UPCOMING SCREENING

Official Selection for the Mahindra Indo-American Arts Council Film Festival. November 7th-11th 2007. Tickets at www.iaac.us

Hearts Suspended is the untold story of legal US immigrant spouses who are denied the basic human right to work, revealed through the filmmaker’s personal struggles.








SYNOPSIS

Hearts Suspended is a short autobiographical documentary that reveals how highly educated South Asian immigrant women struggle to survive in the United States on their H4 or dependent spouse visas, which deny them work authorization. Once independent, now completely dependent, they face loneliness, depression, loss of self-identity, strained marital relations and — in extreme cases — exploitation and abuse.
Through a unique expressionistic combination of visuals, monologue, verite footage and interviews, the film takes us on a journey into the director inner turmoil’s, search for spiritual strength and eventual resolve to bring hope and political change for other women who are frozen in time because of the restrictive nature of this visa

Screening Schedule: Nov 8th, 6 pm, Newport Mall, NJ. Nov 10th, 8:30 pm, Loews AMC 19th and Broadway Manhattan. Tickets available at http://www.iaac.us/



DIRECTOR'S BIO

Meghna Damani grew up in Mumbai, India, where she did her master's in marketing. She worked at J Walter Thompson in Mumbai for two-and-a-half years in the Account Management Department on various Unilever accounts. Also a journalist and model, she came to the United States in 2002. Unauthorized to work on her ‘dependent spouse’ visa, her struggles inspired her first film Hearts Suspended.

She also finds expression through painting, photography and poetry. Meghna is fascinated by the blending cultures in New York, especially the South Asian American, and is keen on sharing their unique struggles, hopes, dreams, and victories through her films.

She believes that the purpose of art is to create harmony and she wishes to accomplish this in her films. A Documentary Film Graduate of the New School in Manhattan, she lives in Jersey City, NJ.

DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT

This film was born one afternoon in a coffee shop below my apartment in Jersey City, New Jersey. As I looked through the glass windows, at the Manhattan skyline with the Hudson river whispering to it gently, for a fraction of an instant I lost concept of time. I felt I was on Marine Drive in Bombay overlooking the jeweled skyline nicknamed as the ‘Queen’s necklace’. In that moment I knew that I was neither here nor there – I was truly suspended between the two countries, two realities and two identities – independent and dependent.

I was not complete in this country despite being here for 5 yrs because of my ‘dependent spouse’ visa status that did not allow me to work despite my Masters and 3 years of work experience. I could not understand this law. My spiritual practice of chanting ‘Nam Myoho Renge Kyo’ with the SGI (http://www.sgi.org/) gave me strength to turn this humungous blank period of my life into something that creates value, for, I learnt, it is because of the very muck that the lotus blooms.

This film is a piece of my life that I hope will tell the story of the thousands of educated women like myself who come here every year as doctors, lawyers, architects, business professionals, artists, etc. and are forced to stay at home for an indefinite period of time. Many are abused, exploited or in just plain denial that they have lost the most precious years of their lives – irrevocably .