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Mira Nair: Salaam Bombay
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The influence of Mira Nair's sociology background is easy to perceive in this film. Her first narrative film details the lives of the unfortunate children who live in the streets of Bombay. The main character Krishna/Chaipau spends his time as a runner for a tea shop in a neighborhood replete with prostitution and the drug trade. It is in the teeming environment of the streets that Krishna must save 500 rupees before he returns to his village. At the same time several episodes serve to demonstrate the hopelessness of everyone's condition.
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Mira Nair took the film world by storm with her first feature, Salaam Bombay!, in 1988. Coming from a country which produces more feature films than any other, she proved that even art movies can be commercially successful. Her film career, which started in 1979, has brought her global accolades and at the same time fierce criticism at home.
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Born in India in 1957, Mira Nair was educated first at Delhi University and then at Harvard. She made her first feature film, called SALAAM BOMBAY!, in India in 1987. It was a huge international success, winning over twenty-five film festival awards culminating in an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. Even though the Oscar went to Bille August’s haunting film PELLE THE CONQUEROR that year, Nair was launched.
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In 1987, Nair departed from documentary filmmaking. Building on her experience in theater and documentary film, Nair and her scriptwriter, Sooni Taraporevala, a college friend of Nair's and a native of Bombay, conducted a three-month workshop with 30 street children who would perform in the feature film. In Salaam Bombay!, Nair set out to "portray the reality of children who are denied a childhood, children who survive on the streets with resilience, humor, flamboyance and dignity." Mira Nair entered the international film scene when this first feature, Salaam Bombay!, won the Camera D’or and Prix du Publique at the Cannes Film Festival in 1988. The picture won twenty-three international awards and went on to receive an academy award nomination as best foreign language film in 1989.
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In Mira Nair's (Vanity Fair, Monsoon Wedding) debut film, she tells the story of Krishna, a country boy who finds himself alone in Bombay, amidst the chaos and violence of the big city. As he finds work and learns to survive, he meets characters — drug dealers, prostitutes, beggars, and thieves — who will forever change his life. Featuring an amazing cast of non-professional and professional actors, the film shows a previously unseen world, made without the artifice of a film studio.
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Prior to directing her first narrative feature, Salaam Bombay!, Nair made several documentaries whose subjects reflect her sociological concerns. Jama Masjid Street Journal explores a Muslim community in Old Delhi; So Far from India portrays an Indian immigrant in New York, and examines his emotions as he is separated from his wife and child back home; Children of a Desired Sex spotlights the problems of pregnant Indian women whose offspring will be girls. Her most acclaimed documentary, India Cabaret, records the lives of female Bombay nightclub performers. Here, Nair investigates the distinction between the traditional Indian woman, who is expected to remain in the home, and her more modern, free-thinking counterpart, who yearns for personal and economic emancipation.
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Salaam Bombay