A Conversation with Filmmaker Mira Nair


	The Proper Introduction	4:33
	The Fuel of My First Excitement	6:36
	The Extraordinariness of Everyday Life	16:08
	How to Make Something Out of Nothing	8:50
	I Learned How to Be a Horsetrader	7:22
	If We Don't Tell Our Own Stories, Nobody Else Will	5:51
	Audience Question & Answer: Part One	12:04
	Audience Question & Answer: Part Two	8:47

	How to Make Something Out of Nothing
	Between 1996 and 1999, Mira Nair lived in South Africa, where her husband was teaching, and where "they didn't know what to do with a person like me." Before leaving, she formed a workshop to teach twenty-six youths from the colored, black, and Indian townships, to make three films in six weeks. "How to make something out of nothing" was the workshop's credo and, upon returning to New York, Nair re-taught this lesson to Columbia University students, before reaching the conclusion that she herself should do this very thing.<br> <br> Creating a feature film in thirty days for less than a million dollars was the premise for <i>Monsoon Wedding</i>, conceived and written with Sabrina Dhawan, Nair's teaching assistant at Columbia. "I brought the middle-aged maturity and she brought the young pulse and that made the movie." Like <i>Salaam Bonbay!</i>, <i>Monsoon Wedding</i> involves very few professional actors—"It was all my family, whoever was free, really!"—although its "cornerstone" is noted Indian actor Naseeruddin Shah in the role of father of the bride, whom Nair had "lusted for" since she was seventeen. Vijay Raaz, who was cast in the role of Dubey just two days before shooting began, had never acted in a movie before. For Nair, he became "a great muse…and now he's a movie star, I'm happy to tell you." Filmed in the summer of 2000, <i>Monsoon Wedding</i> was "pure socialist cinema," Nair tells John Lithgow, where "everybody was paid the same…$1200 a week." <i>Monsoon Wedding</i> was the winner of the Golden Lion at the 2001 Venice Film Festival and opened worldwide to tremendous critical and commercial acclaim.<br> <br> <br> <br>