Shooting Water

In her memoir, Shooting Water: A Memoir of Second Chances, Family, and Filmmaking (2007), Canadian author and journalist Devyani Saltzman chronicles attempts by the Indian filmmaker Deepa Mehta—her mother—to shoot her controversial Academy Award-nominated 2005 film Water, which presents stark depictions of misogyny, abuse, and child marriage in Indian society in the 1930s and 1940s.

In 2000, Mehta sets out to film Water, the third film in her Elements trilogy which includes Fire (1996) and Earth (1998). Fire sets off a firestorm of controversy among conservative Hindu activists, as it is the first mainstream Bollywood film to explicitly depict a lesbian relationship. A month after its release, 200 members of the right-wing Hindu nationalist party Shiv Sena storm a theater in Mumbai where Fire is being shown, smashing glass and burning posters for the film. Another violent protest erupts at a screening in Kolkata, and in total 29 individuals are arrested for their participation in these incidents.

Meanwhile, Water tells the story of the hardships faced by rural Indian child widows in the 1930s and 1940s when India was still under British occupation. Its protagonist, Chuyia, begins the story as an eight-year-old girl. The victim of forced child marriage, Chuyia witnesses her adult husband die unexpectedly. According to fundamentalist tradition, Chuyia is forced to shave her head and live out her life in a state of social ostracization in an ashram on the Ganges river. The leader of the ashram funnels the girls to a pimp who prostitutes them out to wealthy clients, many of whom are followers of Mahatma Gandhi.



Given the reaction among conservative Hindus toward Fire and the fact that Water deals with the dark underbelly of abuse and misogyny beneath traditional Indian culture, controversy surrounds the film before it even goes into production. As the shooting location, Mehta chooses the holy city of Varanasi on the Ganges. To this day, such so-called "widow houses" still exist, though generally, they do not sink to the level of depravity found in widow houses of the 1930s and 1940s as depicted in Water. However, a day before the film is set to begin shooting, Mehta finds that her location permits have been blocked. The next day, 2,000 right-wing Hindu activists affiliated with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Kashi Sanskrit Raksha Sangharsh Samiti (KSRSS) burn down the sets and throw the debris into the Ganges. They also burn effigies of Mehta and encourage followers to bombard the director with death threats. One KSRSS leader tells The Week magazine in India, "Breaking up the sets was far too mild an act, the people involved with the film should have been beaten black and blue."

With great reluctance, Mehta makes a few minor changes to her script, eventually winning back the local shooting permits. Nevertheless, the first days of shooting are marred by the intrusion of undercover government officials and rogue protesters, including "professional suicide attempters" sent by political parties to infiltrate the set to make a performative suicide attempt. To protect her crew, as well as the lives of misguided Hindu nationalist followers vowing to kill themselves over the film, Mehta pauses production.

While other officials in locations around India tell Mehta it would be acceptable for her to shoot there, she thinks the danger to her crew is too great to film the movie in India. Moreover, by this point, Mehta has lost 80 percent of her budget due to the destruction of so many sets and props. While she regroups and attempts to secure funding to complete Water, Metha directs two less politically charged films, including the 2002 romantic comedy Bollywood/Hollywood and the 2003 English language comedy-drama The Republic of Love, shot in Canada and the United Kingdom. Finally, in 2004, Mehta is ready to revisit Water, opting to shoot the film in Sri Lanka, an island nation off the coast of India. To protect the production, she hires an all-new cast and shoots the film under the false title, River Moon.



In 2005, the film is released internationally at the Toronto International Film Festival where it garners widespread critical acclaim. Prominent film critic Roger Ebert compares the film favorably to the work of the legendary Indian director Satyajit Ray, and the New York Times selects it as a Critic's Pick. The film goes on to receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language film but loses to Germany's The Lives of Others. Meanwhile, the film is not released in India until 2007.

Shooting Water, a fascinating depiction of censorship and repression in India, is also an inspiring story of an artist overcoming steep odds on behalf of her vision.