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Deepa Mehta ________________________
India (1949 - )
Because her father was a film distributor and theater owner, Mehta grew up on movies. After school she would go there with friends and watch movies for free, yet she did not realize she had a serious interest in films until after finishing her education: "By the time I was in university I knew I wanted to have nothing to do with film! I had been saturated with it…I was going to do my dissertation for my PhD, and I met a friend who said they needed someone to work part time in a place called Cinematic Workshop, a small place that made documentary film in Delhi. I learned how to do sound first, and then I learned camera work; I leaned to edit and then finally I made my own documentary and discovered how much I loved it" (Craughwell F10).
Being raised in India yet living in Canada, Mehta felt confused about her identity for a long time: "I've never felt Canadian. I used to be upset about being called an ovisible minority, that's what they called coloured people there. I used to come to India and was called an NRI [Non Resident Indian] here. The problem was not about belonging anywhere; it was a dislike for labels…Now I feel very happy being who I am, Deepa Mehta" (Ramchandani). Mehta views herself as a kind of cultural hybrid. Quoting a character from Salman Rushdie’s collection of stories East, West who is asked whether he is British or Indian, Mehta says, " 'I refuse to choose.' That's how I feel. I refuse to choose. I spend about half of each year in each country. My daughter is a Canadian. I'm an immigrant here, and I wouldn't stay exclusively in either place" (Lacey C8).
Mehta's main point in making films is to challenge blind tradition in India: "It was important to set it [the films] in India because the story is happening there. It is a microcosm of India, the challenging of traditions. I seriously wanted to break the stereotypes of India, the 'exotic' India of the Raj and the princes and the mysticism. Exotic India doesn't really exist" (Kirkland 11/24/97) (Morli Desai, Emory University, Fall 2001)
Kanda. Mami. "Fire." Aichi Shukutoku University. 2005
Morris, Gary. "Burning Love: Deepa Mehta’s Fire." Bright Lights Film Journal. 10 Nov. 2001.
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Canadian-based filmmaker Deepa Mehta was born in Amritsar, India in 1949. She received a bachelors and masters degree in philosophy from the University of New Delhi, where she met her husband, Canadian filmmaker and producer Paul Saltzman. Shortly after getting married, she immigrated to Canada in 1973. However, the marriage was short lived, and they divorced. She has one daughter, Devyani, of whom Mehta says: "I really admire her. She is proud and satisfied of being who she is. That is something lovely about her and possibly nurtured by her father and mother's absolutely crazy life"(Ramchandani).