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The Future of Indo-American Cinema

Jagmohan Mudhra (left) shares stories of his first days in the business. Aparna Malladi listens. Photos by M.S. Deshmukh.

Industry upstarts and venture capitalists make connections

By M.S. Deshmukh | Special to AsianWeek

By now, it is common knowledge that Bollywood is the biggest film industry in the world — with Indians producing and consuming over 800 movies every year. But what may not be as well-known, is that Indian Americans have maintained that love for movies, propelling a stateside industry of video rentals and Indian-specific movie theaters.

Recently though, Indian movies have found their way into American cineplexes and art houses. Famous crossovers like Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding and the Oscar-nominated Lagaan are finding an audience in America and lending a newfound credibility to an industry that had, until recently, found itself more lampooned than acclaimed by international movie-goers and critics.

Embarking from this moment in Indian film history, two Indian American groups, the Silicon Valley Indian Professionals Association (SIPA) and the Network of Indian Professionals (NetIP), organized a panel discussion Saturday in Menlo Park, Calif. to contemplate the future of Indo-American film.

The panel consisted of Piyush Pandya, American-raised writer/director of the independent movie American Desi, Jagmohan Mudhra, a long-time filmmaker in the American film industry, Harish Saluja, a technical magazine publisher whose recent film The Journey won acclaim on the festival circuit, Aparna Malladi, a filmmaker at work on her first feature and actress Sheetal Sheth.

Panel discussion on the future of Indo-Am cinema (left to right): Saluja, Sheth, Mudhra, Malladi, Pandya and moderator Rafiq Dassani.

Enlightened in the Dark

The power was out Saturday afternoon at Gaylord’s Indian Restaurant in Menlo Park, as it was in much of the Bay Area, while a series of Pacific storms battered the region. But that did not drive away nearly 70 South Asian IT and venture capitalists who had come to the restaurant for the event.

The brains behind the days’ programming were those of SIPA communications director, Vivek Kumar, who kicked off the interaction stating that in a perfect world, his group might set up “an ebay for talent, where talent seekers could find the talent for their films,” within the community.

The grid crashed just as everyone was lining up for the buffet, but, far from putting a damper on the day, it lent a rather intimate setting to the conversations that took place over tandoor-cooked chicken. In fact, the group discussions that followed the meal had the cozy air of a small Actor’s Studio session.

By the glow of several dozen tea lights, pioneering Indian American director, Jagmohan Mudhra described the circus that he endured while directing his first picture in India in the early 1980s.

“Everyone took me for a ride,” he said to his captive audience. “The writer said he needed a room in the nicest hotel in Mumbai to finish the script. Then, two weeks later I found that he was paying his assistant a fraction of what he was getting to come in and write for a few hours a day while he had his friends over to drink and do God knows what else at night.”

Along with making movies in India, Mudhra established himself in America by making a series of soft-core erotica films, which allowed him to finance his most recent movie, Bawander, the socially-conscious tale of an Indian woman fighting village injustice. Mudhra was described by fellow panelist Aparna Malladi as the “original, in-the-business Non-Resident Indian” and has helped get a lot of Indian American’s projects off the ground.

The Shady Side

Mudhra said that he has come a long way from making that first film and now makes a comfortable living. The lesson to be learned though, he said, is that the Indian movie business is not conducive to collaboration.

“It is a shark-eat-shark world where the financier’s main concern is getting his picture taken with the stars,” Mudhra said.

Panelist Harish Saluja chimed in, making sure to bash the shady financing business side of the Indian film industry, which has lately become notorious for gang-controlled activity.

Malladi — a Film Arts Foundation alumnus, Newark, Calif. resident and relative newcomer on the scene — argued that working together is the key to Indo-American film. She is completing her first feature-length film, Mirsein, and preparing to shop it around on the festival circuit. Malladi identifies as an artist rather than a filmmaker.

During the panel, she spoke about the need for cooperation when undertaking a project. “You need an army to make your art,” she said to the assembled film-curious professionals. “You need to have people you trust working with you when you go to war, or start shooting.”

Malladi spoke about the need to have both community and family support: “It’s still not considered by Indian parents as a viable option for a career. What need to show is to show them that it is a viable business.”

Redefining Roles

Sheetal Sheth, an NYU Drama School-trained actress who has starred in ABCD and a series of other films featuring, written and directed by second generation Indian Americans, said that she saw the future of Indo-American films in the younger generation who are creating roles and movies for themselves, even when the subject matter goes beyond identity.

“We have to collaborate and sincerely want each other to succeed at telling stories that become part of America,” she said in her opening statement. “So that we leave a history here and start building our legacy.”

In a conversation before lunch, Malladi expanded on this point of representation. “If you only see Tom Cruise doing Mission: Impossible, you feel if you have to be white to be that cool,” she said with a conviction she carries into her art. “If you see your own image doing things, making love, having those experiences, you don’t feel the need to become white, you think, ‘Okay, even in my image I can have the full range of human images.’”

Panelist Piyush Pandya, a New Jersey-raised Indian American, was at the forefront of this new movement. His film American Desi was one of the first to place Indian American characters on the screen.

The Future

Overall, the event was an exciting one, connecting investors with filmmakers for the first time in such a setting.

Pandya encouraged the crowd with his story, saying “There are as many ways to be a filmmaker as there are films.”

Even though Saluja boisterously said that “every day, I make another enemy when an Indian comes up and asks me to read their script,” it didn’t seem to slow down the exchange of business cards.