New York City was abuzz with the launch of Mira Nair’s new film ‘Amelia’ which comes from a big studio and stars big names Hilary Swank and Richard Gere. Directed by Nair, the film follows the fabled adventures of Amelia Earhart, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. The film, while different from Nair’s recent India-related films, stays true to her fascination and empathy with strong women. It is a film about woman power, about a woman before her time, ‘a flying yogini’ as Nair likes to call her.
The special screening organized by Aroon Shivdasani’s Indo-American Arts Council at the Museum of Modern Art in New York had live appearances by Mira Nair and Richard Gere. It attracted an audience of several hundred, including guests like Salman Rushdie, screenwriter Sabrina Dhawan, industrialist Anand Mahindra and movers and shakers from many different worlds.
After the screening guests moved to Pranna for wine and hors d’oeuvres. They had all come together to raise funds for Mira Nair’s passion – Maisha Film Lab, which she founded six years ago in Kampala, Uganda. That city has been Nair’s second home since 1989, and as she recalls, “Maisha was born out of the fact that I lived there and there was such a dignity, such power to life, to stories, to people I saw around me but almost never did we see those stories come on screen. I believe that if we don’t tell our own stories, no one else will.”
Maisha is a free school which offers scholarships to people who are rich in the folklore of story-telling but don’t have the means to translate it into cinema, offering them classes in everything from directing to editing to all facets of film-making. Nair’s goal is to build a physical school which can serve as an arts center, possibly the first film school in Africa. Film-making is a bit like flying, taking you beyond yourself into infinity and Nair probably hopes to create many more Amelias who will take off into the world of imagination.
