Meeting Judith Redding

Sometimes you meet someone outside a bathroom/washroom and have a marvelous conversation.
You've been dying for a good conversation and it happens right outside a bathroom-while you are in a queue.
That's exactly where and how I met Judith Redding last evening.

In the next 20 minutes we discussed Bollywood, Shahrukh Khan's nose, Legalization of sex work in India, 'Tales of The Night Fairies' and 'In the Flesh' vis-a-vis 'Born Into Brothels', appeal of the 'innocent East', the use of children as innocent subjects that fits so well in the west's perception of India, the march to Sundance, Oscars, Academy and more films about 'little brown people'.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1878067974/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&seller=
I absolutely love the cover of her book 'Film Fatales' (Seal Press, Seattle, Judith Redding and Victoria A. Brownworth).
It is a collection of interviews with Independent Women Directors and spreads across 'Documentary', 'Experimental', 'Narrative' and 'Beyond the Director's Chair' sections.
Some of my favourites are there too- Pratibha Parmar, Su Fredrich, Trinh T. Minh-Ha, Mira Nair and Susan Seidelman.
The book is a reflection on the fact that apart from a rare Kathryn Bigelow why women directors across the globe run into a 'celluloid ceiling'. Spanning 32 interviews with some of the most accomplished independent women filmmakers, the book is my next read.

Judith tells me about the days she worked in Airline Security and with a laugh she says that with a name like 'Ambarien Al-Qadar' I invite suspicion and curiosity. Suspicion because it sounds so 'middle eastern' and curiosity because young women my age have no record of being terrorists. I tell her that's something I encounter quite often. And seriously, am a bit sick of thinking about it constantly. Not that something really major has happened but the urdu word 'khalish' perfectly describes the feeling- a slight tingling, a mild irritation.

This brings me to a facebook update by a friend some days back.
It read: If you are a Muslim, and an artist, is 9/11 the only framework granted to you?
My answer seems like a series of questions at the moment: you make art to be able to deal with the world and find your place in it. This is my rather simple, could be read as silly way, of understanding the motivations to make art.
This constant questioning, the constant reminding of who you are, where you come from, what clothes you wear, did you go to a Madarsa, does your mother wear a Hijab, does your father wear a beard, do they offer prayers, is your brother a willing fundamentalist, do you wear a scarf back home, the hows, the whys, the where.
So your art becomes a way of thinking through some of these questions.
My question remains in the spirit of a whim or a fancy-why am I asked these questions all the time? Why do people expect me to answer?
I guess its time we reframe this question and ask
'with what framework we; and by we, i imply myself and the rest of the liberals, the not so liberals, the secularists and the pseudo-secularists; do we view works made by artists/people who are Muslims. What is the lens we use to 'frame' them. How we see and feel about them in the everyday.

So much for today. I get back to editing.
Meet you Judith Redding soon. was such a pleasure!