desai: Beyond Bollywood: The cultural politics of South Asian diasporic film. New
York: Routledge, 2004, 280 pp. ill. ISBN 0-415-96684-1 / ISBN 0-415-96685-X
Gita Rajan: Pliant and compliant: colonial Indian art and postcolonial cinema. Women.
Oxford, ISSN 0957-4042 ; 13(2002):1, pp. 48–69. Alpana Sharma: Body matters: the politics
of provocation in Mira Nair's films. QRFV : Quarterly review of film
and video, ISSN 1050-9208 ; 18(2001):1, pp. 91–103. Pratibha Parmar: Mira Nair: filmmaking in
the streets of Bombay. Spare rib, ISSN 0306-7971; 198, 1989, pp. 28–29.
Gwendolyn Audrey Foster: Women Filmmakers of the African and Asian Diaspora: Decolonizing
the Gaze, Locating Subjectivity. Carbondale, Ill. : Southern Illinois University Press,
1997. ISBN 0-8093-2120-3 John Kenneth Muir: Mercy in Her Eyes: The
Films of Mira Nair. Hal Leonard, 2006. ISBN 1-55783-649-3, ISBN 978-1-55783-649-6.
References
External links Mira Nair Bibliography
SAWNET biography Biography
Mira Nair at the Internet Movie Database Maisha Film Lab in Kampala, Uganda
Video Interview on LX.TV A Conversation with Mira Nair - Harvard @ Home
program Profile of Mira Nair - on MirabaiFilms.com
Video interview with The Namesake director on Sidewalks Entertainment
Video: Mira Nair at the Asia Society, 10 Dec 2009
Mira Nair: A Life in Pictures, BAFTA event video
The Fabulous Picture Show - Master Class with Mira Nair at the Doha film festival, Al Jazeera
English, Dec 2009