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These young Indian-origin artistes's talents help them live the Hollywood dream
Updated On: 02 April, 2023 09:21 AM IST | Mumbai | Jane Borges
Young Indian-origin artistes in love with the business of making movies and music tell us how they are realising their big Hollywood dream
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Harsimmar Singh, who works as a senior compositor with visual effects company Weta FX, contributed to James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water; Mayanka Goel recently won the $10,000 writing award from the Alfred P Sloan Foundation, an American nonprofit that has previously supported Academy Award-winning films like The Imitation Game and Rafiq Bhatia is one part of the Son Lux trio, which bagged an Oscar nomination for the soundtrack in the film, Everything, Everywhere All At Once. Pic Courtesy/John Klukas
Apart from the “total banger” of a live performance of Naatu Naatu, the Oscars 2023 also had a more dreamy and mysterious display of music by American experimental band Son Lux that along with singers David Byrne and Stephanie Hsu, performed This Is A Life from Everything, Everywhere All At Once. Rafiq Bhatia, who was on the guitars at the performance, and is one part of the Son Lux trio, which bagged a nomination for their soundtrack in the film, is among the Indian origin artistes we almost forgot to celebrate. “The Oscars performance was definitely the largest scale production we’ve ever been part of. We really have to hand it to choreographer Ryan Heffington, who served as a kind of creative director, for bringing so much of the silliness of the film to the stage, while also keeping the simple and poignant message of the song in focus,” Bhatia tells us in an email interview. The performance had David Byrne show off the prosthetic hot dog hands from the film. “It was fun seeing the look of pure joy on his [Byrne’s] face when we told him that we had heard someone who had been working at the Academy for the past 20-something years say that ours was the weirdest performance they had ever seen at the Oscars,” adds Bhatia.
While Son Lux may not have taken home the Oscar, Bhatia says he is delighted to have worked on a film “that not only puts forward Asian actors, but also truly centres and speaks to a version of the Asian immigrant experience”. “As a kid, I almost never saw films with actors from Asia in Hollywood, and certainly not ones that told our stories without being reductive or stereotypical.”
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