Desperately Seeking Helen | |
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Directed by | Eisha Marjara |
Written by | Eisha Marjara |
Produced by | Don Haig Sally Bochner David Wilson |
Narrated by | Eisha Marjara |
Cinematography | K. U. Mohanan Jules De Niverville |
Edited by | Eisha Marjara |
Production company | |
Release date |
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Running time | 80 min |
Country | Canada |
Language | English |
Desperately Seeking Helen is a 1998 documentary by Eisha Marjara, produced by the National Film Board of Canada.[1]
It documents the life of the Bollywood star Helen and also discusses Marjara's process of self-discovery.[2] Marjara liked Helen as a child, and Marjara stated "Helen is a conduit into my childhood — my relationship with my mother, my struggle with anorexia and the Air India disaster which took the lives of my mother and sister."[3] Jerry Pinto, author of Helen: The Life and Times of an H-bomb, wrote that the film "is as much about Eisha Marjara's perception of Helen as it is about Helen."[4] Desperately Seeking Helen uses Hindi music.[2]
The film covers the complications in the relationship between Marjara and her mother,[5] Devinder.[6] Marjara had the perception that her mother was unable to balance the culture of Canada against that of India, and Devinder was more feminine and traditional compared to her daughter.[2] The film also discusses the 1985 Air India Flight 182 bombing,[7] which ultimately killed Davinder along with Seema, one of Marjara's sisters.[6]
D.B. Jones, the author of "Brave New Film Board," wrote that the filmmaker "verges on self-pity and often seems self-absorbed, but she can also be brutally honest about herself."[5] Sabeena Gadihoke, the author of "Secrets and Inner Voices: The Self and Subjectivity in Contemporary Indian Documentary," wrote that the "deeply personal" film "did not easily fit popular conceptions of documentary" since it had a "fictive structure in which the filmmaker staged her own body" as well as "reflexive use of humor" and "whimsy".[8] Angela Failler argued that the film was what had been described as a "counter-memorial" of the Air India Flight 182 disaster.[9]