hello I’m a filmmaker I like to make
documentaries about people whose stories
take the audience on a journey to
somewhere they may never have been
documentaries that introduce viewers to
people they may never meet so I’d like
to talk about how people are at the
heart of any story and how films can
connect people to each other our
differences aren’t new do we really
think they just popped up today do we
really need to celebrate them or
simplify them into neat categories
people are so much more than that when I
was growing up in America I was often
told about the Tigers roaming the
streets of Golgotha where I was born
I remembered the cars the buses the
crowds of people there were sidewalk
vendors selling street food and
rickshaws ambling by that I had never
seen any Tigers there and those who told
me this had never been to India but they
knew they were sure they knew my
experience and it was always followed by
the question when are you going back it
wasn’t an option they knew what I had to
do as a young girl I always wondered if
any of it made sense why would they
think I’d go back to a place where I’d
have to go to school through streets
filled with Tigers
but maybe all the questions came from
the same place where differences are at
best ridiculous and at worse frightening
and always brimming with judgment so at
the age of six I learned to talk back I
spoke of the hippopotamus I’d seen on my
way to school in America when I was told
that I spoke English so well I didn’t
have the patience to explain that
English is widely spoken in India I
would reply politely thank you how’s
your Bengali yes it was an arrow aimed
at their condescension and just like
eventually my answer – when are you
going back became I don’t know what
about you when are you going back so I
learned that we have to change how we
view our differences when we judge our
differences we stop the conversation
when we know everything there’s nothing
left to discover it’s not about good and
bad the haves the have-nots and those
who think they have it all it’s not
about who we are where we come from or
which Tigers we need to be saved from
people are so much more than that it’s
about walking in someone else’s shoes
and that’s where documentaries come in
documentaries make that possible it’s
been many years since I was six but I
think I’m still talking back as a
filmmaker I don’t know if films change
the world but they play an important
role because they can open up our minds
and that’s where change begins
in one of my documentaries I wanted to
capture the experience of three girls
who enter ninth grade at top independent
schools their Cambodian American
Egyptian American and African American
for the first time in their lives they
find themselves to be different from the
other 14 year olds around them now in
the interest of full disclosure I should
tell you that I was the only brown skin
student at my school at this school
after a screening of that film a woman
came up to me and told me she was
surprised that one of the characters
Sara listened to music on zoom’ 100
radio just like her daughter she was
surprised that Sara argued with her
mother about permission to go to parties
just like her daughter she was surprised
that she and Sara Sara’s mother had the
same worries she herself was white and
obviously affluent when she first saw
Sara and her mother on screen she
thought they were unknowable strangers
whose differences blinded her of course
they were Muslim and Egyptian and not
affluent that has to be recognized but
she hadn’t seen that they were also a
mother and daughter now it’s true a film
can open up a world now it’s true a film
can open up a window onto a world we’ve
never seen before it can also hold up a
mirror in which we see ourselves and if
we dare to risk the discomfort of the
unfamiliar we may even find common
ground people have been doing that for
years but do we value our history of
conflict more than our history of peace
how do we know that we can do better if
we don’t remember that sometimes we’ve
done well I arrived in Philadelphia as a
child with my parents who came as
graduate students and ended up staying
that we were not the first people to
come from India to America the first
Indians came to America in the 1890s I
don’t know if anyone asked them when
they were going back but they didn’t go
back
they were devout Muslims who married
devout Christians Sikhs who married
Catholics men from remote villages of
Bengal whose wives were big city
african-americans farmers from Punjab
whose wives were Mexican immigrants they
knew about differences long ago they
married built families they had to make
it work they reinvented their worlds and
ours
I tell the story of one such family in
my next documentary maybe we can learn
from them maybe we can stop calling
people the other what does that mean
anyway different we’re all different
from one another we’re all others to
someone we can all give each other a
glimpse of the world as we’ve never
looked at it before that’s what people
do for each other I made a documentary
about one family’s search for a new
normal after their son Eric’s traumatic
brain injury I had never worked with the
main character who couldn’t move freely
or speak like most of us do I wasn’t
sure how to direct him he insisted on
spelling words and making odd sounds he
shared frightening truths about how he
was Eric number two because Eric number
one had died he spoke of his wife daring
viewers to believe
had one he called his brother’s fiance
his own girlfriend was he teasing his
brother the filmmaking team or the
audience you never knew what he would
say or do next would anyone even want to
or be able to enter his world and then I
realized that I had to let him be
himself on camera with all his broken
parts still a whole person a person not
limited and defined by the issues
surrounding brain injury that’s the only
way the story would be complete because
Eric could take me somewhere I’ve never
been and we would all find ourselves in
his broken parts people in documentaries
can do that for their audience they can
spark such an abundance of emotions when
there’s nuance and complexity and
wholeness when we let people tell their
stories from the inside it’s the only
way to smudge the neatly drawn lines
separating them and us because we are
them and they are us our differences
don’t have to divide us that’s why I
think we need to build bridges to meet
the people on the other side thanks for
listening
[Applause]
documentaries about people whose stories
take the audience on a journey to
somewhere they may never have been
documentaries that introduce viewers to
people they may never meet so I’d like
to talk about how people are at the
heart of any story and how films can
connect people to each other our
differences aren’t new do we really
think they just popped up today do we
really need to celebrate them or
simplify them into neat categories
people are so much more than that when I
was growing up in America I was often
told about the Tigers roaming the
streets of Golgotha where I was born
I remembered the cars the buses the
crowds of people there were sidewalk
vendors selling street food and
rickshaws ambling by that I had never
seen any Tigers there and those who told
me this had never been to India but they
knew they were sure they knew my
experience and it was always followed by
the question when are you going back it
wasn’t an option they knew what I had to
do as a young girl I always wondered if
any of it made sense why would they
think I’d go back to a place where I’d
have to go to school through streets
filled with Tigers
but maybe all the questions came from
the same place where differences are at
best ridiculous and at worse frightening
and always brimming with judgment so at
the age of six I learned to talk back I
spoke of the hippopotamus I’d seen on my
way to school in America when I was told
that I spoke English so well I didn’t
have the patience to explain that
English is widely spoken in India I
would reply politely thank you how’s
your Bengali yes it was an arrow aimed
at their condescension and just like
eventually my answer – when are you
going back became I don’t know what
about you when are you going back so I
learned that we have to change how we
view our differences when we judge our
differences we stop the conversation
when we know everything there’s nothing
left to discover it’s not about good and
bad the haves the have-nots and those
who think they have it all it’s not
about who we are where we come from or
which Tigers we need to be saved from
people are so much more than that it’s
about walking in someone else’s shoes
and that’s where documentaries come in
documentaries make that possible it’s
been many years since I was six but I
think I’m still talking back as a
filmmaker I don’t know if films change
the world but they play an important
role because they can open up our minds
and that’s where change begins
in one of my documentaries I wanted to
capture the experience of three girls
who enter ninth grade at top independent
schools their Cambodian American
Egyptian American and African American
for the first time in their lives they
find themselves to be different from the
other 14 year olds around them now in
the interest of full disclosure I should
tell you that I was the only brown skin
student at my school at this school
after a screening of that film a woman
came up to me and told me she was
surprised that one of the characters
Sara listened to music on zoom’ 100
radio just like her daughter she was
surprised that Sara argued with her
mother about permission to go to parties
just like her daughter she was surprised
that she and Sara Sara’s mother had the
same worries she herself was white and
obviously affluent when she first saw
Sara and her mother on screen she
thought they were unknowable strangers
whose differences blinded her of course
they were Muslim and Egyptian and not
affluent that has to be recognized but
she hadn’t seen that they were also a
mother and daughter now it’s true a film
can open up a world now it’s true a film
can open up a window onto a world we’ve
never seen before it can also hold up a
mirror in which we see ourselves and if
we dare to risk the discomfort of the
unfamiliar we may even find common
ground people have been doing that for
years but do we value our history of
conflict more than our history of peace
how do we know that we can do better if
we don’t remember that sometimes we’ve
done well I arrived in Philadelphia as a
child with my parents who came as
graduate students and ended up staying
that we were not the first people to
come from India to America the first
Indians came to America in the 1890s I
don’t know if anyone asked them when
they were going back but they didn’t go
back
they were devout Muslims who married
devout Christians Sikhs who married
Catholics men from remote villages of
Bengal whose wives were big city
african-americans farmers from Punjab
whose wives were Mexican immigrants they
knew about differences long ago they
married built families they had to make
it work they reinvented their worlds and
ours
I tell the story of one such family in
my next documentary maybe we can learn
from them maybe we can stop calling
people the other what does that mean
anyway different we’re all different
from one another we’re all others to
someone we can all give each other a
glimpse of the world as we’ve never
looked at it before that’s what people
do for each other I made a documentary
about one family’s search for a new
normal after their son Eric’s traumatic
brain injury I had never worked with the
main character who couldn’t move freely
or speak like most of us do I wasn’t
sure how to direct him he insisted on
spelling words and making odd sounds he
shared frightening truths about how he
was Eric number two because Eric number
one had died he spoke of his wife daring
viewers to believe
had one he called his brother’s fiance
his own girlfriend was he teasing his
brother the filmmaking team or the
audience you never knew what he would
say or do next would anyone even want to
or be able to enter his world and then I
realized that I had to let him be
himself on camera with all his broken
parts still a whole person a person not
limited and defined by the issues
surrounding brain injury that’s the only
way the story would be complete because
Eric could take me somewhere I’ve never
been and we would all find ourselves in
his broken parts people in documentaries
can do that for their audience they can
spark such an abundance of emotions when
there’s nuance and complexity and
wholeness when we let people tell their
stories from the inside it’s the only
way to smudge the neatly drawn lines
separating them and us because we are
them and they are us our differences
don’t have to divide us that’s why I
think we need to build bridges to meet
the people on the other side thanks for
listening
[Applause]
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