New York-based actor-director Nisha Ganatra shines with her tastefully bold films

New York-based actor-director Nisha Ganatra is making a splash with her tastefully bold films but she is not the archetypal NRI filmmaker celebrating Indian culture on celluloid.


DESI WITH A DIFFERENCE: Nisha Ganatra dismisses ABCD films as a cultural show that is soon going to be over
Director Nisha Ganatra's mother came to hold her hand. Chutney Popcorn, Ganatra's poignantly subversive first film about gender, identity and being Indian-American, had its Indian premiere at the recently concluded Mumbai International Film Festival.

And both mother and daughter were apprehensive about how audiences would view the story of a lesbian non-resident Indian (NRI) girl who, when her sister cannot conceive, has a baby with her American brother-in-law through artificial insemination.

Their fears were unfounded. As women locked lips on screen (Ganatra plays the lead herself) and characters redefined family, the standing-room-only audience was widely appreciative. "People were so open," marvels Ganatra's mother Vinod. "Even ladies of my age said it was so well done." Ganatra's latest work Cosmopolitan, which had its festival premiere in Mumbai, also drew raves.

Based on a short story by Akhil Sharma, Cosmopolitan is about a middle-aged Indian man who suddenly finds himself living alone in American suburbia. His wife and daughter desert him with a week's worth of frozen dinner and Gopal, played by Roshan Seth, must reinvent his life and learn to love again.

The film, which also stars Oscar-nominated actor Carol Kane, has been made for PBS television but the feedback has been so positive that the producers, New York-based Gigantic Pictures, want to extend it into a feature film.

In the wave of emerging NRI filmmakers, Ganatra occupies a separate space. At 28, she is younger than the first generation of stalwarts - Mira Nair, Gurinder Chadha, Deepa Mehta - but she refuses to be slotted with a slew of ABCD directors either. In fact, she defiantly declares that ABCD films, in which Indian-American directors typically talk about the confusions of a hyphenated life (think American Desi, American Chai, ABCD) are done with. "These movies were the equivalent of a cultural show," she says.

"I'm not interested in explaining to white people how similar we are because we are not." Chutney Popcorn has the requisite scenes of a hyper Indian mother trying to set up her Americanised daughter with an eligible Indian boy but these are undercut with delicious comedy - the boy wants to date the NRI girl's American roommate only to be told that the two women are in fact lovers.

In Ganatra's films (Cosmopolitan is her third feature), being Indian is organic. That is, the characters are Indian and this informs their choices but being desi is not the story. Her stories are small, specific and, therefore, universal. So Chutney Popcorn, released in 2000, wooed not only NRIs but also audiences at festivals in Berlin, Paris and Madrid.

As actor Sakina Jaffrey, who plays Ganatra's sister in Popcorn, puts it, "She has shown the world that she can make a crowd pleasing movie about an Indian-American lesbian and her family. That has afforded her the luxury to think that she can remain outspoken, political and successful in Hollywood."

Hollywood has not managed to slot Ganatra ("They think of me as a younger, hipper Chadha") but she has made enough waves to land her first mainstream movie. This spring, Ganatra will start shooting Cake, a $10 million romantic comedy with Heather Graham. Graham, an A-list actor seen in the Austin Powers movies, had director approval on the script. She saw Ganatra's work and immediately said yes. In Hollywood, Ganatra says, being Indian is not as much of a hurdle as being a woman is. "They think of you as small and girly."

Underneath the "girlyness" is steel. Though her actors describe Ganatra as calm and quietly supportive, she is in absolute command. "She is like the conductor of a huge orchestra," says actor Cara Buono, who worked in Popcorn and was recently seen in Ang Lee's The Hulk. "She knows that each instrument's contribution is crucial to the final outcome. She knows how to lead everyone to do their best." Being an actor herself, Ganatra is instinctively able to trust her actors and guide them. "She has," says Jaffrey, "an acute sensitivity to false notes."

Direction wasn't Ganatra's first love. Growing up in Canada and later in the United States, Ganatra very much wanted to be an actor. Her parents' brief was clear: drama was directly dependent on good grades. So Ganatra got straight As in school and headed to the local college for theatre classes. But at 16 when she announced that she wanted to act, she says, her parents "had the same reaction as if I had said I wanted to be a prostitute".

Her father is an engineer, her mother a nurse, her elder brother, a computer scientist and good NRI children did not go into the arts. So Ganatra studied both communications and pre-law at the reputed UCLA College. "One for her mom," says Vinod, "and one for her own soul." But films slowly consumed her. She did a graduate degree in film direction at New York University, with teachers like Spike Lee. She continues to live and work in New York.

Her parents have also come to appreciate her fierce desire to make movies. When Chutney Popcorn premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival, Ganatra recalls ducking. She was onscreen making love to a woman as her parents watched from one row behind her. "They just looked down," she says laughing. Their eyes may be averted but their heads are held high. "She is still the same hard-working little girl," says Vinod proudly. Actually, there's nothing little about Ganatra.

  • Andriod App
  • IOS App
Do You Like This Story?