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Deepa Mehta

YWCA Toronto woman of distinction 2008, President's Award

Deepa Mehta is a director, producer and screenwriter of extraordinary honesty and courage. Her film trilogy Fire, Earth and Water evidenced a vision of unusual breadth, sustaining an elemental focus on the experiences of very different women at three different watersheds in history through three separate and thematically linked films.

Deepa Mehta is no stranger to controversy for her unwavering clarity in examining themes that interest her most: lesbian desire in a traditional Indian household; forced child marriage and the treatment of widows in the context of India's struggle against colonial rule; the perspective and memories of a disabled eight year old Parsee girl growing up in the violence, chaos and rising religious intolerance in post-Partition Pakistan. She is also a documentarian of note, choosing as her theme in Let's Talk About It, the intimate and difficult conversations between women who had been abused by their husbands and the daughters they had raised in these marriages. During the filming of her extremely successful and deeply affecting film Water, Deepa Mehta was the subject of violent protests and death threats, eventually shutting down production of her project for years. Rising out of this experience with the exuberant hit, Bollywood Hollywood, Mehta went on not only to defy threat, intimidation and financial loss to tell the story of Indian widows in Water, but also created an Academy-award nominated film.

Deepa Mehta has a degree in philosophy from the University of New Delhi, and brings an intelligence, compassion and intensity to all her projects. Her career in film tracks an uncommon sensibility, and an indisputable stature in a traditionally male-dominated field.

In 1991, Mehta produced and directed her first feature film Sam & Me, the heartwarming story of an unlikely friendship between an old Jewish man and a young recent Indian immigrant in Toronto. Sam & Me won the very first Honorable Mention by the Critics in the Camera D'Or category in the 1991 Cannes Film Festival.

In 1992, she directed a one hour episode of the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, (the adventures of Indiana Jones as a boy) produced by George Lucas for ABC television. "Benares" was filmed on location in Benares, India.

Fire, Mehta's third feature film, based on an original screenplay, was written, directed and produced by Mehta. Fire was released in 1996 and won fourteen international festival awards including Best Picture in Chicago and Los Angeles.

Earth, based on Bapsi Sidhwa's critically acclaimed novel, Cracking India, is the second film in Mehta's trilogy of the elements, Fire, Earth and Water. Earth won the Prix Premiere du Public at the Festival du film Asiatique de Deauville, France in March, 1999 and the Critics' Award at the Schermi d'Amore International Film Festival, Italy in April of the same year.

In 2002 Mehta's film, Bollywood Hollywood, opened the Perspective Canada Program at the 2002 Toronto International Film Festival, and upon release became one of the top ten grossing English Canadian movies.

In 2003, Mehta co-wrote and directed Republic of Love, based on the novel of the same title by the world-renowned author, Carol Shields, starring Bruce Greenwood and Amelia Fox. In the same year, Ms.Mehta won the prestigious CineAsia "Best Director" Award - an acclaim awarded to Steven Spielberg in 2002.

Water, the third film in the "elements" trilogy, opened the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival and was released in Canada in the fall of 2005, grossing over $2.2 million. The film is Canada's official entry to the Best Foreign Film category for the 79th Annual Academy Awards, also playing film festivals in North America and internationally, winning several festival awards. In 2007 Water was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.

Deepa Mehta is currently preparing a film entitled Exclusion, based on Komagatu Mara, a Japanese steam liner turned away from Canadian shores in one of the most notorious incidents in the history of early 20th century racial exclusion laws in Canada. The film is expected to be completed in 2009. Deepa Mehta was born in India and has divided her time between there and Toronto since 1973. Toronto's women and girls have been the beneficiaries of not only her artistic vision and strong female characters, but also of her generosity through screenings she has hosted in support of community based work creating justice, equality and freedom from violence.

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Deepa Mehta - 2008 Woman of Distinction, President's Award

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