- Paperback: 208 pages
- Publisher: Key Porter Books (Oct 1 2005)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1552637123
- ISBN-13: 978-1552637128
- Product Dimensions: 20.3 x 12.4 x 2.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 408 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #526,995 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Saltzman's mother, Deepa Mehta, is a filmmaker who attempts to shoot the final installment of her trilogy, Water (after Fire and Earth), in India. In 1999, the author, then 19, accompanies her mother to work as a third assistant cameraperson. A series of politically motivated attacks shut down the film's production. Four years later, shooting restarts in Sri Lanka, with Saltzman onboard as a still photographer. With the film's production as a backdrop, Canadian Saltzman delves into her past. When she was 11, her father, a Jewish Ukrainian, and her mother, a [Hindu] Indian, divorced. Saltzman was forced to choose with whom she would live. Picking her father, she created a rift with her mother that would take more than a decade to repair: "most of our relationship had to be reconstructed through fragmented pieces of memory, like shards of glass, some reflecting light, others opening deep wounds." Saltzman longs for stability, which she discovers in the world of film. "Film was my second language, even before Hindi.... It was the common culture both my parents had raised me in, beyond being Jewish or Indian." Saltzman never loses any of the threads she delicately weaves together, creating a lush, evocative memoir that is emotional but never cloying. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Book Description
In February 2000, international award-winning filmmaker Deepa Mehta began shooting Water, the third film in the Elements trilogy after Fire and Earth. Water examines the lives of Indian widows in the late 1930s and centres on seven-year-old Chuyia, a child bride who is brought to a widow house after the death of her 50-year-old husband. Young and innocent, precocious and defiant, Chuyia refuses to accept her fate and rebels against the traditional role that society has dealt her.
Shot in the holy city of Benares, the film became the target of a series of vicious attacks mounted by Hindu fundamentalist political groups that accused Mehta of creating a negative portrayal of India, despite the fact that the script had been approved twice by the central government in New Delhi. Protestors destroyed the sets, burned effigies of the director and made threats on her life. Within a week, the film was shut down.
So begins a five-year odyssey between a mother and daughter that culminated in the successful completion of Water on a secret location in Sri Lanka. Devyani Saltzman, daughter of Deepa Mehta and Canadian producer and director Paul Saltzman, traveled to Benares to reunite with her mother and to work on the film. Part Jewish, part Hindu and raised in Canada, Devyani had spent her life navigating between two religions, two traditions, two cultures and two people--belonging to both and to neither at once. Since her parents` painful divorce when she was eleven years old, she had chosen to live primarily with her father. The filming of Water would be a mother and daughter`s second chance.
Transformative and inspiring, Devyani`s remarkable story chronicles her life-changing experience in India, the struggle to produce a film and through that struggle, the emergence of a deeper love and mutual recognition between mother and daughter.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.6 out of 5 stars (5 customer reviews)
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A revealing story, Sep 23 2006
By Midwest Book Review - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Shooting Water: A Memoir of Second Chances Family and Filmmaking (Hardcover)
In late 1999 when the author was almost twenty her filmmaker mother Deepa Mehta invited her to come to India to work as a third assistant cameraperson on her new controversial film Water. SHOOTING WATER: A MEMOIR OF SECOND CHANCES, FAMILY, AND FILMMAKING chronicles this season where mother and daughter worked to repair a strained relationship affected by divorce and separation. The fallout of such a relationship was to affect not just their relationship but Saltzman's own choice of religion (Hinduism and Judaism), culture (Indian and Canadian) and more. Anticipate a revealing story in SHOOTING WATER which covers not just the art of filmmaking in India, but how families are separated and come back together.Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Captivating, July 19 2006
By Jessica Atcheson - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Shooting Water: A Memoir of Second Chances Family and Filmmaking (Hardcover)
I read this book straight through in a day and a half. A beautifully written account of the shooting of the film Water, the author's relationship with her family, and her life experiences, the narrative invokes powerful images, sounds, and emotions. The book recognizes the imperfections, the struggles, the injustices--in the world, in relationships--and is ultimately hopeful and uplifting.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating, Aug 28 2006
By Bonnie Neely - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Shooting Water: A Memoir of Second Chances Family and Filmmaking (Hardcover)
Shooting Water by Devyani Saltzman is the touching story of the making of the film Water of which Ms. Salzman's mother, Deepa Mehta, is the writer/director. The film documents the deplorable life of widows in India in the 1930's. The shooting began in Benares, India's most holy city where many of these widows lived. However, within a couple of days dangerous demonstrations shut down the production and four years later the film was finished in Sri Lanka. The book documents the events surrounding the shooting while the mother and daughter team work out the stresses and pain of a lifetime between them, since Devyani chose to live with her father after her parents divorced. The struggle with the film-making parallels the struggle with their hearts, and as they resolved the production problems they also resolved their relationship pains. It is a touching book, timely, as the film is just being released in the U.S
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