Mira Nair celebrates re-release of romantic drama ‘Mississippi Masala’

As a director-producer and cultural icon, Mira Nair is celebrating the Blu-ray improve and Might 24 re-release of her 1991 romantic drama “Mississippi Masala” starring Denzel Washington.

The Harvard-educated Nair’s second function after a collection of award-winning documentaries is, as its title suggests a “mixture of spices,” on this case Black, white and brown characters interacting within the melting pot of the American South.

Washington, 37 and already an Oscar winner for “Glory,” had seen Nair’s debut function “Salaam Bombay!” concerning the metropolis’s road children and was desirous to work together with her.

“Masala” begins as Africa’s Ugandan dictator Idi Amin is expelling all Indians — however that has nothing to do with Nair’s private historical past.

“This took place actually due to being a brown particular person between Black and white. I first left India after I was 19 on a scholarship at Harvard. It was my first outing of my nation and an attention-grabbing few years wherein I used to be welcome to each communities inside Cambridge and in my life there.

“But there have been invisible strains between us and I needed to make a movie about what I considered in my thoughts because the hierarchy of coloration: Black, white and brown. That was the thought. A cerebral, emotional thought, not precisely a narrative.

“Concerning the Asian expulsion from Uganda to Mississippi, amongst many different locations, I learn a really bizarre, unusual article in a diasporic Indian newspaper. An entire article about how one can’t discover an American-owned lodge within the South. It’s all Indians. And I couldn’t imagine this! But it was true.

“Many of those ‘Patil accommodations’ (Patel is the final identify) are Ugandan nationals from Kampala and all these locations. I put the 2 collectively. What if love occurred between these two communities that by no means met?

“They have been very comparable in that in Uganda, Asian Indian Africans had by no means recognized India. They’d solely recognized Africa as their dwelling. They usually have been coming to Mississippi, which was the birthplace of the Civil Rights motion, which is a foundational African-American group.

“That they had by no means recognized Africa as their dwelling. It was an attention-grabbing trick of historical past, isn’t it? To have these two communities, actually dwell cheek by jowl in Mississippi. So the reality of it gave delivery to the story.”

Criterion’s Particular Version Blu-ray of “Mississippi Masala,” a brand new 4K restoration accomplished with the director’s approval, boasts Nair’s new audio commentary, new interviews with the cinematographer, screenwriter and manufacturing designer, plus a brand new dialog with Sarita Choudhury, the movie’s romantic lead. The movie is in English and Swahili with English subtitles.