Gurinder Chadha
Gurinder Chadha
Gurinder Chadha OBEis an English film director of Punjabi Sikh Kenyan Asian origin. Most of her films explore the lives of Indians living in England. This common theme among her work showcases the trials of Indian women living in England and how they must reconcile their converging traditional and modern cultures. Although many of her films seem like simple quirky comedies about Indian women, they actually address many social and emotional issues, especially ones faced by immigrants caught between two...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth10 January 1960
CityNairobi, Kenya
I knew from an early age that people didn't see the different sides of me. I formulated a kind of bi-cultural identity quite early, and I was always very comfortable with it, but I knew people didn't quite see that.
I am not afraid to be a pioneer. When a door is ajar, you need to open it fully. And once you are in that room, you need to see what other doors there might be and where they might lead.
Bollywood is a cinema of vibrant contradictions, which works when it seems it shouldn't.
Britain has nurtured me and made me able to make movies that have travelled round the world.
DVDs have their place, but the cinema is a tangible, emotional experience that I would hate my children not to have.
I know it sounds really weedy, but we are all children who seek approval from our parents.
My pregnancy was great, but the last three weeks were manic because my blood pressure was going up and up.
The great thing about musicals is that they transcend race.
The only time I used to feel like an outsider was when I first went to India.
All my films are about kind of being seen to be one thing when you're actually something else, and the power of the female spirit to make things work your way on your terms. Which is what I do.
Constantly, I've been asked to make a sequel to 'Beckham.' However, I thought a West End show was the proper way to go. Once we made the show, I wanted to make sure that I embraced the West End genre rather than just put the film on stage.
I saw 'Billy Elliot' again, and what I loved about it was the way it had become a social document, a reminder of what happened with the mining communities in the '80s. And I thought, 'Everyone keeps wanting me to make a sequel to 'Beckham,' but maybe a musical remake is the answer, embracing all this theatricality.'
I tell stories about people audiences might think they have nothing in common with, then they emotionally connect with them and find they're not different at all.
I use humour a lot because humour is a great equaliser. Everyone laughs at the same things if you set them up properly, and that makes everybody equal. At the end of the day, I see my job as being there to entertain as well as inform and provoke.