Oscar-nominated director Mira Nair dissects the art of filmmaking and realities of life at Tufts

After over thirty years in the industry, Indian filmmaker Mira Nair is in a class of her own. Quite literally, in fact; her movie “Salaam Bombay!” (1988) was the first Indian film since 1957 to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, making her the first Indian woman nominated in that category. Nair’s career touches upon a variety of genres, with major works including “Mississippi Masala” (1991), “Monsoon Wedding” (2001), “The Namesake” (2006) and “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” (2012).

On April 20, Nair came to Tufts to help launch the Mellon Sawyer Seminar in Comparative Global Humanities with Between Two Worlds: A Conversation with Mira Nair. Prior to the talk, Nair was gracious enough to lead a seminar with Tufts faculty and students. For almost an hour and a half, Nair told stories about her fascinating life and provided insights into the industry.

When asked about her perspective on what it means to be a filmmaker in this day and age, Nair succinctly responded that one “[has] to have the heart of a poet and the skin of an elephant.” This maxim came out of a larger story Nair was telling about the difficulty she had with getting “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” to be made. The film, based off the book of the same name by Moshin Hamid, details the story of one Pakistani man following 9/11 and addresses many uncomfortable truths such as the reactions of Americans in the wake of the attacks. For Nair, making this film was important because she wanted to bring attention to what she thought was a powerful story, and she emphasized the importance of “[cutting] your cloth without changing your story,” meaning filmmakers should work to compromise without comprising the truth.

This mix of guiding hope and tough honesty is essential to understanding Nair’s outlook on both life and how she goes about making films. This especially relates to her depiction of Indian street children in “Salaam Bombay!” as the film juxtaposes the darkness and joy of their lives. Nair best summarizes this seesaw that inspires her with this idea of “the lifeist” as these children wanted to live their lives as fully as possible despite preexisting circumstances. While this means that there can be no sugarcoating of this immense pain, it is powerful insofar as Nair, in her art, shows viewers the agency that these children still have. Beyond art, this film contributed to the changing conversation around street children in India and led Nair to establish the Salaam Baalak Trust, which now helps over 5,000 kids each year.

Building upon this idea of affecting change, Nair’s work sits comfortably at the intersection between ethnography and fiction. Though Nair previously was a documentarian, her more recent work aptly fits this description. In her mind, Nair believes that the “actual fabric of life informs the screenplay” by addressing the real needs and concerns of a film’s subjects. Even though this is not an explicit social science, the fact that her work is grounded in reality adds a power to them that is lacking in other fictions. As she stated, “you only need the world in front of you" to make films.

In a technical sense, Nair’s films present themselves as fascinating modes of conveying stories. This can only be described as some sort of “plasticity of movies” as Nair embraces both color and aesthetic. Particularly, she referenced her creation of the romantic “Monsoon Wedding” on a budget of approximately $1 million and shooting the film entirely at home in New Delhi without compromising the film’s vision. By her logic, filmmakers “can make something out of nothing” and have no need for the backing of a financial juggernaut when they can convey the richest of stories with the simplest of techniques. In her art, color is a code to follow at all times, but it becomes useless if the frame is unenjoyable. Nair used the word “maximize" to best sum up this philosophy as it relates to her craft and belief in getting the most out of everything she does.

The centerpiece of Nair’s visit to Tufts, however, was her conversation with Kris Manjapra, associate professor of history, and Kamran Rastegar, associate professor of Persian, Arabic and comparative literature, during Between Two Worlds: A Conversation with Mira Nair. The talk explored the meaning of the cultural divide generated by the modern era and how one can possibly begin to bridge this gap. Nair eloquently answered that one must “step behind the other side” and find meaning in the art one sets out to create. In other words, there is a necessity to engage with the political and social implications of both art in general and that of Nair’s. The conversation elaborated upon this theme as it covered topics ranging from her firsthand experience of the destructive cultural impact apartheid had in South Africa to her own understanding of the West’s relationship with Islam. Nair’s continued exploration of the world she actually lives in informs her art, whether it be due to her roots in India or the current home she maintains in Uganda.

Never content to remain idle for too long, Nair has two big projects in the works. “Queen of Katwe,” starring Lupita Nyong’o, tells the story of Ugandan chess prodigy Phiona Mutesi and is scheduled to be released on Sept. 23 by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. The movie “Monsoon Wedding” is currently being adapted for the Broadway stage for some time in 2016.

While Nair had shared many maxims about life and filmmaking, nothing sums up her directorial outlook better than when she was asked about how she explains her vision to her own actors: “You cannot imitate. Imitation is killing, of any kind. Really killing. You have to find your spark as an actor, and a director has to guide that spark into a fire.” For Nair, this explanation lies not in the film itself but in the story it seeks to tell.