Mississippi Masala

UGANDA, 1972. IDI AMIN HAS DECIDED to solve the problem of racism by deporting all Asians. Jay, a successful Indian lawyer is forced to escape with his wife Kinnu and daughter Mina. Eighteen years later we meet them in Mississippi, USA, where origin and color of skin continues to be obstacles for love and careers. The daughter starts a relationship with a Black American. When her parents find out, uncomfortable memoires from Uganda are reawakened both in the family and in their Afro-American environment. A film by Mira Nair who made Salaam Bombay!
Comment:
'''MASALA' LITERALLY MEANS A COLLECTION OF hot spices of different colors. In Mississippi Masala Mina is Indian but from Africa via England so she says she is a sort of ' masala', all mixed up, from everywhere. The whole film is masala really, because it involves several different countries, actors of three nations and clashing cultures. It is reflected in the accents, the politics, the music, what people wear, what they drive and how they decorate their homes.
I had been drawn to the idea of making a film that dealt in some way with the hierarchy of color, a film about an inter-racial love story, but I was reminded time and again that films of this sort don't make money'. I got so used to rejection of this kind, that I felt I must be doing something right.
The finished film is pretty much what I expected to make, only it's funnier. I think humour and emotion are great vehicles for people to understand the universality of the human situation.
Mississippi Masala may provoke people, but I think it will be impossible to deny that the people in this film have been portrayed with compassion. I would hope that people seeing this film will be able to see themselves in it, that this is not just a film about The Other. This is a film that is very deeply about the human condition, a film in which we respect the particularity of each character, but in that particularity there is a universal seed.
MIRA NAIR

Medverkande
Denzel Washington, Roshan Seth: Producent
Michael Nozik, Mira Nair: Manus
Sooni Taraporevala: Foto
Ed Lachman: Musik
L. Subramaniam: Talat språk
English