Films from the South Asian diaspora and the Indian subcontinent are gaining more mainstream recognition among U.S. audiences
“For a little, gay musical-theater major in Chicago, that shifted everything,” said the Indian American actor. “We were no longer the good, White-adjacent, model-minority, Asian American kids that we had grown up being.”
The floodgates began to open last year when the Riz Ahmed vehicle “The Long Goodbye” won the Oscar for best live-action short film and “Summer of Soul,” produced by Joseph Patel, took home best documentary feature.
“This [representation] is not all new,” said Davé, author of “Indian Accents: Brown Voice and Racial Performance in American Television and Film.” “It’s just that social media has suddenly alerted people to the presence of these films.” “The theme of arranged marriage is one that is seen as constraining. … It’s a way to paint South Asians as different,” said Davé. “It’s usually seen as an object of curiosity. It’s depicted as anti-romantic love.”
“I wanted to see the mother [in the film] really come into her own and give her a life outside of the family … just sort of galvanize that character in a way that I don’t think I’ve seen in a lot of diasporic films,” the Indian American filmmaker said, adding she believes South Asian film has historically cast women in traditional roles, such as those of housewives and “aunties,” without exploring their characters fully.
That has extended to East Asian filmmakers as well. Chloé Zhao became the first Asian woman to win a best directing Oscar in 2021 for “Nomadland,” a movie about the mostly White working class. And Taiwanese filmmaker Ang Lee won the same award in 2013 for “Life of Pi,” about a young Indian man lost at sea with a tiger.
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