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.
So I think I'll say the obvious thing: theater is ephemeral. When a production is done, it's gone forever. You can take pictures of it. You can make a film of it. But it's not the production. It's not the same thing.
I record all of my music with authentic instruments in a studio before we start editing, doing many, many versions. The music shapes the film as we edit so it has an organic relationship to the content.
I am the shadow on the moon at night/Filling your dreams to the brim with fright.
My art is about paying attention - about the extremely dangerous possibility that you might be art.
Drama is real life with all the boring parts cut out.
The person of old had the same brilliance of mind that we assume we have now. But that which made a thing become manifest for the first time is our great moment of creative happening.
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