Originally a sociology concentrator, a portfolio of landscape photographs gained Nair entrance into the nascent Visual and Environmental Studies (VES) department, capped at ten students per year.

“It changed my life,” she says.

But she wasn’t passionate about photography.

“It was not my personality,” she says. “I liked working with people more.”

Filmmaking allowed her to “dream in images and say something about life.” In its second year of existence, Harvard’s film department was still “basic.”

“We did everything ourselves, from camera to sound to cutting negatives,” Nair says.

Though the equipment was obsolete, VES professors’ passion infused Nair with a desire to make films and introduced her to various directors and styles. And as a sophomore, she met Sooni R. Taraporevala ’79, who now writes Nair’s screenplays.

For her senior thesis, Nair submitted the 18-minute Jama Masjid Street Journal. The documentary observes and interacts with a Muslim community in old Delhi.

While Nair is now self-conscious about the short, it caught producer D.A. Pennebaker’s attention, who found Nair a grant to make her next film, So Far from India.

“I was lucky that I found my vocation while I was at Harvard without any intention of finding film,” Nair says. “That’s what I’m meant to do and it’s a blessing to find that early in life.”

South Asian filmmaking style is nicknamed “Bollywood,” in reference to the “Bombay Hollywood” movie machine that produces ready-made blockbusters distributed in India, the U.K., the U.S. and Australia.

Such movies are recognized by “stock themes,” according to Lecturer on Sanskrit and Indian Studies Rena Fonseca. Typical plot lines include hostile parents, generations of family drama and boy-meets-girl-boy-weds-girl, all mixed in with a heavy dose of exotic locales, dancing and songs—and of course, the inevitable happy ending.

“While it has been fashionable among Indian intellectuals to put down Bollywood films (not without justification), many are great fun and some recently have even tackled more serious subjects,” Fonseca writes in an e-mail.

Nair has called her filmmaking style “Bollywood on my own terms.” While Nair’s films certainly have the flavor, music and color typical of Indian filmmaking, something beyond Bollywood draws the viewer’s attention.

“My films are generally a bit of a circus,” Nair laughs. “I just can’t imagine making a movie of two people eating sushi. I aspire to make cinema that reflects density, complicatedness of life and that celebrates people.”