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‘Bend it Like Beckham’ global smash hit director says her home country doesn’t make it easy…
BRITAIN’S most successful woman director Gurinder Chadha OBE publicly revealed that it is a former business contact and his group of friends who have helped to finance her latest movie, ‘Christmas Karma’.
Slated to release next Christmas (2025), she told a gathering at the British Association of Film and Television Arts (Bafta) that without a wealthy group of financiers made up of her former lawyer, she might still be searching around and looking at raising money on other projects instead.
On a panel of speakers that also included Pravesh Kumar, director of film, ‘Little English’ and Domnique Unsworth, producer of this film and actors Arian Nik and Jason Patel, the five discussed the challenging environment for South Asian creatives, representation and difficulties in raising finance for Asian stories to be seen.
Chadha told the audience that it was was the support of these business figures, international producers Indian Civic Studios, and distributor, True Brit, that had made ‘Christmas Karma’ possible in the first place.
She described how last Christmas, her retired lawyer had asked her to do a reading in aid of an anti-slavery charity just across the road from Bafta itself in Piccadilly, London and Chadha offered a walk on part in the film as part of a raffle to raise extra cash for the charity.
“It was December and I was depressed, I was trying to get this money together and despite all my (film) success – everyone was saying no.
“It’s a very funny script and a take on Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’, it’s contemporary London and about a very uptight Indian who hates refugees and poor people.
“I went to this reading and the woman who won in the raffle asked about the movie and said ‘it’s good… how can we help?’ They got a million pounds together.”
The film has a slew of stars, including Eva Longoria, Boy George, Hugh Bonneville, Charitha Chandran, Danny Dyer, Nitin Ganatra and Kunnal Nayyar (of ‘The Big Bang Theory’ fame) plays the Asian millionaire Scrooge character.
A comedy musical with Gary Barlow, Nitin Sawhney, and Shaznay Lewis on board, Chadha said she is confident the film will make a lot of money.
“My best friend has seen it (Chadha said she is editing currently) and she is nothing to do with the business and I think it’s going to do really well and now my former lawyer and all his friends are going to make a lot of money instead of the British film industry.”
She told the audience that they simply had to keep going and believe in themselves.
“There are just so many ticks against you and I’ve learnt the only way is to just be really bloody-minded and have a thick skin and just keep going and pushing.”
Kumar MBE is the director of ‘Little English’, a rare British Asian feature film shot during covid and released in cinemas last year and now available on ITV streaming service, ITVx for free (in the UK).
Well-known in the theatre world for his own Rifco Theatre Company, he has written and produced ‘Frankie Goes to Bollywood’ which is currently on at the Southbank Centre in London, and has also produced a new comedy show, ‘Pali & Jay’s Ultimate Asian Wedding DJ Roadshow’ which has just finished playing at Soho Theatre in London, and now transfers to the Edinburgh Fringe.
The show was developed by Kumar and is written and performed by actor-writer Viraj Juneja, and stand-up Tez Ilyas.
Kumar said it was truly inspiring for him to be alongside Chadha who comes from a similar British Punjabi working class background as himself.
At the opening, Chadha was invited to talk about her early journey and the making of her first feature, ‘Bhaji on the Beach’ (1993) by moderator Mariayah Kaderbhai, head of programmes at Bafta.
Kumar drew parallels between that film and his own, ‘Little English’. His tells the story of a Punjabi bride who comes over to England and finds not all as it should be and stumbles on into a romance not with her intended groom but another British born Punjabi.
Kumar’s work is both authentic and popular and not just with South Asians – drawing mixed audiences.
“So there are things in my film that you might not notice if you are not from my background but your enjoyment of the film is not undermined if you don’t get them,” he explained. In other words, brown stories can be commercial too.
Unsworth, who is of mixed Mauritian heritage, noted how South Asians must create their own space within existing structures.
It was, she said, not about waiting for a space at the table but pulling up a chair and simply sitting there. She told the audience that her and Kumar’s micro budget film was initially rejected by independent cinemas used to showing niche fare.
“They just said it wasn’t for them,” before seeing that some commercial chains which knew South Asian audiences better were far keener to screen ‘Little English’.
“They knew their audiences better and we’re still talking to the British Film Institute (BFI) about the others,” she revealed.
The BFI helped to secure theatrical distribution – another big subject covered by the panel.
Patel is the star of ‘Unicorns’ a film which was on general release in UK last month and enjoyed a successful global fest run that included Toronto and London and has proved a big cult hit.
He stars alongside one time ‘Eastenders’ soap star Ben Hardy who as a single, separated heteronormative father, falls in love with Patel’s Asian drag queen Aysha.
It is Patel’s first feature role having performed in theatre for a few years – and he is now widely tipped to be nominated for awards for ‘Unicorns’.
He said he did a lot of research to bring authenticity to the role he plays as a South Asian from a Muslim Indian Gujarati background.
“There are basically two characters – Aisha and Ashiq and they are like two different characters from the other ends of the earth and my goal was bringing them together,” he pointed out.
The other actor Nik, who starred as the doctor turned vampire in Kaamil Shah’s Muslim comedy drama, ‘Count Abdulla’ – which screened on ITV last year, said he felt huge anxiety on set – it was his first prominent screen role and the whole drama had a global majority cast with just three members, not of Colour.
Of Iranian heritage, and growing up in Leeds among a working class community, like all of the creatives on the panel – he said he felt a pressure that simply didn’t exist and that it was the same for everyone from himself and other actors right through to successful director, Asim Abbasi (‘Churails’).
“If we don’t get this right, the commissioners have got a list of excuses of why not to commission work from our communities and it feels like they are never going to tell a brown story again.”
‘Count Abdulla’ did not get a second series with insiders telling acv the hard data of viewing figures, both linear and streaming didn’t get it over a certain threshold.
The debate, billed as Masterclass: The Power of Authenticity on Screen: South Asian Identity Explored, took place on July 23.
Chadha has made nine films, while Britain’s other very successful woman director Andrea Arnold has made seven. A few years ago, a BFI study cited Chadha as the most successful British woman film director of her generation.
For future Bafta events of this sort – https://events.bafta.org/event/list.php
Previous coverage of (in order of presentation above)
Christmas Karma – http://asianculturevulture.com/portfolios/bird-bites-uk-asian-film-festival-gandhi-series-cannes-gurinder-chadha-film-and-jlf-at-british-library-books-and-more/
Unicorns – http://asianculturevulture.com/portfolios/unicorns-busting-labels-and-showing-that-attraction-can-be-complex-and-surprising/
