8 Bollywood filmmakers who directed Hollywood films
Last updated on - Feb 23, 2018, 17:52 ISTShare fbsharetwsharepinshare
01/98 Bollywood filmmakers who directed Hollywood films
Indian cinema is the most incredible and it is more than 100 years old now and over the course of a century. There are a number of movies being made in Bollywood each year. Filmmakers come up with content driven films every time. These filmmakers are not only recognised in Indian but also globally. The kind of films that these directors make is just wonderful or simply mind-blowing. The list of this filmmaker will definitely motivate other directors to make films in Hollywood. Indian actors are now also seen in foreign language films and stars like Irrfan Khan and Priyanka Chopra maintain a full-time career in both Bollywood and Hollywood. Also, a large number of actors, writers, producers, singers of Indian origin are making a name for themselves at the worldwide stage and more films are being made with international casts. Bollywood has produced some of the best directors of all time and directors like Guru Dutt, Satyajit Ray and Bimal Roy are highly respected among the Hollywood fraternity. Hence here is the list of brilliant filmmaker who has created masterpieces in Hollywood.
02/9Vidhu Vinod Chopra
Vidhu Vinod Chopra has directed films like ‘Parinda’ and ‘Eklavya: The Royal Guard’ in Bollywood while he directed ‘Broken Horses’ in Hollywood. His love of Hindi cinema and support of his family encouraged him to study film direction. For this purpose, he went to Pune and studied film direction at the Film and Television Institute of India. He has also been part of ‘Munna Bhai’ film series (‘Munna Bhai M.B.B.S’. and ‘Lage Raho Munna Bhai’) and ‘3 Idiots’ which are some of his highly popular films. His first feature film, shot in black-and-white, was ‘Sazaa-E-Maut’ (Death Penalty) – a thriller made on a shoestring budget with then-unknown actor Naseeruddin Shah and Editor Renu Saluja, who were his fellow students at FTII, Pune. His critically acclaimed films include ‘Parinda’, 1942: A Love Story, Mission Kashmir, the ‘Munna Bhai’ series, ‘Parineeta’, and ‘3 Idiots’.
03/9Mira Nair
She directed 'Amelia' in Hollywood and also directed the acclaimed film ‘Salaam Bombay’ in Bollywood. Before she became a filmmaker, Nair was originally interested in acting, and at one point she performed plays written by Badal Sarkar, a Bengali performer. While she studied at Harvard University, Nair became involved in the theater program and won a Boylston Prize for her performance of Jocasta’s speech from Seneca’s Oedipus. At the start of her film-making career, Nair primarily made documentaries in which she explored Indian cultural tradition. For her film thesis at Harvard between 1978 and 1979, Nair produced a black-and-white film entitled Jama Masjid Street Journal. In the eighteen-minute film, Nair explores the streets of Old Delhi and has casual conversations with Indian locals. In 1982, she made her second documentary entitled So Far from India, which is a fifty-two-minute film that followed an Indian newspaper dealer living in the subways of New York, while his pregnant wife waited for him to return home. Mira Nair has been an enthusiastic yoga practitioner for decades; when making a film, she has the cast and crew starts the day with a yoga session.
04/9Shekhar Kapur
Shekhar Kapur is an acclaimed filmmaker has directed iconic films like ‘Masoom’, ‘Mr. India’ in Bollywood while he has directed films like ‘Elizabeth’ and ‘Elizabeth: The Golden Age in Hollywood’. Shekhar Kapur started his career as an actor in the movie ‘Jaan Hazir Hai’ and later in ‘Toote Khilone’, in Bollywood. He appeared in several Hindi television dramas, such as ‘Udaan’, opposite Kavita Chaudhary, ‘Upanyaas’ opposite Nisha Singh, and ‘Masoom’ opposite Neena Gupta. In 1998, he received international recognition for the second time after ‘Bandit Queen’, when he directed the Academy Award-winning period film ‘Elizabeth’, a fictional account of the reign of British Queen ‘Elizabeth I’ nominated for seven Oscars. Shekar Kapur was the executive producer of the film ‘The Guru’. He established an Indian film company with Ram Gopal Verma and Mani Ratnam, though the group has thus far produced only one film, ‘Dil Se..’, starring Shahrukh Khan and Manisha Koirala. Shekar Kapur executive-produced the Bollywood-themed musical ‘Bombay Dreams’ by Andrew Lloyd Webber, which has been running in London's the West End since 2002 and on Broadway in New York City since 2004. He has announced that he will direct Little Dragon, an authorized biopic of martial arts legend Bruce Lee.
05/9Deepa Mehta
After completing her graduation, Mehta started making short documentaries in India. In time she met Canadian documentarian Paul Saltzman, who was in India making a film and whom she was to marry and migrate with to Canada in 1973. Once in Canada, she embarked on her film career as a screenwriter for children's films She also made a few documentaries including ‘At 99: A Portrait of Louise Tandy Murch’. In 1991 she made her feature-film directorial debut with Sam & Me (starring Om Puri), a story of the relationship between a young Indian boy and an elderly Jewish gentleman in the Toronto neighbourhood of Parkdale. It won Honorable Mention in the Camera d'Or category of the 1991 Cannes Film Festival. Mehta followed up with Camilla starring Bridget Fonda and Jessica Tandy in 1994. In 2002, she directed Bollywood/Hollywood, for which she won the Genie Award for Best Original Screenplay.
06/9Ritesh Batra
Ritesh Batra directed ‘The Lunchbox’ starring Irrfan Khan and Nimrat Kaur which won highly positive reviews from the audiences as well as the critics. He also directed ‘Our Souls At Night’ starring Robert Redford and Jane Fonda in Hollywood. Batra began his filmmaking career by writing and directing shorts. His Arab language short ‘Café Regular’, ‘Cairo’, screened at over 40 international film festivals and won over 12 awards. He has directed some brilliant film ‘The Sense of an Ending’, starring Jim Broadbent. The film is an adaptation of Julian Barnes’ Booker Prize-winning novel The Sense of an Ending. ‘The Lunchbox’ has been nominated for 33 Awards and won 25 so far. In 2014, Batra founded his own production company and currently developing a slate of films.
07/9Jahnu Barua
The Assamese director has made ‘Maine Gandhi Ko Nahi Mara’ in Bollywood while also made ‘Homing Pigeons’ in Hollywood. He is a multiple national and international award-winning Indian film director from Assam. He has directed a number of Assamese and Hindi films and along with ‘Bhabendra Nath Saikia’ was one of the pioneers of Assamese Art cinema. He is best known outside Assam for his Hindi film ‘Maine Gandhi Ko Nahin Mara’, a drama which uses the principles of Gandhism for its thematic backstory.
08/9Param Gill
He has made ‘Warrior Savitri’ in Bollywood while he also made ‘Hotel Hollywood’ in Hollywood. Param Gill made history, and became the first director in the world to premiere his Hollywood film, ‘Last Supper’ (released in theaters as Going to America), and Bollywood film, ‘Death of Amar’, over the same weekend at a film festival in San Francisco. The movies competed against each other and went on to win multiple awards, including the best director with a cash prize of US$100,000. Gill was born in Moga, Punjab, and his father was a farmer. He was penniless when he came to the United States in May 2001 and worked nights at a gas station in New Jersey. Gill received a joint master's degree from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and the New Jersey Institute of Technology in 2003 and received a diploma in film-making from New York Film Academy in 2005. He practiced dentistry in Modesto and founded Gill Dental Dental Group with multiple locations in Northern California until he completely transitioned to films. The director even wrote a book, ‘How to lose a million dollars and not lose your smile’ based on his experiences with the film industry.
09/9Bornila Chatterjee
The Kolkata born filmmaker has made ‘Let's Be Out’, ‘The Sun Is Shining’ in Hollywood while she has made ‘The Hungry’ starring Naseeruddin Shah in Bollywood. The 100-minute film relocates Shakespeare's work 'Titus Andronicus' to modern-day India, where corruption, greed, and revenge run amok at an extravagant wedding. In the adaptation, villain Tamora transforms into Tulsi (essayed by Tisca Chopra) and Titus transforms into Titus (essayed by Naseeruddin). "With him, it was interesting when it comes to convincing because when he first met us he said: 'I think Titus is the worst thing Shakespeare ever wrote, why the hell do you want to make this. And we thought 'oh okay maybe this meeting is not going to go very well'," Chatterjee said. "When we went to his house, he was literally just sitting there having just finished reading the play. So we talked a bit about it and he asked similar questions like 'why now, why this, and we said that 'it was great to meet you and we are leaving this script if you can then please do read it. He texted after a few hours that he 'loved the script and let's make it happen.With everyone, there is always a bit of convincing which is required but it is all a part of the process, " she added.
