Maps and movies : talking with Deepa Mehta

![CDATA[From my location in Australian academic and artistic institutions, I had been using Mehta’s elements trilogy as a springboard for my doctoral thesis and documentary on diasporic creativity. This was an intellectual, emotional, and spiritual journey not unlike the conception, development, and distribution of Mehta’s border-crossing cinema. She herself is a border crosser whose Water, despite being in India’s national language (Hindi), was a Canadian nominee in the Best Foreign Film category of the 2006 Academy Awards. During a Canadian-Indian buffet lunch with the cast and crew of Heaven on Earth, I observed the transnational, hyphenated identity of every aspect of her cinema. When it finally came time to interview her, we were two Indian-born women of different generations sitting on a production set with a map of Canada in the background. It was a perfect frame, a much-needed one for containing our forthcoming conversation about old homes, new homes, and the in-between cinema that transcends national and generic boundaries.]]