Desperately Seeking Helen

Desperately Seeking Helen is a 1998 documentary by Eisha Marjara, produced by the National Film Board of Canada.[1]

Desperately Seeking Helen
Directed byEisha Marjara
Written byEisha Marjara
Produced byDon Haig
Sally Bochner
David Wilson
Narrated byEisha Marjara
CinematographyK. U. Mohanan
Jules De Niverville
Edited byEisha Marjara
Production
company
Release date
1998
Running time
80 min
CountryCanada
LanguageEnglish

It documents the life of the Bollywood star Helen and also discusses Marjara's process of self-discovery.[2] Marjara liked Helen as a child, and Marjara stated "Helen is a conduit into my childhood — my relationship with my mother, my struggle with anorexia and the Air India disaster which took the lives of my mother and sister."[3] Jerry Pinto, author of Helen: The Life and Times of an H-bomb, wrote that the film "is as much about Eisha Marjara's perception of Helen as it is about Helen."[4] Desperately Seeking Helen uses Hindi music.[2]

The film covers the complications in the relationship between Marjara and her mother,[5] Devinder.[6] Marjara had the perception that her mother was unable to balance the culture of Canada against that of India, and Devinder was more feminine and traditional compared to her daughter.[2] The film also discusses the 1985 Air India Flight 182 bombing,[7] which ultimately killed Davinder along with Seema, one of Marjara's sisters.[6]

D.B. Jones, the author of "Brave New Film Board," wrote that the filmmaker "verges on self-pity and often seems self-absorbed, but she can also be brutally honest about herself."[5] Sabeena Gadihoke, the author of "Secrets and Inner Voices: The Self and Subjectivity in Contemporary Indian Documentary," wrote that the "deeply personal" film "did not easily fit popular conceptions of documentary" since it had a "fictive structure in which the filmmaker staged her own body" as well as "reflexive use of humor" and "whimsy".[8] Angela Failler argued that the film was what had been described as a "counter-memorial" of the Air India Flight 182 disaster.[9]

Background

The National Film Board selected Marjara to make a film on the Air India Flight 182 disaster in 1994. She did research by visiting Trois-Rivières and taking one trip to India.[3] The title is a reference to the 1985 film Desperately Seeking Susan.[7]

Marjara dedicated her film to Air India Flight 182 victims, including Davinder and Seema.[10]

Release and reception

The film's first screening in India was during the Mumbai International Film Festival (MIFF).[11]

It was ranked as the "Theater Critic's Choice" in the Chicago Reader in 1999.[12] Firdaus Ali of Rediff wrote that the film received "rave reviews".[2] Gadihoke stated that in India the film received some criticism due to a perception that it was "self-absorbed"; Gadihoke argued that this was because the film used "strategies unfamiliar to documentary discourse in India at the time."[11]

It earned a Special Mention from Planet Television at the 2000 Internationales Dokumentarfilmfestival München. At the 1999 Locarno Film Festival, it won the prestigious SRG SSR Award and the Silver Pardino - Leopards of Tomorrow award.[13]

References
  1. "Desperately Seeking Helen". onf-nfb.gc.ca. National Film Board of Canada. 11 October 2012. Retrieved 6 February 2023.
  2. Ali, Firdaus. "In search of a vamp" (Archive). Rediff. April 24, 2000. Retrieved on November 22, 2014.
  3. Black, Barbara. "Air India disaster hit Concordia hard" (Archive). Concordia's Thursday Report. April 21, 2005. Volume 29, No. 14. Retrieved on November 22, 2014.
  4. Pinto, Jerry. Helen: The Life and Times of an H-bomb. Penguin Books India, 2006. ISBN 0143031244, 9780143031246. p. 204.
  5. Jones, D.B. "Brave New Film Board". In: Beard, William and Jerry White (editors). North of Everything: English-Canadian Cinema Since 1980. University of Alberta, 2002. ISBN 088864390X, 9780888643902. Start: p. 19. CITED: p. 36.
  6. "Air India 182 Press Kit" (Archive). Air India 182 (film) official website. p. 11/12. Retrieved on October 22, 2014.
  7. Bontempo, Mirella. "The Other English-Canadian film: Indo-Canadian cinema" (Archive). Montreal Serai. July 27, 2012. Retrieved on November 22, 2014.
  8. Gadihoke, Sabeena. "Secrets and Inner Voices: The Self and Subjectivity in Contemporary Indian Documentary." In: Lebow, Lisa (editor). The Cinema of Me: Self and Subjectivity in First-Person Documentary Film (Nonfictions series). Columbia University Press, August 13, 2013. ISBN 0231850166, 9780231850162. Google Books PT213-PT214.
  9. Henderson, Jennifer and Pauline Wakeham (editors). Reconciling Canada: Critical Perspectives on the Culture of Redress. University of Toronto Press, June 17, 2013. ISBN 1442695471, 9781442695474. Google Books PT259.
  10. Somani, Alia Rehana. "Broken Passages and Broken Promises: Reconstructing the Komagata Maru and Air India Cases" (Archive) (PhD thesis). The University of Western Ontario. 2012. p. 146-147 (PDF file p. 155-156).
  11. Gadihoke, Sabeena. "Secrets and Inner Voices: The Self and Subjectivity in Contemporary Indian Documentary." In: Lebow, Lisa (editor). The Cinema of Me: Self and Subjectivity in First-Person Documentary Film (Nonfictions series). Columbia University Press, August 13, 2013. ISBN 0231850166, 9780231850162. Google Books PT213.
  12. Shen, Ted. "Desperately Seeking Helen" (review) (Archive). Chicago Reader. April 29, 1999. Retrieved on November 22, 2014.
  13. "Desperately Seeking Helen". onf-nfb.gc.ca. National Film Board of Canada. 11 October 2012. Retrieved 6 February 2023.

Further reading
  • Failler, Angela. "Remembering the Air India Disaster: Memorial and Counter-Memorial." Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies 31 (2009). p. 166-172.
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