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The title of Nisha Ganatra's debut feature, Chutney Popcorn, sums up the writer/director/actress's attitude toward her film and her blossoming career: a mix of spicy and light, ethnic and All-American, dramatic and frivolous. The Canada-born, Los Angeles-raised daughter of first-generation Indian parents (her mother hails from New Delhi, her father from Bombay), Ganatra, 27, grew up between cultures -- and as a child fell in love with American movies, especially the romantic and screwball comedies that define Hollywood. No surprise, then, that Chutney Popcorn is earning praise for its poignant depiction of generation and culture clashes, as well as for its humorous treatment of those themes. In the film, a free-spirited lesbian daughter, Reena (played by Ganatra), the outcast in her well-meaning but dismissive Indian-American family, offers to be a surrogate mother for her "perfect" but infertile older sister (Sakina Jaffrey). Add to the mix a strong-willed, traditional mother (acclaimed actress Madhur Jaffrey, who is also Sakina's real-life mother) who resists this new wrinkle in her ordered world, and Jill Hennessy (of TV's Law and Order) as Reena's carefree girlfriend who also balks at the idea of a baby, and the result is a new kind of family comedy. In spite of its weighty themes, Chutney Popcorn is most often described as a crowd-pleaser, with warmth and laughs winning out over didacticism. Hence its title. "I love popcorn movies," Ganatra says. "It would be easy for people to think this movie is heavy and issue-driven. People hear 'lesbian movie' and think it will be terrible; I wanted to fight that connotation and tip people off that it's light and fun." It isn't the first time Ganatra has defied preconceptions. She began her career as an actress, but grew weary of playing bit parts, usually Latinas. "At the time, Meryl Streep and Glenn Close were complaining about the lack of good roles for women. I remember thinking, if they can't get parts, what chance do I have?" She began taking classes in filmmaking, and eventually wrote a short screenplay about her life and that of her circle of friends, shot it on video, edited it, and called it Generation Sex. "But it still never occurred to me that I could do this for a living," Ganatra says. Boosted by her friends' affection for Generation Sex, Ganatra submitted it to the prestigious NYU film school, which promptly accepted her. But at NYU, where she studied with Martin Scorsese and Spike Lee, Ganatra still felt disconnected from the entrenched network there. Discouraged, she returned to the passion that generated Generation Sex. The result was another personal short, this time shot on film. Junky Punky Girlz soon hit the festival circuit running, fast-tracked Ganatra to a film degree, and paved the way for Chutney Popcorn, which revisits the themes of culture clashes and family bonds that mark Junky Punky Girlz. "Obviously, I had a lot more to say. I made my short thinking no one is going to care about this Indian girl, but I'm going to make it anyway and at the very least I'll have this film that I like," Ganatra says. "I kept thinking, this is not going to play well, but it played twenty-eight film festivals and won an award from PBS. Looking back, all that success told me there was an audience for my film, and gave me confidence.... I began to think of myself as a filmmaker." Ganatra didn't plan to star in Chutney Popcorn, but the sparsely-funded film was hit with a crisis when the lead exited to accept a plum role in a bigger movie. With just two weeks before shooting started, Ganatra telephoned the actress in a panic. "I said, 'You have to help me. When you don't get a role, who else gets it?' And she said, 'No one. That's why I get everything.' It was really hard to find an Indian-American without a British accent, who had acting training, and was willing to play a lesbian." Ganatra was pressured to step in herself. She had been rehearsing her cast anyway, she says, so she talked it over with co-star Hennessy and the Jaffreys. "Then we all kind of held hands and jumped in," Ganatra recalls. "I wanted my actors to feel someone was looking out for them. We didn't have a monitor or dailies, so we had no idea what we were getting until we were done. But I trusted the DP [director of photography]; she was great. We set up the shots first and I just trusted her eye." Ganatra's struggles as an actress propelled her to provide opportunities for her colleagues both in front of and behind the camera. "I was tired of going to movies and seeing women that I just could not relate to, or didn't look like anything I was familiar with or any of my friends," she says. "Everyone I know, all my friends, are loud and obnoxious. Where are those girls? They're not on screen." Chutney Popcorn's crew was made up entirely of women; again, Ganatra sought to give gaffers, editors and cinematographers the same break she wanted to give actresses. "Behind the scenes, it's even tougher. Women could not climb the ladder into positions they wanted to be in," she says. "I had this incredible opportunity with this film. It was a big break for me to write and direct for the first time, so why not help everybody else? The DP [Erin King] had been a gaffer on tons of films, but no one had let her shoot. So, she shot her first feature.... In every department, we found women with tons of experience but who had not been allowed to move to the next level. My feeling was, let's bump everybody up on this film so we can go out and perpetuate work for each other." Besides depicting the frustration and humor of a typical family in all its dysfunction, Ganatra's film pays homage to the unique between-two-worlds place where American children of immigrant parents live. "Films have usually portrayed India as exotic, like City of Joy or with beautiful Kama Sutra images. Second- and third-generation Indian-Americans don't relate to those portrayals. It's not just Indian-Americans, but all children of immigrants.... We are American and not American, in a third space. That was important to me. It's such a specifically American experience. At the heart of it, I wanted to make a real American movie that showed that." Chutney Popcorn premieres June 9 on Sundance Channel as part of the Out Loud series and will play in limited theatrical release this summer. It has enjoyed success on the festival circuit: Ganatra has picked up audience awards at festivals from San Francisco to Newport, R.I., and was named by Filmmaker magazine this year as one of its twenty-five new faces to watch. Still, Chutney Popcorn remains without a distributor, a fact that leaves Ganatra scratching her head. "At first, I struggled with why we were not getting picked up for wide release. You'd think that winning four audience awards proves there is an audience for [the film].... I just want as many people as possible to see it and feel that relief that comes when you see something represented for the first time. Film is such a powerful medium; so many groups have been ignored for so long. To see this is like taking a deep breath and feeling validated and confirmed and not invisible. It can cause transformation. That's how powerful I think film is. I want people to laugh. And call their moms." And her own mother? "My mom loves the film," Ganatra says. "I sent her the script, and she helped with the mother's character, like telling me, 'I wouldn't say that.'... It's hard, because so much of the character is based on her. There were parts that were personal and I worried. But she came to the L.A. premiere and she was great. The film is dedicated to all our moms." * Read the PopcornQ review of Chutney Popcorn PQ MOVIE NEWS: PQ Video Hot List | Interviews | Advance Guide to Queer Film | Movie News Archive | PQ Video Hot Lists Galore MORE NEWS ON PLANETOUT: PlanetOut News & Politics | PlanetOutRadio | Entertainment
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