NFB Collection
Desperately Seeking Helen
19981 h 20 min 40 secFilm: Documentary
Direction: Eisha Marjara
Production: David WilsonSally BochnerDon HaigAlison Burns
Script: Eisha Marjara
Director Eisha Marjara's story takes us first to her childhood in snowbound small-town Quebec and then to Bombay, India, where she desperately tries to track down Helen, a famous movie star in the world's largest dream factory. Helen becomes a passage into Marjara's real world--her unsettling youth, life-threatening anorexia, and the devastating 1985 Air India bombing, which took the lives of her mother and sister. This video revisits the '70s pop culture of Marjara's youth and enters the fascinating world of the Bombay movie industry--"Bollywood."
Other versions
Subject categories
- Film and Video Arts > ActingCommunity and Society
- Families > Family LifeImmigrant ExperienceParent-Child Relationships
- Health and Medicine > Fitness and WeightFood Issues and Nutrition
- Developing Countries > India, Nepal and PakistanPortraitsWomen
- Cultural Diversity and Multiculturalism > Integration IssuesIntegration of Immigrants in QuebecLifestyle of Immigrants
Credits
- director
- Eisha Marjara
- script
- Eisha Marjara
- editing
- Eisha Marjara
- narrator
- Eisha Marjara
- producer
- David Wilson
- executive producer
- Sally Bochner
- Don Haig
- associate producer
- Alison Burns
- camera
- K.U. Mohana
- Jules de Niverville
- sound
- P.M. Satheesh
- sound editing
- Leopoldo Gutierrez
- Chris Piggins
- sound mix
- Serge Boivin
- Jean Paul Vialard
- animation
- Gian Spezzacatana
- David Abu Bacha
- sound design
- Sydney Alzate Chen
- participation
- Ranjana Jha
- Ludmilla Verhoven
- Vrinda Bhasin
- Preshita Sood
Awards
- SRG SSR Award International Film Festival
- Special Mention ("Nana" sculpture from the artist Niki de St.Phalle) given by PLANET - the documentary tv-channelInternational Documentary Film Festival