Every film is a political act; it's how you see the world.
Interpretation
Films reflect societal views and can influence political perceptions.
Mira Nair's quote highlights that every film communicates a perspective about the world, serving as a medium through which filmmakers express their political beliefs and insights. As such, films become an integral part of the political discourse, shaping audiences' understanding and interpretation of societal issues.
In practice
During a film festival panel discussing the role of cinema in social change.
It gave me a lot of pleasure and pride that 90 percent of the crew for 'Monsoon Wedding,' and most of my film, are women. We get the work done, you know, much lesser play of ego... And I really believe in harmony, I believe in working in a spirit of egolessness and that the film is bigger than all of us.
Middle-class Pakistani cultural life is what I've seen, what I know - they're not all screaming faceless mullahs. It's disturbing that in American films, the character on the other side is not even named.
If we don't tell our own stories, no one else will.
I think there's a level of ignorance, when, in the callowness of youth, you imagine that you are inventing the world for the first time. You imagine that your parents don't know what it feels like to fall in love.
To make films, you have to have something to say. To have something to say, you have to be a student of life. And to be a student of life, you have to be feeding yourself with what life, politics, society, and your family fuels you with.
Music is what I have to do, I only answer the questions so that I can do it.
It is true that the poet does not directly address his neighbors; but he does address a great congress of persons who dwell at the back of his mind, a congress of all those who have taught him and whom he has admired; they constitute his ideal audience and his better self.
The opportunity to create a small world between two pieces of cardboard, where time exists yet stands still, where people talk and I tell them what to say, is exciting and rewarding.
I cannot speak for more than an hour exclusively about poetry. At that point, life itself takes over again.
In the waking dreams our societies permit, in our myths, our arts, our songs, we celebrate the nonbelongers, the different ones, the outlaws, the freaks.
Well, you put a little piece of yourself into every character that you do. Even if you're playing some psychotic person, which of course I'm not, some part of you is in that character and it's hopefully believable. I always come back to the fact that my own instinct is better than something I build in my mind.
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