Deepa Mehta on 30 Years of Boundary-Breaking Cinema: Facing Down Protests, Hanging Up on George Lucas and Her $1 Deal With Salman Rushdie

variety.com:

Naman Ramachandran From facing angry mobs in Varanasi to fielding calls from George Lucas, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Deepa Mehta has built a fearless career challenging cultural taboos — and at 74, she’s not slowing down.

In a wide-ranging conversation ahead of her career retrospective “Through the Fire: The Films of Deepa Mehta” at Toronto’s TIFF Cinematheque, the filmmaker sat down with Variety to discuss her journey from reluctant cinephile to celebrated auteur whose works have consistently challenged social and political norms over the last 30 years. “Should I be retiring instead of doing work?” Mehta jokes when asked about the retrospective. “No, too much,” she quickly adds, dismissing the notion of slowing down with characteristic determination.

The Indo-Canadian director, whose films frequently examine divisions – between countries, communities and within individuals themselves – traces her cinematic roots to childhood days spent in her father’s movie theater in the Punjab. “I grew up with films.

My father was a film distributor and a theater owner in Amritsar,” Mehta recalls. “After school, we’d hang around and pick up dad and see movies while he’s doing his calls or working, til he was free.” It was during these formative years that Mehta first experienced cinema’s emotional power, recalling her confusion at crying over the film “Nagin” (1954). “I remember being about 6 or 7… and sitting there and asking my dad, ‘This is not real… but why am I crying?'” she remembers. “I’d seen what a projection room was, I’d actually felt the screen with my hands and realized that was cloth, but I didn’t get it that these aren’t real people on the screen.” Despite this immersion, young Mehta initially resisted filmmaking as a.