Reeling
in International Acclaim
The New Yorker Magazine
reviewed her most recent film, claiming that Earth (1999) “... has an urgency
and narrative economy like Casablanca” and that it was reinforced by “hypnotic
score” and “passionate cinematography.” Deepa Mehta’s Hindu parents hailed
from Lahore, now a major city in Pakistan, but before the 1947 Partition,
a major city in northwest India. Born, Amritsar, India, 1950, Deepa Mehta
received a degree in Philosophy from the University of New Delhi before
beginning her cinematic career writing scripts for children’s films. At
23 years, Deepa immigrated to Canada. Her first feature film, Sam &
Me, won Honourable Mention in the Prestigious Camera D’Or Category, 1991,
Cannes Film Festival. She directed, 1992, a one-hour episode of the Young
Indiana Jones Chronicles for ABC Television. Produced by George Lucas,
the “Benares” episode was filmed on location in India. Camilla, her second
feature film, 1993, starred the late Jessica Tandy, in addition to Bridget
Fonda, Graham Greene, and Hume Cronyn. Fire, 1997, first of a trilogy,
was launched at the Toronto International Film Festival, 1997, where it
tied for the Air Canada People’s Choice Award. It was one of 29 films selected
from over 1,400 films for the New York Film Festival that same year. Fire
has been sold to more than 30 countries worldwide. The impressive second
film in the trilogy, Earth, received a standing ovation when it was launched
at the Toronto Film Festival, 1998. It won the Prix Premiere du Publique
at the Festival du film Asiatique de Deauville, France, March 1999. The
New York Times calls Earth a film “bathed in a deep golden light that recalls
the orange sky ... in Gone With the Wind during the burning of Atlanta.”
Deepa Mehta, who divides her time between Toronto, her home base, and Delhi,
is currently completing the final episode of her trilogy, a production
called Water which explores the human condition in the India of the 1930s,
an area, today, inhabited by more than one billion people. [Photo, courtesy
Dilip Mehta, Contact Press Images]