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Either you're this, or you're that: either you're - if you're a Pakistani, you're a terrorist; if you're an American, you might be a militarist. Those kind of prisms that we see each other through are really stultifying, and they don't often show the complexity and the incredible warmth and encompassing of the world.
Mira Nair
Truth is more peculiar than fiction. Life is really a startling place.
I want to question what the outside is and who defines it. I often find those that are considered to be on the outside extremely inspiring.
We all know the power of film; we all know there's almost nothing more powerful than to see people on film that look and talk like you, like we do.
We have three generations at home, including my father-in-law. I keep a very low profile, and a lot of things I do are very much with the family in mind. I have actually made films with the family around me.
You've got to understand that in Bollywood, every actor is an instrument, and yet a human being. They come to the set with a set agenda, believing, 'This is who I am, this is what I want, and no, I am not going to become that character you want me to.'
In America, we have so many movies and so much media about the Islamic world, the sub-continental world, but it's not a conversation, it's a monologue. It's always from one point of view. 'If we don't tell our own stories, no one will tell them' is my mantra.
I'm the bullheaded type, and I really don't give up if I fall in love.
I look for the humanity in people, however big the politics or oppressive the situation may be, whether it's subsumed within a human being or between two human beings. I want to help us hold a mirror to ourselves.
We never see the fancy schools with the blazers and ties in films about Africa! But, in fact, we too have class and elitism.
I think, in terms of activism associated with my films, be it 'Salaam Baalak Trust' or 'Maisha', taking the idea of cinema as a way to change people, I feel heartened. I am glad that we have impacted thousands of lives.
There's nothing universal about Indian families except that the family itself is deeply important across the country. It's sort of the fabric and anchor of our country.
I've loved 'Vanity Fair' since I was 16 years old. You know, we're all colonial hangovers in India, steeped in English literature. It is one of these novels that I read under the covers at my convent boarding school in Simla.
Humility is not a trait I often associate with America.
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.
I listen to music deeply and seriously for at least an hour or two a day.
Katwe is fifteen minutes from my home. It's entirely about knowing it from the inside. For instance, the incredible vibrancy of style. Kampala is the center of used clothing in the world. Everyone dresses in secondhand clothes, but they look astonishing for it.
India somehow constantly rivets and inspires me, and I feel very relieved to have come from this country which has a very 'lifeist' approach to living fully, no matter what one has or doesn't have.
When people break up, after sharing their entire souls with each other, I don't want to believe that you just switch off. There are remnants of melancholia, and there is so much that stays with you because you loved this person. Of course, it's that much more complicated when it's an interracial love or love from a person from another culture.
No one goes to Pakistan to make movies. You stick out.
A lot of us feel that we are against the war; we are against profiling and are against what is happening. We are tired of war in every manifestation. American people do not all believe in what the government has been doing.
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.
'Queen of Katwe' is an absolutely true story. And it's wonderful. But it's not about saviors. Your only savior is yourself - but yourself with your community. It's never alone. You have to have someone who believes in you.
Once 9/11 happened, people who looked like me and whose children looked like us and whose husbands looked of a community, really were made to feel quite the other, and I thought that was impossible in a city like New York but I myself was witness to that.
We want the diversity of the world that is around us represented both in front of and behind the camera, and on our screens as a result.
We have not learned the lessons of 9/11. This wrongful suspicion, racial hatred, and profiling is what I keep seeing.
The film itself should interact with the audience. In the case of 'Queen of Katwe', people are laughing, sobbing and dancing. I am taking them on a ride... It is not like I am asking them for handouts.
I love the idea that it doesn't take one person only to achieve your potential. It takes a village, it takes a community, a street, a teacher, a mother.
I've been able to look at the world differently from three continents practically. I've always lived between India and the U.S. When I married Mahmood I became a daughter-in-law of Africa. That really changed my worldview. I can see it from so many perspectives.
Christmas lights may be the loneliest thing for me, especially if you mix them up with reindeers and sleighs. I feel alone. I feel isolated. I feel I do not belong.
Never take no for answer, and try to make films that turn you on.
I always like to reveal the fact that the emperor has no clothes. And children are best at that. They teach us how to see the world in that sense. They are without artifice; they see it for what it is. I am drawn to that ruthless honesty.
I am still attracted to stories about people who are considered to be on the outside of society. I still seek inspiration from those stories.
Creative freedom is an imperative for me, but it doesn't really exist in a Hollywood game.
'No words - action' was the lesson my mother taught me: as artists, we have the privilege of holding a mirror to the world, to engage, to question, to bring beauty to a complex universe.
I came from the school of cinema verite documentaries, which was: Do not manipulate reality as it was happening but create a narrative in the editing room.
I think optimism springs from nature. I'm a gardener. Nature has taught me about rhythm, the essence of every art. With so much that is terrible, nature gives me pleasure.
From Vietnam's 'Deer Hunter' to Iraq, films are never about the person who has had his house destroyed.
What's nice about what we have is when you enter the set, the world of film, it becomes this real cocoon, very different from all the publicity. That's the fun part.
'Salaam Bombay' didn't put a halo on the poor. Instead, it said that they will teach us how to live.
I am Indian, and my home is Kampala. My world is already diverse. But films are financed by those who want to see themselves on screen, and it is a white male world. Still, it does feel like America is waking up. Let's hope it's the start of an avalanche.
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.
My family is vital to me - just the sense of being surrounded by no pretension.
In our house we say 'adolescence' is a western word. We don't believe in it.
I started to make my own films, however small and however independent they were, from the beginning. And so, even though I was nobody, I was always the master of my own work.
Never treat anything you do as a stepping stone. Do it fully, and follow it completely.
I dream of living off the land completely - in vain, because the monkeys eat everything.
Americans are not used to being bombed in their beds, but if you come from anywhere outside America, it's not highly unusual.
It's only at this age that I can say the word 'art' without flinching.
I think I am kind of put on this Earth to speak of being between worlds in my films.
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