Queen's to honour filmmaker; Deepa Mehta has been burned in effigy and now she will be immortalized

She's been burnt in effigy by Hindu religious fundamentalists in the sacred city of Benares, India. Now Indo-Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta is being feted by scholars in the Limestone City.

She will receive her honorary degree as well as address new graduates at a Queen's University fall convocation ceremony tomorrow at 9:30 a.m. And tonight, there will be a free screening of her film, Water, a nominee at this year's Academy Awards for best foreign-language film.

Just about to begin shooting of her latest film Heaven on Earth, Mehta was too busy to be interviewed for this story.

"She's quite courageous for handling contentious subjects most shy away from," says Reena Kukreja, who teaches a course in Hindi language cinema at Queen's University and is herself a documentary filmmaker.

"She doesn't hesitate to address subjects that are deeply problematic. In this case, lesbian relationships were quite taboo and not discussed in other Hindi cinema. She didn't hesitate to take the bull by the horns."

. It was 2000 and it was sacrilegious to them that someone they considered a heretic was going to shoot her film on the banks of their sacred river the Ganges. So on the night, before shooting was to begin, the extremists rioted and burned her set.

"The Hindu religious right had gained political power at the time and they wanted to protect an idealized Indian past that had no flaws," says Kukreja. "There was no room in it for lesbianism or criticizing the Hindu tradition of putting away widows."

She decided to make a film that was all fun, and the result was Bollywood/Hollywood. Set in Toronto, it's a comedy about a young Indo-Canadian millionaire trying to find a bride so he can get his traditional parents off his back. C

Bollywood/Hollywood was the beginning a collaboration between Mehta and Mongrel Media, whose president, Hussain Amarshi, is a Queen's grad as well as the founder of the Kingston International Film Festival, which ran here in the late 80s and early '90s.