Ackland Film Forum: “Mississippi Masala” (Mira Nair, 1991)

Mira Nair’s second feature film, and her first set in the United States, tells the story of Ugandan Indian family who is forced to leave their country after the dictator Idi Amin expels all people of Asian descent from Uganda. As its title implies, the film largely takes place in Mississippi, where the family resettles and finds work running a hotel. The film’s cinematographer, Edward Lachman, uses two different color film stocks to contrast the scenes in Uganda, which some in the family look back at with fondness, with those in Mississippi, where the family’s daughter, Mina, falls in love with a self-employed carpet cleaner (Denzel Washington), against her family’s wishes.

The film will be introduced by Martin Johnson, associate professor of English and Comparative Literature and associate director of Film Studies.

This film will be screened at 7:30 p.m. at the Varsity Theatre (123 E. Franklin Street). Tickets are free, but must be reserved on the Ackland’s website. Register below. UNC-Chapel Hill students can receive CLE credit for attending by scanning the QR code at the event.

About the Series:

Join the Ackland Film Forum on selected Tuesdays evenings this fall for Color Triumphant in Film, a series that accompanies the Ackland exhibition Color Triumphant: Modern Art from Collection of Julian and Josie Robertson. While the natural world is full of color, for filmmakers color is a choice. Recreating color in the cinema required expensive technologies, careful attention to costumes and set design, and an openness to experimentation. In this series, we highlight how filmmakers have used color from the beginnings of the movies to tell stories.

The Ackland Film Forum is co-organized by the Ackland Art Museum and UNC Film Studies, housed in the UNC-Chapel Hill Department of English and Comparative Literature.

All films will be screened at 7:30 p.m.  The first two films will be shown at the Chelsea Theater and the third film will be shown at the Varsity Theatre.