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Desperately Seeking Helen

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Desperately Seeking Helen is a 1998 film by Eisha Marjara, produced by the National Film Board of Canada.

It documents the life of the Bollywood star Helen and also discusses Marjara's process of self-discovery.[1] Marjara liked Helen as a child, and Marjara stated "Helen is a conduit into my childhood — my relationship with my mother, my struggle with anorexia and the Air India disaster which took the lives of my mother and sister."[2] Jerry Pinto, author of Helen: The Life and Times of an H-bomb, wrote that the film "is as much about Eisha Marjara's perception of Helen as it is about Helen."[3] Desperately Seeking Helen uses Hindi music.[1]

The film covers the complications in the relationship between Marjara and her mother,[4] Devinder.[5] Marjara had the perception that her mother was unable to balance the culture of Canada against that of India, and Devinder was more feminine and traditional compared to her daughter.[1] The film also discusses the 1985 Air India Flight 182 bombing,[6] which ultimately killed Davinder along with Seema, one of Marjara's sisters.[5]

D.B. Jones, the author of "Brave New Film Board," wrote that the filmmaker "verges on self-pity and often seems self-absorbed, but she can also be brutally honest about herself."[4] Sabeena Gadihoke, the author of "Secrets and Inner Voices: The Self and Subjectivity in Contemporary Indian Documentary," wrote that the "deeply personal" film "did not easily fit popular conceptions of documentary" since it had a "fictive structure in which the filmmaker staged her own body" as well as "reflexive use of humor" and "whimsy".[7] Angela Failler argued that the film was what had been described as a "counter-memorial" of the Air India Flight 182 disaster.[8]

Background

The National Film Board selected Marjara to make a film on the Air India Flight 182 disaster in 1994. She did research by visiting Trois-Rivières and taking one trip to India.[2] The title is a reference to the 1985 film Desperately Seeking Susan.[6]

Marjara dedicated her film to Air India Flight 182 victims, including Davinder and Seema.[9]

Release

Its first screening in India was during the Mumbai International Film Festival (MIFF).[10]

Reception

It was ranked as the "Theater Critic's Choice" in the Chicago Reader in 1999.[11] Firdaus Ali of Rediff wrote that the film received "rave reviews".[1] Gadihoke stated that in India the film received some criticism due to a perception that it was "self-absorbed"; Gadihoke argued that this was because the film used "strategies unfamiliar to documentary discourse in India at the time."[10]

References

  1. ^ a b c d Ali, Firdaus. "In search of a vamp" (Archive). Rediff. April 24, 2000. Retrieved on November 22, 2014.
  2. ^ a b Black, Barbara. "Air India disaster hit Concordia hard" (Archive). Concordia's Thursday Report. April 21, 2005. Volume 29, No. 14. Retrieved on November 22, 2014.
  3. ^ Pinto, Jerry. Helen: The Life and Times of an H-bomb. Penguin Books India, 2006. ISBN 0143031244, 9780143031246. p. 204.
  4. ^ a b Jones, D.B. "Brave New Film Board". In: Beard, William and Jerry White (editors). North of Everything: English-Canadian Cinema Since 1980. University of Alberta, 2002. ISBN 088864390X, 9780888643902. Start: p. 19. CITED: p. 36.
  5. ^ a b "Air India 182 Press Kit" (Archive). Air India 182 (film) official website. p. 11/12. Retrieved on October 22, 2014.
  6. ^ a b Bontempo, Mirella. "The Other English-Canadian film: Indo-Canadian cinema" (Archive). Montreal Serai. July 27, 2012. Retrieved on November 22, 2014.
  7. ^ Gadihoke, Sabeena. "Secrets and Inner Voices: The Self and Subjectivity in Contemporary Indian Documentary." In: Lebow, Lisa (editor). The Cinema of Me: Self and Subjectivity in First-Person Documentary Film (Nonfictions series). Columbia University Press, August 13, 2013. ISBN 0231850166, 9780231850162. Google Books PT213-PT214.
  8. ^ Henderson, Jennifer and Pauline Wakeham (editors). Reconciling Canada: Critical Perspectives on the Culture of Redress. University of Toronto Press, June 17, 2013. ISBN 1442695471, 9781442695474. Google Books PT259.
  9. ^ Somani, Alia Rehana. "Broken Passages and Broken Promises: Reconstructing the Komagata Maru and Air India Cases" (Archive) (PhD thesis). The University of Western Ontario. 2012. p. 146-147 (PDF file p. 155-156).
  10. ^ a b Gadihoke, Sabeena. "Secrets and Inner Voices: The Self and Subjectivity in Contemporary Indian Documentary." In: Lebow, Lisa (editor). The Cinema of Me: Self and Subjectivity in First-Person Documentary Film (Nonfictions series). Columbia University Press, August 13, 2013. ISBN 0231850166, 9780231850162. Google Books PT213.
  11. ^ Shen, Ted. "Desperately Seeking Helen" (review) (Archive). Chicago Reader. April 29, 1999. Retrieved on November 22, 2014.

Further reading

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