Deepa Mehta
Deepa Mehta OC OOnt (born January 1, 1950 in Amritsar , India ) is a Canadian director and screenwriter of Indian origin. Her films often deal with socio-cultural problems.
Life
After graduating in philosophy from the University of Delhi , she emigrated to Canada in 1973 .
She started there as a screenwriter for children's films. She made her feature film debut as a director in 1991 with Sam & Me , a story about the relationship between a young Muslim and an older Jew in Toronto (where Deepa Mehta lives). Her second film was Camilla (1994) with Bridget Fonda and Jessica Tandy in the lead roles.
The best known, however, is Mehta's trilogy of elements - Fire (1996), Earth (1998), Water (2005) - all of which are set in India and also live from the performances of Kulbhushan Kharbanda and Nandita Das '. Fire is set in modern India and aroused controversy there because of his relentless view of a marriage and an apparently lesbian relationship between two women, one played by Shabana Azmi , one of the most important contemporary Indian actresses. Earth deals with the partition of India in 1947 from the perspective of a young Parsenian girl. Water is about the life of widows in an impoverished ashram in the 1930s . The film production in India had to be stopped because of Hindunationalist protests and attacks, although Mehta had a filming permit from the central government in New Delhi . The film has not yet been shown in India.
Deepa Mehta's latest project is the film Exclusion with the Indian film stars Amitabh Bachchan and John Abraham about the so-called Komagata-Maru incident , the refusal to accept Indian emigrants in North America in 1914.
She has a daughter together with Canadian director and producer Paul Saltzman .
Awards
Deepa Mehta has received various prizes, for example she won the Golden Camera for the best debut film at the Cannes Film Festival for Sam & Me in 1991 , and in 2003 she received a Genie Award for Bollywood / Hollywood . In 2006 she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Western Ontario .
Filmography
- 1975: At 99: A Portrait of Louise Tandy Murch
- 1988: Martha, Ruth & Edie
- 1989: Danger Bay - Episode: This Little Piggy
- 1991: Sam & Me
- 1993: The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones - Benares, January 1910
- 1994: Camilla
- 1996: Young Indiana Jones: Travels with Father
- 1996: Fire - When love catches fire
- 1998: Earth
- 2002: Bollywood Hollywood
- 2003: The Republic of Love
- 2005: Water
- 2008: The Forgotten Woman
- 2012: Midnight Children
Web links
- Deepa Mehta in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Deepa Metha in conversation with the WSWS
- hollywood.com biography
- SAWNET biography
- MyBindi Interview ( Memento from June 16, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
- Emory biography
- GlamSham Article
- http://www.saja.org/deepamehta.html ( Memento from January 17, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
- “Schizophrenic times” , interview at critic.de
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Mehta, Deepa |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Canadian director |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 1, 1950 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Amritsar , India |