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Rupesh Sawant chats
up UK-based director Gurinder Chadha, a retrospective Jesminder ‘Jess’ of Bend It Like Beckham may have preferred a football game to making aloo-gobhi but UK-based filmmaker Gurinder Chadha is proud of her Punjabi roots.
"I think I’m very Punjabi in a very British way. But I’m also quite British in a very Punjabi way too," Chadha said on the sidelines of the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) here. Chadha traces her India-British roots to her childhood. "My first sentence as a child was ‘I want roti-khana’. That sort of carried on as I grew up," she says. The director, who is credited for making Indian diaspora popular in the UK, was honoured by IFFI this year. A retrospective of seven of her films was being held during the 10-day festival, which also included Chadha’s cult hit Bend it like Beckham. Chadha, who began her career as a BBC reporter, is keen on the reaction of the Indian audience to her films, the reason, she says, for her presence at the festival. "I was in India in 1993 with Bhaji on the Beach, so I’ve been here before. But it was before the festival was based in Goa," she explains. "Indian audience likes me and my films. May be it’s the Punjabi culture in the films and the comedy value, but there’s certainly loads of affection," Chadha says. The director, who cracked the formula of interpreting life of an Asian in the UK through her crossover films like Bend It Like Beckham and Bride and Prejudice, emphasises the importance of the diaspora in influencing her filmmaking. "My ancestors were from Jhelum and Rawalpindi in Pakistan. My family then went to Kenya (where she was born) and I am now living in England. All that creates an interesting cultural context within which I work." The director now plans to work with Shabana Azmi on her next project, a British comedy called It’s a wonderful afterlife. "It’s currently
in the final stages and will be out next April," she adds. — PTI
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