New York, I Love You

The highly acclaimed director from India, Mira Nair leapt into the world’s spotlight with her film Salaam, Bombay! This film is considered by many to be her best work although she may be better known for the controversial subject matter of her latest film Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love.

Mira Nair was born in Bhubaneshwar, Orissa to a civil servant in 1957. She went on to attend the University of New Delhi where she studied Sociology and Theater. Dissatisfied with the quality of the education, she applied elsewhere. As result she came to Harvard in 1976 on full scholarship to continue studying Sociology. While at Harvard her focus drifted to documentary film. She describes documentary as “a marriage of my interests in the visual arts, theatre, and life as it is lived”.

Mira’s first film was Jama Masjid Street Journal which was also her Master’s thesis project. This film explores the life of a traditional Muslim community from the Western perspective. Her most acclaimed documentary was India Cabaret. Ultimately, the standards of objectivity and non interference inherent in documentary film proved to be a trying constraint. She told the West Side Spirit writer, “While I was working in documentary I was impatient sometimes, many times, with waiting for something to happen and not having it happen like I hoped it would.” She goes on to say that she wanted “a lot more control over gesture and drama and faces” in her work. As result she tried her hand at fictional narrative. Her greatest recognition came with her first feature film Salaam, Bombay! She was awarded the Best New Director at the Cannes Film Festival as well as a nomination for best foreign film at the Academy Awards. —http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Nair.html

Brett Ratner has established himself as one of Hollywood’s most successful director with eight feature films grossing over one and a half billion dollars worldwide in a short amount of time.

At 26 years old he directed his first feature film, the surprise box office hit comedy Money Talks, starring Charlie Sheen and Chris Tucker. His second film, the action comedy Rush Hour, starred Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker and earned $250 million worldwide which propelled the extremely popular and lucrative Rush Hour trilogy with Rush Hour 2 grossing more than $342 million worldwide and most recently Rush Hour 3 featuring an acclaimed international supporting cast.

Following the success of Rush Hour, Brett directed the romantic fantasy drama The Family Man, a critical and box office hit starring Nicolas Cage and Tea Leoni. Ratner made his first suspense thriller with his fifth feature film Red Dragon, the Silence of the Lambs prequel starring Edward Norton, Anthony Hopkins, Ralph Fiennes and Emily Watson. Ratner’s sixth feature film, After the Sunset, starring Pierce Brosnan, Salma Hayek, Woody Harrelson, and Don Cheadle was also successful in theatres nationwide. Ratner’s work has been recognized with many awards including an MTV Award for Best Fight Sequence for Rush Hour 2 as well as a TONY Award for producing Russell Simmons’ Def Poetry Jam on Broadway.

Last year, Ratner shattered several box office records with the release of the third installment of the popular X-Men film series. X-Men: The Last Stand opened with a staggering $123 million in just four days, the biggest Memorial Day weekend in history. Its $45.1 million opening day marked the second-biggest single day box office ever, and the film grossed more than $400 million worldwide to date.

Raised in Miami Beach, Ratner dreamed of being a filmmaker since he was 8 years old. After enrolling in New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts at age 16, Ratner became the department’s youngest film major. While attending NYU Film School, he made Whatever Happened to Mason Reese, an award-winning short film that received funding from Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment. Ratner’s big break came after he screened his film for hip-hop impresario Russell Simmons, launching a successful career in music videos. In his career Ratner directed more than 100 videos for a variety of artists including Madonna with which he won an MTV Video Music Award for “Beautiful Stranger”, Mariah Carey, Jessica Simpson, Miley Cyrus, Jay-Z, Mary J. Blige, Wu-Tang and many others.

In addition to success in film and music, Ratner has also segued into book publishing and photography. Through his Rat Press imprint, he published the controversial book, Naked Pictures of My Ex-Girlfriends and authored Hilhaven Lodge: The Photo Booth Pictures, which was released in October 2003. His photographs have appeared in Vanity Fair, Interview and Heeb magazine, and have graced the covers of Vogue Homme, V-Life and Haute Living. Brett has also shot advertising campaigns for fashion companies like Baby Phat, Jimmy Choo and Jordache.

Brett contributes more than his artistry to the community. He also contributes his time and energy towards philanthropic causes he is passionate about. Ratner is currently on the boards of Best Buddies and Chrysalis, receiving the Spirit of Chrysalis Award for his dedication and leadership in helping economically disadvantaged and homeless individuals change their lives through jobs. Brett is also on the Board of Governors for the We Are Family Foundation. He also serves on the Dean’s Council of the NYU Tisch School of the Arts and most recently, Ratner became the youngest member of the Board of Trustees of the Simon Wiesenthal Center & Museum of Tolerance.Brett Ratner currently resides in Los Angeles. —brettratner.com

Shekhar Kapur (Hindi: शेखर कपूर) (born 6 December 1945) is an Indian film director and producer. A critically acclaimed director, he rose to popularity with the movie Bandit Queen. His historical biopics of Queen Elizabeth I (Elizabeth and its sequel Elizabeth: The Golden Age) garnered several Academy Award nominations, including two Best Actress nods for Cate Blanchett.

Kapur was born in British India (modern-day Pakistan) to Kulbhushan Kapur, a doctor who had a flourishing practice, and Sheel Kanta, a journalist and stage actress. The nephew of actors Vijay Anand and Dev Anand, he was discouraged to get into show business by his father. His schooling was at the Modern School, New Delhi. He did his economics course at St. Stephen’s College. At 22, Kapur became a chartered accountant, having studied accountancy to please his parents.

Kapur started his career working with a multinational oil company. He moved to Great Britain in 1970, and spent several years working as an accountant and management consultant.

He started his career as an actor in the movie Jaan Hazir Hai (1975) and later in Toote Khilone in Bollywood. He also appeared in several Hindi TV serials, like Udaan opposite Kavita Chaudhary, and films, but failed to flourish as an actor.

He turned director with Masoom (1983). He then directed the 1987 science-fiction film Mr. India which was one of the most successful films of the 1980s. In 1994 he directed the critically acclaimed Bandit Queen and also played a cameo in the film as a truck driver.

Kapur was also partly involved in the production of several Bollywood films. He partly directed the movie Joshilay (1989), which starred Sunny Deol, Anil Kapoor, Sridevi and Meenakshi Sheshadri. In 1992 he was set to direct another science-fiction film titled Time Machine, which was to star Aamir Khan, Raveena Tandon, Naseeruddin Shah and Rekha. However, halfway through production, financial problems forced the film to be abandoned. He partly directed Dushmani, starring Sunny Deol, Jackie Shroff and Manisha Koirala. In 1998, he received international recognition for directing the Academy Award-winning period film Elizabeth. A fictional account of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the movie was nominated for 7 Oscars. The 2007 sequel, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, was nominated for 2 Oscars. He was accused of being anti-British by British tabloids for his portrayal of the British Army and the Empire in the 2002 movie The Four Feathers. This perception was heightened by the fact that during an interview for the DVD release of The Four Feathers, he spoke favourably of the Mahdi, a fanatical religious leader depicted in the film.

Kapur was the executive producer of the film The Guru. He also established an Indian film company with Ram Gopal Verma and Mani Ratnam, though the group has thus far produced only one film, Dil Se (1998), starring Shahrukh Khan and Manisha Koirala. He was also executive producer of the Bollywood-themed Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Bombay Dreams, which has been running in the West End, London since 2002, and on Broadway in New York City since 2004.

In 2005, Kapur worked with Okan Quail on Hunji!, a story of a young Indian maid who idolised Sachin Tendulkar. Some claim that this was his finest film ever. Critics across the UK and India called it a flop.

In 2006, Kapur formed Liquid Comics and Virgin Animation, an entertainment company focused on creating new stories and characters for a global audience. Its Shakti titles debuted with Devi and The Sadhu. Devi is about “a fierce feminine warrior, stronger than the Gods themselves . . . a champion of the heavens, and the protector of man;” and The Sadhu is about one man’s choice between his spiritual oath and his human instinct,"

In an unusual role, Kapur provided the voice of Mahatma Gandhi in the Charkha Audio books title of The Story of My Experiments with Truth, alongside Nandita Das as narrator.

He served as judge on a reality TV series, India’s Got Talent, aired on Colors. He was a member of the jury at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival in May 2010. —Wikipedia

The standard bearer of the 1990s new wave of Japanese film, Shunji Iwai cranked out some of that country’s hippest, hottest, and most popular movies. A self-styled eizo sakka, or visual artist, Iwai is a filmmaker equally at home directing commercials, TV dramas, rock videos, and feature length pictures. Though older critics have blasted his films for lacking depth and for borrowing from 1970s experimental auteur Shuji Terayama, Iwai understands that for an audience weaned on MTV, the image is the movie. Slick and oozing with style, his films consistently have an uncanny resonance with 1990s Japanese pop culture, making him one of the most important directors of his generation.

Born on January 24th, 1963, in the northern city of Sendai, Iwai started his filmmaking career in 1988 directing music videos and television dramas. Though he was already garnering considerable buzz by 1993 for his acclaimed one-hour late-night TV dramas Fried Dragon Fish and Uchiage Hanabi: Shita kara Miru ka? Yoko kara Miru ka?, Iwai’s true mainstream breakthrough came in 1995 with his gorgeously-rendered romance Love Letter. About a young woman who writes a letter to her dead lover — and mysteriously gets a reply — the film proved to be an amazing success for the fledgling Japanese director. Love Letter played to sold out theaters for 14 straight weeks in central Tokyo, a run usually only reserved for Hollywood heavy-hitters. Hailed for its clever narrative, touching plot, and Miho Nakayama’s remarkable dual performance, the film lent new energy to Japan’s moribund national cinema.

The film’s popularity prompted Iwai to release two film shorts, Undo and Picnic, along with re-releasing his popular television dramas. Filmed in 1994, Undo concerns a pair of bohemian Tokyoites: he’s a struggling writer, she is slowly going insane, aided in part by the negligence of her boyfriend. She becomes possessed with the idea of tying things with twine and rope, leading eventually to tragedy. Picnic also concerns a group of hipsters on the edge — a trio of mental patients escape in order to enjoy a little freedom before the end of the world. Feeling that the film echoed headlines a little too closely, distributors hastily pulled it after members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult gassed the Tokyo subway with poison gas in 1995.

Iwai next film, Swallowtail, is perhaps his most emblematic, both in terms of visual style and in narrative themes. Exuding a similar futuristic grime and decadence as Blade Runner, the film is about foreign fortune-seekers living in slums on the edge of a 21st-century megalopolis called Yen Town. At a time when his country grows increasingly aware of its Asian neighbors, Iwai intentionally, gleefully, blurred Japan’s deep-rooted insularity by having his Japanese actors speak Mandarin and English and his foreign actors speak in flawless Japanese. This aside, the film proved to be an even bigger success in Japan than his previous works. Part of its popularity is, no doubt, the presence of ultra-hip pop-sensation Chara, who plays the film’s Chinese singer-turned-prostitute, Glico. At several points in the film, the plot simply stops in favor of funky music numbers by Glico and the Yen Town Band. The sequences were used in their entirety for MTV videos for the band, which had a number of hits spun off from the movie.

As opposed to the aggressively stylish Swallowtail, Iwai opted for a clean, simple look for his follow-up, Shigatsu Monogatari. Seemingly taken from the pages of a shojo manga, the film is about a young college freshman (played by teen idol Takako Matsu) making her first steps in life and love. —allmovie guide

Fatih Akin was born in 1973 in Hamburg of Turkish parentage. He began studying Visual Communications at Hamburg’s College of Fine Arts in 1994. His collaboration with Wüste Film also dates from this time. In 1995, he wrote and directed his first short feature, Sensin – You’re The One! (Sensin – Du Bist Es!), which received the Audience Award at the Hamburg International Short Film Festival. His second short film, Weed (Getuerkt, 1996), received several national and international festival prizes. His first full length feature film, Short Sharp Shock (Kurz Und Schmerzlos, 1998) won the Bronze Leopard at Locarno and the Bavarian Film Award (Best Young Director) in 1998. His other films include: In July (Im Juli, 2000), Wir Haben Vergessen Zurueckzukehren (2001), Solino (2002), the Berlinale Golden Bear-winner and winner of the German and European Film Awards Head-On (Gegen Die Wand, 2003), and Crossing the Bridge – The Sound of Istanbul (2005). —World Cinema Foundation

Jiang Wen (born January 5, 1963) is a Chinese film actor and director. Born in Tangshan, Hebei province into an army family, he shifted to Beijing at the age of 6. In 1980, Wen entered China’s foremost acting school, the Central Academy of Drama, graduating in 1984. That same year he started acting both on the stage (with the China Youth Theater) and in films.

After appearing in many television serials and films, Jiang became renowned in China for his starring role in the 1992 TV series Beijingers in New York, which made him one of the best-loved actors of his generation. In addition to these he also starred in Hibiscus Town (1984, directed by Xie Jin), Black Snow (1990, directed by Xie Fei), The Emperor’s Shadow (1996, directed by Zhou Xiaowen) and The Soong Sisters (1997). Other than Red Sorghum, Jiang also collaborated with Zhang Yimou for his 1997 film Keep Cool.

Jiang wrote and directed his first film in 1994, In the Heat of the Sun, adapted from a novel by Wang Shuo. A tale set in the Cultural Revolution, it won for its young lead actor Xia Yu the Best Actor prize at the Venice Film Festival and garnered six Golden Horse Awards in Taiwan. Jiang’s second feature, Devils on the Doorstep, set during the Japanese occupation of China in the early 1940s, won him the Grand Prix in the 2000 Cannes Film Festival. He has acted in many TV series, the most recent where he portrayed Huang Taiji.

He was married to French actress Sandrine Chenivisse, with whom he has a daughter. He is now married to Chinese actress Zhou Yun and the two have a son together. —wikipedia