REPORTER: Olivia Rousset
Deepa Mehta had to overcome incredible obstacles to make her latest film Water when she found herself at the centre of political protests in India.
DEEPA MEHTA, FILM DIRECTOR: Water is many things to me. It is a love story. It is about redemption, it is about liberation, it is about compassion, but it isnt about anger. I hope you enjoy it.
'Water' is about widows - one as young as eight - condemned by religious law to living a life of deprivation as outcasts in an ashram. 'Water' is the third part of a trilogy, written and directed by Mehta. The films challenge the often repressive nature of politics and religion in India.
WOMAN IN FILM, (Translation): Our Holy Books say, a wife is part of her husband, while hes alive and when husbands die, God help us wives also half die.
DEEPA MEHTA: You hear about the ashrams or institutions where widows live - Hindu widows live - but to see them is something totally different.
Deepa Mehta was inspired to make 'Water' when she met an old widow in Varanasi who took her to the ashram where she lived.
DEEPA MEHTA: There must have been about 40 women that lived there in conditions that if youre from the outside, it seemed like complete and utter desperation.
In 1938, when the film is set, widows in India had little choice when their husband died. They could burn to death on their husbands funeral pyre, marry his younger brother, or live as outcasts with other widows in ashrams. In society, they are seen as bad luck.
WOMAN IN FILM, (Translation): Widows shouldnt run around like unmarried girls, you have polluted me! I have to bathe again.
REPORTER: Are there still issues raised in 'Water' that resonate now?
DEEPA MEHTA: Living in ashrams. Spending their lives singing hymns or begging. But more than that its the personal humiliation of living in the margins of society because somehow it's your karma to do so. That is there.
Water doesnt pull any punches with its critique of how religion is used to oppress the widows.
MAN IN FILM, (Translation): Watch it! Dont let your shadow touch the bride!
At the time India was ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party, a right-wing fundamentalist Hindu party which didnt take kindly to criticism of the countrys dominant religion.
DEEPA MEHTA: Before you make a film in India, you have to submit the script to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and they go through it and scrutinise it and go through it with a fine-tooth comb to make sure there is nothing in the script that is either derogatory to India or to Indians. The government at that point was a Hindu fundamentalist government in India and they went through it and said, Its a lovely script, go ahead and make it. So we got the stamp of approval and everything was fine.
But when Mehta did go ahead and make it, she soon hit troubled waters.
DEEPA MEHTA: The night before we started shooting, we heard there were sort of rumblings in the city that the script of 'Water' was anti-Hindu. Before we knew it, mobs had materialised and threw our sets into the river, and the ones they didnt throw into the river they set fire to and started burning my effigy. It happened instantaneously, it felt.
REPORTER: How did you feel at that point?
DEEPA MEHTA: I didnt see my effigy being burnt but my daughter did. And she didnt feel that great. I asked her what my effigy was wearing. You have to have a sense of humour about stuff like that. You can't take it seriously.
Mehta and some of the actors in the film also received death threats.
REPORTER: So that essentially stopped the filming of 'Water'?
DEEPA MEHTA: No, because I am a stubborn broad. So we went back and started shooting, and I think we shot about two hours before the army came. Suddenly there were all these guys in uniform with tear gas and stuff and they said they were there for our protection because somebody - a man - had tried to commit suicide in protest and he was in intensive care, and if he died, which looked very likely, then mobs would again be upon us, so they were there to protect us. And we had to stop shooting.
In a bizarre twist, Deepa Mehta later found out that the man who had tried to commit suicide was a fraud and did it for a living. For 1,000 rupees, he could be hired to make a cause seem more authentic.
Having lost over $1 million, Mehtas producers cancelled the shoot. Four years later, they decided to make the film in Sri Lanka instead of India.
REPORTER: Would you hesitate to shoot in India again?
DEEPA MEHTA: No, not at all. I go to India all the time. I live there half the year. My parents are there, my family is there. I have never felt in any way that I couldnt shoot there or I cant live there. Like I said, if 'Water' had its detractors, it also had its supporters.
In fact there was little in 'Water' that was truly controversial. As Mehta was told by the head of the extremist Hindu organisation the RSS, the backlash against 'Water' was payback for making an earlier film called 'Fire'.
GIRL IN FILM: Isnt it amazing? Were so bound by customs and rituals, somebody just has to press my button, this button marked 'tradition' and I start responding like a trained monkey.
'Fire' controversially showed two sisters-in-law, neglected by their husbands, who begin a lesbian relationship.
GIRL IN FILM: Did we do anything wrong?
The films detractors claimed that there were no lesbians in India, and that the film might give women ideas.
GIRL IN FILM: Listen, there is no word in our language that can describe what we are, how we feel for each other.
Unlike 'Water', with Fire Deepa Mehta was being deliberately provocative.
DEEPA MEHTA: 'Fire' essentially, for me, is about the conflict between, or the tug-of-war between tradition and the desire for an independent voice. I was curious - and really, that's what drives me - curiosity is what drives my stories - because I was curious about what happens if women make a choice which is an extreme choice, what will the fallout be? And in the case of 'Fire', if a woman wants to get another woman lover, what will the reaction be? Obviously in 'Fire', in the film, it was a conflagration.
At the end of the film Fire one of the women burns while her husband watches. Fire screened in the cinemas for just two weeks before sparking a real-life inferno.
The same radical Hindu party that was behind the protests against 'Water' trashed a cinema where 'Fire' was screening. But Mehta thinks the protesters missed the point.
DEEPA MEHTA: Its about love. Its a love story. Its about emotional sustenance, which is actually what a healthy relationship is supposed to do. To condemn it seemed such a waste of energy to me. There are so many things to protest about. Why not protest about the lack of running water? Or access to education?
I'll have a dosa too. I love dosas. I'll have the masala dosa and sambal and coconut chutney. Do you speak Hindi?
Deepa Mehta is passionate about India and wants to reflect real life, as opposed to the fantasy worlds of escapist Bollywood melodramas.
DEEPA MEHTA: Delicious! So you folks tell me - what is this fascination with Bollywood? I cant figure it out. I'd love to know from you folks. Just look at it!
Her next film is about Indians who tried to emigrate to her adopted home of Canada, and explores issues of racism. For the first time she will be looking at the clash of the two cultures she lives in.
REPORTER: Do you set out to be controversial? Do you take on these issues because you want to effect some change?
DEEPA MEHTA: No. Thats the irony of it in many ways. I think if I did that my films might be very self-conscious. I dont even think of them. I'm a storyteller.
Deepa Mehta had to overcome incredible obstacles to make her latest film Water when she found herself at the centre of political protests in India.
DEEPA MEHTA, FILM DIRECTOR: Water is many things to me. It is a love story. It is about redemption, it is about liberation, it is about compassion, but it isnt about anger. I hope you enjoy it.
'Water' is about widows - one as young as eight - condemned by religious law to living a life of deprivation as outcasts in an ashram. 'Water' is the third part of a trilogy, written and directed by Mehta. The films challenge the often repressive nature of politics and religion in India.
WOMAN IN FILM, (Translation): Our Holy Books say, a wife is part of her husband, while hes alive and when husbands die, God help us wives also half die.
DEEPA MEHTA: You hear about the ashrams or institutions where widows live - Hindu widows live - but to see them is something totally different.
Deepa Mehta was inspired to make 'Water' when she met an old widow in Varanasi who took her to the ashram where she lived.
DEEPA MEHTA: There must have been about 40 women that lived there in conditions that if youre from the outside, it seemed like complete and utter desperation.
In 1938, when the film is set, widows in India had little choice when their husband died. They could burn to death on their husbands funeral pyre, marry his younger brother, or live as outcasts with other widows in ashrams. In society, they are seen as bad luck.
WOMAN IN FILM, (Translation): Widows shouldnt run around like unmarried girls, you have polluted me! I have to bathe again.
REPORTER: Are there still issues raised in 'Water' that resonate now?
DEEPA MEHTA: Living in ashrams. Spending their lives singing hymns or begging. But more than that its the personal humiliation of living in the margins of society because somehow it's your karma to do so. That is there.
Water doesnt pull any punches with its critique of how religion is used to oppress the widows.
MAN IN FILM, (Translation): Watch it! Dont let your shadow touch the bride!
At the time India was ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party, a right-wing fundamentalist Hindu party which didnt take kindly to criticism of the countrys dominant religion.
DEEPA MEHTA: Before you make a film in India, you have to submit the script to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and they go through it and scrutinise it and go through it with a fine-tooth comb to make sure there is nothing in the script that is either derogatory to India or to Indians. The government at that point was a Hindu fundamentalist government in India and they went through it and said, Its a lovely script, go ahead and make it. So we got the stamp of approval and everything was fine.
But when Mehta did go ahead and make it, she soon hit troubled waters.
DEEPA MEHTA: The night before we started shooting, we heard there were sort of rumblings in the city that the script of 'Water' was anti-Hindu. Before we knew it, mobs had materialised and threw our sets into the river, and the ones they didnt throw into the river they set fire to and started burning my effigy. It happened instantaneously, it felt.
REPORTER: How did you feel at that point?
DEEPA MEHTA: I didnt see my effigy being burnt but my daughter did. And she didnt feel that great. I asked her what my effigy was wearing. You have to have a sense of humour about stuff like that. You can't take it seriously.
Mehta and some of the actors in the film also received death threats.
REPORTER: So that essentially stopped the filming of 'Water'?
DEEPA MEHTA: No, because I am a stubborn broad. So we went back and started shooting, and I think we shot about two hours before the army came. Suddenly there were all these guys in uniform with tear gas and stuff and they said they were there for our protection because somebody - a man - had tried to commit suicide in protest and he was in intensive care, and if he died, which looked very likely, then mobs would again be upon us, so they were there to protect us. And we had to stop shooting.
In a bizarre twist, Deepa Mehta later found out that the man who had tried to commit suicide was a fraud and did it for a living. For 1,000 rupees, he could be hired to make a cause seem more authentic.
Having lost over $1 million, Mehtas producers cancelled the shoot. Four years later, they decided to make the film in Sri Lanka instead of India.
REPORTER: Would you hesitate to shoot in India again?
DEEPA MEHTA: No, not at all. I go to India all the time. I live there half the year. My parents are there, my family is there. I have never felt in any way that I couldnt shoot there or I cant live there. Like I said, if 'Water' had its detractors, it also had its supporters.
In fact there was little in 'Water' that was truly controversial. As Mehta was told by the head of the extremist Hindu organisation the RSS, the backlash against 'Water' was payback for making an earlier film called 'Fire'.
GIRL IN FILM: Isnt it amazing? Were so bound by customs and rituals, somebody just has to press my button, this button marked 'tradition' and I start responding like a trained monkey.
'Fire' controversially showed two sisters-in-law, neglected by their husbands, who begin a lesbian relationship.
GIRL IN FILM: Did we do anything wrong?
The films detractors claimed that there were no lesbians in India, and that the film might give women ideas.
GIRL IN FILM: Listen, there is no word in our language that can describe what we are, how we feel for each other.
Unlike 'Water', with Fire Deepa Mehta was being deliberately provocative.
DEEPA MEHTA: 'Fire' essentially, for me, is about the conflict between, or the tug-of-war between tradition and the desire for an independent voice. I was curious - and really, that's what drives me - curiosity is what drives my stories - because I was curious about what happens if women make a choice which is an extreme choice, what will the fallout be? And in the case of 'Fire', if a woman wants to get another woman lover, what will the reaction be? Obviously in 'Fire', in the film, it was a conflagration.
At the end of the film Fire one of the women burns while her husband watches. Fire screened in the cinemas for just two weeks before sparking a real-life inferno.
The same radical Hindu party that was behind the protests against 'Water' trashed a cinema where 'Fire' was screening. But Mehta thinks the protesters missed the point.
DEEPA MEHTA: Its about love. Its a love story. Its about emotional sustenance, which is actually what a healthy relationship is supposed to do. To condemn it seemed such a waste of energy to me. There are so many things to protest about. Why not protest about the lack of running water? Or access to education?
I'll have a dosa too. I love dosas. I'll have the masala dosa and sambal and coconut chutney. Do you speak Hindi?
Deepa Mehta is passionate about India and wants to reflect real life, as opposed to the fantasy worlds of escapist Bollywood melodramas.
DEEPA MEHTA: Delicious! So you folks tell me - what is this fascination with Bollywood? I cant figure it out. I'd love to know from you folks. Just look at it!
Her next film is about Indians who tried to emigrate to her adopted home of Canada, and explores issues of racism. For the first time she will be looking at the clash of the two cultures she lives in.
REPORTER: Do you set out to be controversial? Do you take on these issues because you want to effect some change?
DEEPA MEHTA: No. Thats the irony of it in many ways. I think if I did that my films might be very self-conscious. I dont even think of them. I'm a storyteller.