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.
A writer is always, always searching, even against her will, against all her better instincts, for the thread of a story. Everything is fodder. Everything is fuel. You can feel it coming on like the tingling of a sore throat. The brain never stops struggling to reshape every experience and feeling into a coherent narrative.
I like using animals because they help suspend my reader's disbelief. We have certain ideas about dentists. We don't have many ideas about rhinoceros dentists.
I had to figure out how to bring the world into my work.
There are only 3 colors, 10 digits, and 7 notes; its what we do with them that's important.
Music has charms to sooth a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.
I may play the same program from one recital to the next, but I will play it differently, and because it is always different, it is always new.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.