Podcast: Interview with Filmmaker Mira Nair (1988)

A scene from Mira Nair's Salaam Bombay! (1988).

From 1981 to 1989, I was assistant producer and co-host of the radio show On the Arts, at CJRT-FM (today Jazz 91.1) in Toronto. With the late Tom Fulton, who was the show's prime host and producer, we did a half-hour interview program where we talked to artists from all fields. In 1988, one of those people was film director Mira Nair.

When I sat down with Nair, her debut feature film Salaam Bombay! was winning her praise worldwide. (In 2011, the film was included in The New York Times' s list of "The Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made.") She would go one to direct many more popular and acclaimed films, including Mississippi Masala (1991), Monsoon Wedding (2001), and most recently Queen of Katwe (2016).

– Kevin Courrier.

Here is the full interview with Mira Nair as it aired on CJRT-FM in 1988.

 

Kevin Courrier is a freelance writer/broadcaster, film critic and author (Dangerous Kitchen: The Subversive World of Zappa, Randy Newman's American Dreams, 33 1/3 Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica, Artificial Paradise: The Dark Side of The Beatles Utopian Dream). Courrier teaches part-time film courses to seniors through the LIFE Institute at Ryerson University in Toronto and other venues. His forthcoming book is Reflections in the Hall of Mirrors: American Movies and the Politics of Idealism.

Tom Fulton was the host and producer of On the Arts for CJRT-FM in Toronto for 23 years, beginning in 1975.