Making “The World Unseen”

Earlier this month, we spoke with lesbian novelist/filmmaker Shamim Sarif (who was recently voted International Lesbian/Bi Woman of the Year by AfterEllen.com readers), her partner (and film producer) Hanan Kattan, and actor Sheetal Sheth, about the making of their first film, I Can’t Think Straight Sarif and Kattan discussed the beginning of their filmmaking career, from their tumultuous first steps into the cinematic world, to the start of their second film, an adaptation of Sarif’s novel The World Unseen.

In this interview, they discussed the making of their second film. A much more intense script, and a period piece (it’s set in 1950s South Africa), The World Unseen benefited from the lessons Sarif and Kattan learned from making their first film, and took home serious praise at gay and straight independent film festivals.

The narrative of Unseen is centered on a love story between a fiery café owner – Amina (Sheetal Sheth, who co-starred in Straight), and a reserved housewife – Miriam (Lisa Ray, Straight‘s other star). Both are women of Indian descent living in Apartheid South Africa, representing a world that’s set between the extremes of black and white society, and certainly within a very traditional Patriarchal culture.

“For The World Unseen,” said Katttan, “we moved – Shamim and I and our two boys – we moved to South Africa. We put them in South African schools, you know, it was a new continent and a new country that we were familiar with, but not to live in.”

They also set up shop right away, recruiting department heads for the ambitious project and making sure that the problems that plagued Straight wouldn’t be an issue on the new production. “I think from a production perspective,” said Kattan, Unseen “was much better organized [than I Can’t Think Straight] in terms of all the legal contracts, the structure, the cash flow, the financing, and how to control elements.”

“We made sure we wouldn’t have the same issues we had on the first film,” she continued, “[which] allowed us to really focus on the production to get the results that Shamim wanted, versus a focus on firefighting and troubleshooting almost every day or every hour. That made a big difference. And it gave Shamim less stress so she could focus on the creative side.” The plan worked, and production on Unseen was much smoother and more positive, allowing Sarif to get the details of the film just right. This was especially important because Unseen is a period darama, where the details – from costumes to props to vehicles – are critical to telling the story, but tougher to nail down.

Sarif acknowledged the work of her talented costume designer and production designer in helping to craft a believable world for the film.

“I think they did a phenomenal job,” said Sarif, “and we were able to think ahead of time about Miriam’s dresses, for example – you’ll notice that as her confidence grows, her clothes become a little more vibrant in color, a little more daring in their cut…[These are] little things that the audience might not notice, but you kind of feel in the film.” She elaborated:

And the car — [we asked] “what kind of car would Amina drive?” They were able to come up, within the budget, with three or four choices so that we could really make informed creative decisions. It was a real pleasure, and it’s wonderful to just see a location that you think you can use and then walk in a week later and just see it transformed — it looks better than you visualized it as a novelist. It’s a thrill — I feel very grateful to have had that experience.

Sarif revealed that a great deal of her inspiration for the story itself came from stories passed down from her grandmother, who actually lived in this oppressive world:

My parents and grandparents were born in South Africa, and my parents actually left there in the early ’60s because of apartheid. So I grew up sort of listening to stories about their time there, and it was fascinating to me as I was growing up, because of course, South Africa was still suffering under that regime, until very recently, or relatively recently. So, they would tell me stories about how they couldn’t go here, or how they lost their house there, and how they had to move to a newly designated non-white area, and just the daily ins and outs of life there.

And then on top of that, the sort of patriarchal structure of life in the Indian community was a kind of second layer of oppression, if you like, in my mind. I thought “well, these two layers would make an incredibly dramatic backdrop to the kinds of themes I wanted to explore” which was, how do you think about your life, see it a little differently, and then start to make little steps towards changing?

Both Sheetal Sheth and Lisa Ray came back aboard for the new film, playing characters that were almost a role-reversal from the characters they played in their previous film together.

In Unseen, Sheth played the courageous, wonderfully non-conformist Amina – a far cry from her turn as the shy, introspective Leyla in Straight. Sheth recalled how she got to know Shamim when they worked on their first film together:

I wanted to get to know Shamim. I knew she was a novelist, so I asked if I could borrow her books and read them. … one night, just randomly in my hotel room, I started reading [The World Unseen] and I could not put it down. I finished it in one sitting. [Laughing] I remember going to rehearsal the next day, exhausted! I loved it. And I’m a reader, so for me, I don’t use those words often. It’s really one of the best books I’ve ever read. It’s so beautiful and lyrical…

So we finished I Can’t Think Straight, and they were developing The World Unseen, and they came to me and asked me to play Amina and I was so excited! I loved the character.

As mentioned in the first interview, neither Sheth nor Ray had any concerns about playing a lesbian character.

Sheth didn’t even think of her character as a lesbian initially – just a person who happened to fall in love. In Unseen, however, she knew that there was a very different romantic dynamic between the characters of Amina and Miriam than there was between Straight‘s Tala and Leyla.

“I don’t think that… Miriam necessarily is [a lesbian],” said Sheth of Ray’s Unseen character. “I see Amina as certainly gay, but that’s just a part of who she was. There’s so much more to both of these characters that… you’re not defined by your sexuality.” When asked why other, less tolerant people can’t see things that way, Sheth responded, “I don’t even know how people think [like that]!”

Since both films are quite unique in that they show love stories from very different perspectives (the layers of race, gender, and sexuality in Unseen, or love vs. traditional family values in a modern, yet still oppressive setting in Straight), there has been a tremendous response from lesbians around the world – including many who haven’t seen the films yet.

“I get emails almost daily now from people saying ‘thank you for making these movies, even though we haven’t seen them yet, it’s nice to know they’re out there,'” said Sarif. “So yeah, it was time for representation of something else, and we’re really happy to know that both movies will be opening in India theatrically, on the art house circuit there.” Kattan agreed. “I get a lot of emails and feedback from women of Middle Eastern and Arab backgrounds who haven’t come out,” she said. “They [admire us], especially because they know how difficult it is from our background to sort of come out and live with integrity and openness and have a wife and two children, the whole thing. So there’s a lot of support, certainly.”

And though there has been some backlash, both women are incredibly hopeful for the future, as evidenced by their all-inclusive view of filmmaking. With both I Can’t Think Straight and The World Unseen, Sarif and Kattan are interested in making work that speaks to everyone, regardless of sexuality or nationality or culture.

“It’s very much ‘world cinema,’ actually,” said Kattan. “[It’s] independent world cinema with a crossover appeal. We don’t see [our movies] as gay or gay and lesbian – well, they’re very strong in that sense, but we see them as crossover films.”

“I think I’m a bit idealistic when I say this,” admitted Sarif, “because I know we’re not actually there yet as a society, but I really do long for a time, that I will get to see in my lifetime, where we don’t have to consider films based on that anymore … [That’s] the way it should be, so that when somebody sees a love story, and if it happens to be between two women, they can still be engaged with the characters and feel their journey.”

Sarif believes the universal themes of the films help them cross over to other audiences.

Sarif and Kattan have taken their respective “DIY” sensibilities well beyond the scope of most small, independent filmmakers. They’ve created works that have enormous crossover appeal, and production values good enough to turn heads at major international film festivals – such as the BFI London, the Phoenix International (where Sarif was named the “best director” in the world cinema category), and the prestigious Toronto International Film Festival.

And they aren’t taking a break anytime soon. They’re currently in pre-production for a third adaptation of a novel, Sarif’s Despite the Falling Snow, which Sarif described as “a tale of passion and betrayal in the cold war set in Moscow.”

Kattan added, “We have a few other films in development as well. And we’re working on the soundtrack of I Can’t Think Straight, and a couple of single videos as well. It’s quite a busy year ahead of us.”

After a short pause, Sarif laughed good-naturedly,”We’re becoming a multi-media giant now!”