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Pioneering film director Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding, Mississippi Masala) is known worldwide for introducing modern Indian culture to Western audiences on the silver screen. She's now trying to give East African filmmakers a chance to show the world through their own eyes.
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Piece Description
Pioneering film director Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding, Mississippi Masala) is known worldwide for introducing modern Indian culture to Western audiences on the silver screen. She's now trying to give East African filmmakers a chance to show the world through their own eyes.
2 Comments
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Mira Nair in Uganda ReviewThe article is informative but also inspiring. It makes excellent use of grounding sounds and quotes and even incorporates audio from Mississippi Masala into itself. Mira Nair is an Indian woman who has experienced some of the same lifestyle changes and geographic movements that makes her a real citizen of the wordl. She was born just years after India gained her independence from Great Britain and began the arduous process of decolonization. She educated herself at world-class institutions, both in India and the United States. She is married to a black man and has lived in Africa. As a result of her experiences, Nair’s work hails from an undeniably international and cosmopolitan perspective. Mississippi Masala is one of my favorite movies pierod. |
Broadcast History
First broadcast during the "Think Global" Public Radio Collaboration, May 16-22, 2005.
Transcript
SUGGESTED HOST INTRO:
The Indian film director Mira Nair says the world is a better place when more people can tell their own stories. That's the idea behind a new film workshop she's helped set up in East Africa. With Nair on location in New York City, WFUV's Tara Anderson traveled to Nair's training center in Uganda. Her report is part of "Think Global," public radio's week of special coverage.
[sound of acting workshop – lines being delivered, laughter, director’s instructions]
TA: In a small dance studio behind the National Theatre in Kampala, Uganda’s capital, a group of aspiring filmmakers is doing acting exercises. Everyone has left their shoes at the door on this warm March evening, and they take turns, in stocking feet, delivering the same line with different inflections.
[“If there was a way, I swear I would go in there and ask that foolish dumb body to come out and...
Read the full transcript
Additional Files
- Suggested Intro and Rundown (andersonrundown.txt)
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Alex van Oss
Posted on June 01, 2005 at 09:01 PM | Permalink
Review of Mira Nair in Uganda
Some months ago, I griped about how all public radio reports about Uganda seem to dwell upon AIDS, violence, or oppression. Now comes an exception--Tara Anderson's commendable feature about a pioneering filmmaker in Uganda.
Unfortunately, this piece relies too much on words. True, Anderson includes clips of actors and singers; but they seem token and fail to convey much atmosphere.
Especially for stories about far-away places, editors and reporters should throw away words, sentences, even paragraphs of precious text, or a whole voice cut, in order to allow time for sound. Consider: it is only through ambience, loud and clear (or soft but enduring), that a feature can breathe. More often than not, it is silence, or the pause for sound, that gives radio its power--rather than the wedging in of one more fact. This is true even in news reports.
End of sermon. I listen forward to Tara Anderson's next feature about Uganda.