A Film Class On Mira Nair
‘Auteur Theory’ According to an Indian-American Woman
4 min readApr 4, 2017
How might the focus on a minority woman for in an auteur film course shift the effects of auteur theory? In this class students will study the work of Mira Nair and the political-economic relationships that breathe life into her characters and camera angles. Nair’s diverse film language challenges the origins of auteur theory and its hegemonic tendencies in film studies. By inviting audiences to engage with her politics from various aesthetic platforms — ranging from neorealist traditions and small budget cinema to box office hits and Disney-funded films— Nair captures the differences in women’s experiences across the world and the contradictory nature of globalization. In this course, we will examine how Nair’s ouevre can be used to better understand the aesthetics of intersectional feminism and anticolonial theory.
Grades/Assignments for UCR Students: 20% Attendance (pop quizzes and participation); 25% Midterm (May 2); 25% Shot-by-Shot Analysis (Due May 30); 30% Final Paper (10–12 Pages, Due Finals Week)
week 1 — Introduction
April 4: A Brief History of Bollywood Cinema in Neoliberal India
(no class)
- Screen: Biwi №1 (1999)
- Screen: Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (2001) AND/OR Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995; available on iTunes & YouTube for $2)
April 6: Auteur Theory
- Read: Robert Stam’s “The Cult of the Auteur” and “The Americanization of Auteur Theory” from Film Theory: An Introduction (2000)
- Read: Andrew Sarris’ “Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962”
- Deep Focus, “Auteur Theory: The Cinematic Class System”
Truffaut V. Nair + Dumbfounded
week 2 — Nair’s (Dangerous) Gaze
workshopping practice: intensive group discussion
April 11: “My family is almost exactly like the one in ‘Monsoon Wedding’. We are very open, fairly liberal, loud people” — Nair
- Screen: Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding (2001)
- Camera Angles and Movements
April 13: Remediation and the Gaze within the Gaze
- Screen: Mira Nair’s Migration (2008; A Short)
- Read: Kanika Batra and Rich’s “Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding and the transcoded audiologic of postcolonial convergence” p. 205 from Postcolonial Cinema Studies
- Read: Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” from Film Theory and Criticism (1999)
week 3 — A Stage for South Asians in America
workshopping practice: intensive group discussion
April 18: A Stage for Solidarity Amongst the Non-Aligned Majority in the United States
- Screen: Mississippi Masala (19)
- David Bordwell and Kristine Thompson’s “The Shot: Mise-en-scène” from Film Art: An Introduction (p. 112–158)
- Understanding Mise-en-scène (additional materials)
April 20: If Bollywood is Just One Long Love Letter to NRIs, begging us to return home, then what is South Asian American Cinema?
- Screen: “Cinema Diaspora: A Discussion with Mira Nair,” University of California Television (UCTV)
week 4 — We’re Not Poverty Porn
workshopping practice: intensive group discussion
April 25: “Salaam Bombay’ didn’t put a halo on the poor…”
- Screen: Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay! (1988)
- Read: Tanya Rawal’s “The Pleasure of Debt: Encoding/Decoding Italian Neorealist Cinema from Social Critique to Poverty Porn” (p. 129–147)
April 27: “Instead, it said that they will teach us how to live.” — Nair
- Screen: Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
- Read: Tanya Rawal’s “The Pleasure of Debt: Encoding/Decoding Italian Neorealist Cinema from Social Critique to Poverty Porn” (p. 129–147)
week 5 — We’re Not Exotic Birds
May 2: (MIDTERM)
- Screen: Mira Nair’s Kama Sutra (1996; on Netflix)
May 4: …Nor are we your Indian princess, so please no Jasmine or Aladdin references!
- Deepa Mehta’s Fire (1996)
- Read: Subeshini Moodley’s “Postcolonial feminisms speaking through an ‘accented’ cinema: the construction of Indian women in the films of Mira Nair and Deepa Mehta” (2003; Agenda Feminist Media)
week 6 — And We Are Definitely Not Your Terrorist
workshopping practice: improvisation and adaptation
May 9: “you should not imagine that we Pakistanis are all potential terrorists” — Changez
- Read: Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007; Ch. 1–6)
- Screen: Jut Sally’s Reel Bad Arabs (2006)
- Listen: Swet Shop Boys’ Cashmere (2016)
May 11: “…just as we should not imagine that you Americans are all undercover assassins” — Changez
- Read: Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007, Ch. 7–12)
week 7 — The Terrorist is a Social Construction
May 16: At the Intersection of Literary Theory and Film Theory
- Screen: Mira Nair’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2012; Netflix)
- Hayden White’s “Interpretation in History” and “The Fictions of Factual Representation” from Tropics of Discourse (1978; pgs. 51–80, 121–134)
May 18: Surveillance & Cinema
- Screen: Tere Bin Laden (2010)
- Screen: Four Lions (2010)
- John Namjun Kim’s “Sudlandisch: the borders of fear with reference to Foucault” (2009)
week 8 — Becky Sharp, Shashi Tharoor, & India as Stage
May 23: “Revenge may be wicked, but it’s perfectly natural” — Becky Sharp
- Screen: Mira Nair’s Vanity Fair (2004)
May 25: “Becky, be careful, those curries can burn” — Amelia
- Screen: Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Ltd. (2007)
- David Bordwell and Kristine Thompson’s “The Relation of Shot to Shot: Editing” Film Art: An Introduction
week 9 — Immigrants, Refugees, & Lost Souls
May 30: “We Haven’t Located Us Yet”
- Screen: Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Ltd. (2007)
- Discussion: Mira Nair, Wes Anderson, and Editing
June 1: Between India, Uganda, and the United States
- Read: Octavio Getino’s “Toward a Third Cinema” (1969)
week 10 — Mira Nair & the Feminist Aesthetic
June 6: Queens
- Screen: Queen of Katwe (2016; iTunes)
- Teresa de Lauretis’ “Aesthetic and Feminist Theory: Rethinking Women’s Cinema” (2011)
June 8: Debby & Beth
- Screen: Hysterical Blindness (2002)
Additional Materials:
- Camera Shots: 12 Types
- Camera Shots: 30 Types
- Screen: The Perez Family (1995; in class) and Read selections from Che Guevara’s Speech at the December 11, 1964, 19th General Assembly of the United Nations in New York)
