Identity Issues British Director Chadha Promotes Unlikely Role Model in ëBend Ití by Ky N. Nguyen As Washington was digging out of the blizzard of the century, I was chatting with smartly dressed British filmmaker Gurinder Chadha (ìBhaji on the Beach,î ìWhatís Cooking?î) in her suite at The Four Seasons. In ìBend It Like Beckham,î the biggest British box office hit of all time in the United Kingdom, an Indian girl who idolizes star player David Beckham wants to play soccer despite her familyís opposition. Chadha described her latest work: ìI set out to make a movie that would be extremely populist and would play multiplexes but still handle the themes and issues that I was interested in: the ideas of identity; being first, second, and third generation; and juggling different cultural traditionsópartly your parentsí heritage, partly the country youíre living in. And so the film is very much about Jess balancing her Indianness and her Englishness. Actually, that works for virtually every country around the world and any city with people who come from every country in the world. In that sense, itís a very universal, migr atory kind of experience.î After taking a call from New York, Chadha continued, ìI wanted to take these issues of identity and this culture which I see is very prevalent in the worldóthe diasporic culture or fusion culture, whatever you want to call it. Itís becoming more and more a common culture around the world. I wanted to make a film from my point of view to show the nuts and bolts of that integration process, that juggling the culture process. And to show it in a positive way because normally itís always shown as a problem.î The writer-director has explored the topic of cultural interaction in her previous features and documentaries. ìMy first documentary was ëIím British, ButÖ.í I wanted to explore Britishness from my point of view. I interviewed four young Asians and asked if they saw themselves as Britishóone from Scotland, one from England, one from Northern Ireland, one from Wales. I asked them, ëDo you see yourself as British?í They all answered, ëI prefer to be a British-Pakistanií or ëIím Northern Irish, thatís how I see myself.í Everyone chose their region more than they did Britishness. It was the first time a lot of people were seeing people speak with different accents in these places.î Chadha was born in Kenya to a family of Punjabi Sikhs. Growing up in England, she said, ìI wasnít into sports at all. I was always the most useless one in the class. No one ever wanted me on the team. The reason I chose soccer was what it symbolizes. In Britain, itís the national sport. Itís very much a manís world. Itís not the world of someone like me or an Indian girl, which is precisely why I wanted to make a film about soccer from the perspective of an Indian girl. I kind of opened up this very English obsession into an Indian arena.î She noted, ìI was noticing howómore and moreósoccer was moving away from just being a sport that people followed to something that the nation followed. It was almost like you were unpatriotic if you didnít support England in a game. Increasingly, fans of all colors and descriptions were beginning to support it whereas a few years back, people of color might have been a bit hesitant,î Chadha said. ìNow what was happening was that people of all backgrounds were going, ëEngland, England!í in the pubs whenever England played. It seemed to me that this was a sea of change in terms of national identity. A lot of people were very comfortable in calling themselves English.î Ky N. Nguyen is the film reviewer for The Washington Diplomat.