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Monsoon Wedding is a 2001 film directed by Mira Nair and written by Sabrina Dhawan, which depicts romantic entanglements during a traditional Punjabi wedding in Delhi.

Writer Sabrina Dhawan wrote the first draft of the screenplay in a week while she was at Columbia University's MFA film program.^[3] Monsoon Wedding earned just above $30 million at the box office.^[2] Although it is set entirely in New Delhi, the film was an international co-production between companies in India, the United States, Italy, France, and Germany.^[4] The film won the Golden Lion award and received a Golden Globe Award nomination. A musical based on the film is currently in development and is scheduled to premiere on Broadway in 2011.^[5]

Plot[link]

The film's central story concerns a father, Lalit Verma (Naseeruddin Shah), who is trying to organize an enormous, chaotic, and expensive wedding for his daughter, for whom he has arranged a marriage with a man she has known for only a few weeks (Parvin Dabas as Hemant Rai). As so often happens in the Punjabi culture, such a wedding means that, for one of the few times each generation, the whole family comes together from all corners of the globe including India, Australia, Oman and the United States.

It is a story set in the modern upper-middle class of India, where telecommunications and a western lifestyle mix with old traditions, like the arranged wedding young Aditi accepts when she ends a current affair. The groom is an Indian living in Texas, and all relatives from both families, some from distant places like Australia, come to New Delhi during the monsoon season to attend the wedding. The four-day arrangements and celebrations will see clumsy organization, family parties and drama, dangers to the happy end of the wedding, and lots of music.

Cast[link]

• Naseeruddin Shah as Lalit Verma
• Lillete Dubey as Pimmi Verma
• Shefali Shah as Ria Verma
• Vijay Raaz as Parabatlal Kanhaiyalal 'P.K.' Dubey
• Tillotama Shome as Alice
• Vasundhara Das as Aditi Verma
• Parvin Dabas as Hemant Rai
• Kulbhushan Kharbanda as C.L. Chadha
• Kamini Khanna as Shashi Chadha
• Rajat Kapoor as Tej Puri
• Randeep Hooda as Rahul Chadha
• Roshan Seth as Mohan Rai
• Soni Razdan as Saroj Rai
• Jas Arora as Umang Chadha
• Natasha Rastogi as Sona Verma
• Neha Dubey as Ayesha Verma

Family tree[link]

Soundtrack[link]

The soundtrack includes a qawwali by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, a ghazal by Farida Khanum, a Punjabi song by Sukhwinder Singh, an old Indian song by Rafi, a folk dance song. The film includes an Urdu ghazal, Aaj Jaane Ki Zid Na Karo (Don't Be So Stubborn About Leaving Today) sung by Pakistani artist Farida Khanum.

All music composed by Mychael Danna (except where listed).

• ^(*) Originally featured in the Hindi film Loafer (1973)
• ^(**) Originally featured in the Hindi film Biwi No.1 (1999)

Awards[link]

The movie won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Mira Nair was the second Indian (after Satyajit Ray for Aparajito) to receive this honour.

Won[link]

• British Independent Film Award for Best Foreign Language Film
• Canberra International Film Festival - Audience Award (Mira Nair)
• Independent Spirit Awards - Producers Award (Caroline Baron)
• Venice Film Festival - Golden Lion (Mira Nair)
• Venice Film Festival - Laterna Magica Prize (Mira Nair)

Nominated[link]

• BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Language Film (Caroline Baron, Mira Nair)
• Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Foreign Language Film
• Chlotrudis Award for Best Cast
• Chlotrudis Award for Best Director (Mira Nair)
• European Film Award for Best Non-European Film (Mira Nair)
• Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film
• Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Foreign Language Film
• Satellite Award for Best Foreign Language Film

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• Monsoon Wedding at AllRovi
• Monsoon Wedding at Box Office Mojo
• Monsoon Wedding at the Internet Movie Database
• Review of Monsoon Wedding

Mira Nair
Nair at the 2008 IIFW Masterclass Directors Meet
Born	(1957-10-15) October 15, 1957 (age 54) Rourkela, Orissa, India
Occupation	Film director, film producer
Years active	1986–present
Spouse	Mitch Epstein (divorced) Mahmood Mamdani (1988–present)

Mira Nair (born October 15, 1957) is an Indian film director and producer based in New York.^[1] Her production company is Mirabai Films.

She was educated at Delhi University and Harvard University. Her debut feature film, Salaam Bombay! (1988), won the Golden Camera award at the Cannes Film Festival and also earned the nomination for Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. She used the proceeds of the film, to establish an organization for street children, called the Salaam Baalak Trust in India.^[2] She often works with longtime creative collaborator, screenwriter Sooni Taraporevala, whom she met at Harvard.

She has won a number of awards, including a National Film Award and various international film festival awards, and was a nominee at the Academy Awards, Golden Globes, BAFTA Awards and Filmfare Awards. She was also awarded the India Abroad Person of the Year-2007, which was presented by Indra Nooyi, Chairperson and CEO, PepsiCo, Inc, and India Abroad Person of the Year-2006.^[3] In 2012 she was awarded India's third highest civilian award the Padma Bhushan by President of India, Pratibha Patil.^[4]

Her most recent films included Vanity Fair with Reese Witherspoon, The Namesake, and Amelia.^[5]

Early life[link]

Mira Nair, a Punjabi and a malayali, was born in Rourkela, Orissa^[6] where her father was employed. She was the youngest of three children from a middle-class family. Her father was a civil servant and her mother a social worker.

Mira did her early schooling at a boarding school, Loreto Convent Tara Hall in Shimla, Himachal Pradesh. She studied sociology at Miranda House, Delhi University, where she became involved in political street theater and performed for three years in an amateur drama company. In 1976, at age 19 she left for the US^[7] with a scholarship at Harvard University, where she continued her studies in sociology.^[8] While at Harvard she met her first husband, photographer Mitch Epstein, as well as her screenwriter, Sooni Taraporevala and gradually moved towards making documentary films.

Career[link]

At the beginning of her career as a film artist, Nair directed four television documentaries. India Cabaret, a film about the lives of strippers in a Bombay nightclub, won the Blue Ribbon award at the 1986 American Film Festival. Salaam Bombay! (1988), with a screenplay by Sooni Taraporevala, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and won many other awards. It is today considered a groundbreaking film classic, and is standard fare for film students.

The 1991 film Mississippi Masala starred Denzel Washington and Sarita Choudhury, and profiled a family of displaced Ugandan-Indians living and working in Mississippi. The screenplay was again by Sooni Taraporevala, and produced by Michael Nozik. In 1995 her film adaption of the book The Perez Family, by Christine Bell, was released. The film starred Marisa Tomei, Alfred Molina, and Angelica Huston, and was again produced by Michael Nozik.

She was also the director of the movie Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love a provocative movie set in 16th century India. In 1998 she made My Own Country starring Naveen Andrews. It was produced for HBO Films and adapted from the memoir by Abraham Verghese by Sooni Taraporevala.

In 2001 she released Monsoon Wedding (2001), a film about a chaotic Punjabi Indian wedding with a screenplay by Sabrina Dhawan. It was awarded the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival, making Nair the first female recipient of the award.^[9] After the success of Monsoon Wedding Nair collaborated with writer Julian Fellowes on her 2004 adaptation of Thackeray's novel Vanity Fair starring Reese Witherspoon. The same year she also founded Maisha, a film lab to help East Africans and South Asians learn to make films.^[10] Maisha is headquartered in Nair's adopted home of Kampala, Uganda. Later that year she rejected an offer to direct Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix saying, "...I would prefer someone else make it. I am better suited to emotions, human beings, and less interested in special effects.".^[11]

Her next film, The Namesake, premiered in fall 2006 at Dartmouth College where Nair was presented with the Dartmouth Film Award. Another premiere was held in fall 2006 with the Indo-American Arts Council in New York.^[12] The Namesake, adapted by Sooni Taraporevala from the novel by Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri, was released in March 2007. The same year she was honoured with the Pride of India award at the 9th Bollywood Movie Awards for her contributions to the film industry.^[13][14]

She directed a short film in New York, I Love You, a romantic-drama anthology of love stories set in New York and a 12-minute movie on AIDS awareness (funded by The Gates Foundation) called Migration.^[15][16]

Her biographical film Amelia was released in October 2009 to predominantly negative reviews.^[17][18]

For several years, Nair was attached to a big-budget adaptation of the novel Shantaram, but the production was shelved in 2009. Nair has also purchased the rights to Mohsin Hamid's 2007 novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist.^[19]

Personal life[link]

Nair lives near Columbia University in New York City where she is an adjunct professor in the Film Division of the School of Arts, and where her husband, Professor Mahmood Mamdani, also teaches.^[20][21] Nair and her husband first met in 1988, when she went to Uganda for the first time to research for the film Mississippi Masala.^[7] Nair has been an enthusiastic yoga practitioner for decades; when making a film, she has the cast and crew start the day with a yoga session.^[22] Nair has one son named Zohran.^[23]

Filmography[link]

• Jama Street Masjid Journal (1979)
• So Far From India (1982)
• India Cabaret (1985)
• Children Of A Desired Sex (1987)
• Salaam Bombay! (1988)^[5]
• Mississippi Masala (1991)^[5]
• The Day the Mercedes Became a Hat (1993)
• The Perez Family (1995)^[5]
• Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love (1996)^[5]
• My Own Country (1998) (Showtime)
• Monsoon Wedding (2001)^[5]
• Hysterical Blindness (2002)
• 11'9"01 September 11 (Segment - "India") (2002)
• Still, The Children are Here (2003)
• Vanity Fair (2004)^[5]
• The Namesake (2006)^[5]
• Migration (AIDS Jaago) (2007)^[24]
• New York, I Love You (Segment - "Kosher Vegetarian") (2009)^[25]
• 8 (Segment - "How can it be?") (2008)^[26]
• Amelia (2009)^[5]

Awards[link]

Wins[link]

• 1985: Best Documentary Film, Global Village Film Festival: India Cabaret
• 1986: Golden Athena, Athens International Film Festival: India Cabaret
• 1986: Blue Ribbon, American Film Festival: India Cabaret
• 1988: Audience Award, Cannes Film Festival: Salaam Bombay!
• 1988: Golden Camera (Best First Film), Cannes Film Festival: Salaam Bombay!
• 1988: National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi: Salaam Bombay!^[27]
• 1988: National Board of Review Award for Top Foreign Films: Salaam Bombay!
• 1988: "Jury Prize", "Most Popular Film" and "Prize of the Ecumenical Jury" at Montreal World Film Festival: Salaam Bombay!
• 1988: New Generation Award, Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards
• 1988: Lilian Gish Award (Excellence in Feature Film), Los Angeles Women in Film Festival: Salaam Bombay!
• 1991: Golden Osella (Best Original Screenplay), Venice Film Festival: Mississippi Masala (with Sooni Taraporevala)^[28]
• 1991: Critics Special Award, São Paulo International Film Festival: Mississippi Masala
• 1992: Best Director (Foreign Film), Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists: Mississippi Masala
• 1992: Asian Media Award, Asian American International Film Festival
• 1993: Independent Spirit Award for Best Feature: Mississippi Masala
• 2000: Special Mention (Documentary and Essay), Biarritz International Festival of Audiovisual Programming: The Laughing Club of India
• 2001: Golden Lion (Best Film), Venice Film Festival: Monsoon Wedding
• 2001: Laterna Magica Prize, Venice Film Festival: Monsoon Wedding
• 2002: Audience Award, Canberra International Film Festival: Monsoon Wedding
• 2002: Special Award for International Cinema, Zee Cine Awards: Monsoon Wedding
• 2002: UNESCO Award, Venice Film Festival: 11'9"01 September 11
• 2004: Faith Hubley Web of Life Award, Rochester-High Falls International Film Festival
• 2007: "Golden Aphrodite", Love is Folly International Film Festival (Bulgaria): The Namesake
• 2012 ; Padma Bhushan by Govt. of India

Nominations[link]

• 1989: Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film: Salaam Bombay!
• 1989: César Award for Best Foreign Film (Meilleur film étranger): Salaam Bombay!
• 1989: Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film: Salaam Bombay!
• 1990: BAFTA Film Award Best Film not in the English Language: Salaam Bombay!
• 1990: Filmfare Best Director Award: Salaam Bombay!
• 1990: Filmfare Best Movie Award: Salaam Bombay!
• 1991: Golden Lion (Best Film), Venice Film Festival: Mississippi Masala
• 1996: Golden Seashell, San Sebastián International Film Festival: Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love
• 1999: Best Film, Verzaubert International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival: My Own Country
• 2001: Screen International Award (Best Non-European Film), European Film Awards: Monsoon Wedding
• 2001: Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film: Monsoon Wedding
• 2002: BAFTA Film Award Best Film not in the English Language: Monsoon Wedding
• 2003: Chlotrudis Award for Best Director: Monsoon Wedding
• 2003: Golden Star, International Film Festival of Marrakech: Hysterical Blindness
• 2003: César Award for Best Film from the European Union: 11'9"01 September 11
• 2004: Golden Lion (Best Film), Venice Film Festival: Vanity Fair
• 2007: Gotham Award for Best Film: The Namesake

Further reading[link]

• Jigna Desai: Beyond Bollywood: The cultural politics of South Asian diasporic film. New York: Routledge, 2004, 280 pp. ill. ISBN 0-415-96684-1 (inb.) / ISBN 0-415-96685-X (hft.)
• Gita Rajan: Pliant and compliant: colonial Indian art and postcolonial cinema. Women. Oxford (Print), ISSN 0957-4042 ; 13(2002):1, pp. 48–69.
• Alpana Sharma: Body matters: the politics of provocation in Mira Nair's films. QRFV : Quarterly review of film and video, ISSN 1050-9208 ; 18(2001):1, pp. 91–103.
• Pratibha Parmar: Mira Nair: filmmaking in the streets of Bombay. Spare rib, ISSN 0306-7971; 198, 1989, pp. 28–29.
• Gwendolyn Audrey Foster: Women Filmmakers of the African and Asian Diaspora: Decolonizing the Gaze, Locating Subjectivity. Carbondale, Ill. : Southern Illinois University Press, 1997. ISBN 0-8093-2120-3
• John Kenneth Muir: Mercy in Her Eyes: The Films of Mira Nair. Hal Leonard, 2006. ISBN 1-55783-649-3, ISBN 978-1-55783-649-6.

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Mira Nair

• Mira Nair Bibliography (via UC Media Resources Center Berkeley)
• SAWNET biography
• Biography
• Mira Nair at the Internet Movie Database
• Maisha Film Lab in Kampala, Uganda
• Video Interview on LX.TV
• A Conversation with Mira Nair - Harvard @ Home program
• featured profile of Mira Nair - on MirabaiFilms.com
• Video interview with The Namesake director on Sidewalks Entertainment
• Video: Mira Nair at the Asia Society, Dec. 10, 2009
• Mira Nair: A Life in Pictures, BAFTA event video
• The Fabulous Picture Show (part 1, part 2) - Master Class with Mira Nair at the Doha film festival, Al Jazeera English, Dec 2009

Randeep Hooda
Born	Randeep Singh Hooda (1976-08-20) August 20, 1976 (age 35) Daseya, Rohtak District, Haryana, India
Alma mater	Rai School in Sonepat, Delhi Public School, Delhi University
Occupation	Actor
Years active	2001 - present

Randeep Singh Hooda is an Indian actor who works in Bollywood films, best known for his work in the movies Risk, Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai, Saheb Biwi Aur Gangster and the latest Jannat 2.

Early life[link]

Hooda was born in the village of Jassia in Rohtak district of Haryana.^[1] His mother, Asha Hooda, is a social worker and his father, Dr. Ranbir Hooda, is a surgeon by profession. When he was eight years old, he went to a boarding school MNSS in Rai, Sonepat, Haryana.^[2] He then went to Delhi Public School, R K Puram, New Delhi. Because of his royal hobbies like horse riding, playing the saxophone and his flawless charisma coupled with his inherent rustic charm, he is often called "Jat prince".

After completing his schooling, Hooda moved to Melbourne, Australia in 1995 for higher studies where he got a Bachelors degree in Marketing and a Masters degree in Business Management and Human Resource Management.^[2] During that time he peeled onions in a Chinese restaurant, worked in a car-wash, waited-tables, and drove taxis for two years. Having tried his hands in various jobs during his college time,this King of cool returned to India in 2000 and got a job in the marketing department of an airline and was acting in stage theatres.^[2]

Film career[link]

He made his film debut in Monsoon Wedding (2001), where he played an NRI (Non Resident Indian). He got the role in the film primarily because of his Australian accent.^[2]

However even after a prominent performance in Monsoon Wedding he had to wait for four years to get a second project. Ram Gopal Varma cast him as lead in the gritty gangster flick D (2005). D was a turning point in his career. The D which supposedly portrayed Dawood Ibrahim's real life gave Hooda a grand entry into tinsel town. In an interview, he stated, "I find D and Risk very romantic films."^[3]

In 2008, he played the lead role in the romantic film Ru-Ba-Ru.^[4]

In 2010, he played the ACP Agnel Wilson of Mumbai crime branch in the film Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai.

In 2011, he impressed critics by giving a stellar performance in film Saheb Biwi Aur Gangster. In 2012, He played the role of ACP Pratap Raghuvanshi In "Jannat 2" and has been getting positive reviews from critics.

Personal life[link]

Randeep recently made it to the list of the 20 sexiest men in the world in a recent poll conducted by the international film website Imdb. “I guess I have my parents’ genes to thank for that,” he smiled, adding that he doesn’t get swayed by such tags. A man who plays the saxophone and the flute when he is high on life, who had the then miss universe as his lady love and classy actor Naseeruddin Shah as a mentor, owns six horses at the Mumbai's Mahalaxmi Race Course and has never been on a vacation in his whole life since holidays have been visiting home away from his hostel life, is expected to have a worldview that's conventionally unconventional.He has always been of the opinion that baring one's soul is much harder than baring one's body.

Filmography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Randeep Hooda at the Internet Movie Database
• Randeep Hooda at IndiaFM.com

Farida Khanum
Farida Khanum rehearsing in December 2005
Background information
Birth name	Farida Khanum
Born	1935 (age 76–77)
Origin	Kolkata, India
Genres	Ghazal
Occupations	singer
Years active	1950–present

Farida Khanum (born 1935) is a Pakistani Ghazal singer from Punjab. The Times of India has called her "Malika-e-Ghazal" (Queen of Ghazal).^[1]

In 2005, she was awarded the Hilal-e-Imtiaz, Pakistan's second highest civilian honour by President Pervez Musharraf.^{[citation needed]}

Early life[link]

Born in (1935) in Calcutta and raised in Amritsar. Her sister is Mukhtar Begum.^[2]

She started learning Khayal from her sister Mukhtar Begum at age seven and later learnt classical music from Ustad Ashiq Ali Khan. Her sister Mukhtar Begum would take her, a seven-year-old Farida, to Khan’s place for riyaaz.^[3][4] She migrated to Pakistan after partition of India in 1947.

Career[link]

Farida Khanum gave her first public concert in 1950 and then joined Radio Pakistan where she courted fame and fortune.^[1] She became a star when Pakistan’s president Ayub Khan invited her to a public recital in the ’60s.

The ghazal she is most associated with is Aaj Jaane Ki Zidd Naa Karo.^[5]

Personal life[link]

Farida Khanum lives in Lahore, Pakistan. She has 1 son and 5 daughters. She lives with her second oldest daughter, and her only son, his wife and kids. One of her daughters lives with her husband and kids in New York, One of her daughters lives in Canada. Her youngest daughter is a specialist in endocrinology currently working in Services Hospital,Lahore and lives with her husband and kids.

Discography[link]

• 1978 Farida Khanum In Concert
• 1979 Farida Khanum In Concert Vol. 2
• 1985 Taghazzul Farida Khanum Vol 1
• 1980 Farida Khanum In Concert Vol. 3
• 1993 Farida Khanum: Meri Pasand Vol 2
• 1993 Farida Khanum: Meri Pasand Vol 1

References[link]

External links[link]

• Farida Khanum at the Internet Movie Database
• Farida Khannum gets Haafiz Ali Khan Award - Indian Express
• Interview with Farida Khanum

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This article about a Pakistani singer is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e