Gurinder Chadha

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 22 November 2015

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Kirsty Young's castaway is filmmaker Gurinder Chadha.

Writer, director and producer behind the films Bend it like Beckham, Bhaji on the Beach and Bride and Prejudice, she began her career as a BBC news reporter.

She was born in Kenya to Sikh parents and grew up in Southall in West London. Her political awakening came in her teens in the 1970s against the backdrop of the National Front and race riots in the capital. The bands she listened to, including the Clash, the Jam and the Specials, were fixtures at the Rock Against Racism concerts which galvanised her desire to make a difference.

Bend it Like Beckham, which launched the career of Keira Knightly, is now a hit musical on the West End stage. Her next film, Viceroy's House, tackles the Partition of India in 1947.

She was awarded an OBE in the 2006 Queen's Birthday Honours List for her services to the British Film Industry.

Producer: Paula McGinley.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Disks from BBC Radio 4.
0:06.0	For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.
0:10.0	For more information about the program, please visit BBC.co.uk.
0:17.0	Radio 4. My cast away this week is the writer, director and producer Garinda Chada.
0:38.0	Bage on the beach, Bend It Like Beckham, bride and prejudice, her work is unashamedly populist and undoubtedly popular,
0:45.4	fool of vitality, music and laughs. But, as well as incorporating a healthy dose of the feel-good
0:50.8	factor, she tackles the big stuff too. Female empowerment, race, the shadow of
0:56.1	colonialism. Her biggest movie hit launched the career of Kyra Knightley and 13 years on from its
1:01.7	big screen release,
1:02.5	Bend It Like Beckham, is now a hit musical on the West End stage.
1:06.5	Born in Kenya to seek parents, she came to London with her family as a toddler.
1:11.0	At school, she was the only Indian girl in her class, navigating her dual identity
1:16.2	with the help of not just her parents, but clothes and music too. Indeed an early publicity
1:20.9	shot shows her in a traditional Indian clothes
1:24.5	accessorized with a leather jacket, Doc Martins and some Nati Union Jack socks.
1:29.0	She says, my job is to make sure we are visible.
1:32.4	We are out there in our three-dimensional ways.
1:35.0	We are part and parcel of the world and we go with the world.
1:39.0	Welcome, Grun de Chada, we being who?
1:43.0	Everyone who looks like me.
1:46.0	My whole entry into the world of film and television and radio
1:50.0	was really visible
	...

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