Tete-a-Tete with Sooni Taraporevala

Padma Shri awardee Sooni Taraporevala, 56, grew up in a large Parsi family in South Bombay, leading a fairly regular life until the day she found out she had been accepted to study in Harvard University as an undergraduate. Harvard opened up a whole new world for her, sowing the seeds for the extraordinary work she was to do as a photographer and screenwriter later in life. It was also here that she met her collaborator in cinema, Mira Nair.

After her post-graduation she moved back to Bombay without a plan, “for emotional reasons”. Back in her hometown, she began photographing her community, building an unparalleled body of photographic work compiled in several exhibitions and a book called Parsis : The Zoroastrians of India – A Photographic Journey. Furthermore, she brought to life a city slum in Salaam Bombay!, Mira Nair’s directorial debut. Since then she has written several films including her own debut feature as a director, Little Zizou. She wants to continue writing & directing films, taking pictures, and write a novel.

The TBIP Tête-à-Tête is a series of in-depth and intimate interviews with film personalities who are critical to this era of filmmaking. It is an attempt to understand their body of work and their minds. Most of these interviews, conducted by Pragya Tiwari, were recorded between 2012 and 2014 but remain some of the most exhaustive and insightful conversations that exist online.

They featured in The Big Indian Picture which was an online publication that featured opinion, reportage, narratives, photo-essays, art, interviews and videos. The idea was to broaden the conversation on cinema and examine its influence on art, design, politics and culture at large. And have some fun while at it.

You can access the rest of the archives on www.thebigindianpicture.com

The TBIP Team -

Editor-in-Chief – Pragya Tiwari

Publisher – Milind Soman

Creative Director – Kavi Bhansali

Senior Editor – Rishi Majumder

Created, conceptualised and managed by Oijo Media