When the Academy Awards nominations were announced on Thursday morning, many observers noted that just as in the past this year too there is a complete lack of recognition for people of color. All day the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite was trending in the US.
But in a quiet little way the Academy did show some amount of diversity in its nominations by recognizing four South Asians – Asif Kapadia (for his documentary Amy ), Sanjay Patel (for his short animation film Sanjay’s Super Team ), Pakistani documentary filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid Chenoy for A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness (her second nomination, as she won an Oscar for her 2012 short Saving Face ). And even though his name was not mentioned during the nominations event, Los Angeles-based Aditya Sood is listed as one of the producers for The Martian (nominated in seven categories, including best picture).
Kapadia’s explosive biography on the short and tragic life of singer Amy Winehouse has been in the news since its May 2015 premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. Chenoy has explored important social issues in Pakistan from acid attacks on women in Saving Face to honor killings in her new nominated film. She divides her time between Karachi and New York.
But little is known about Sanjay Patel — a Los Angeles-based animator who is quickly becoming a star at Disney’s Pixar studio. Patel has worked as an animator on some of Pixar’s top celebrated films — Toy Story 2 , Toy Story 3 , Monsters, Inc. and Cars . But for his short Sanjay’s Super Team he took a piece of his childhood and made a sweet little autobiographical film, which in a way is a homage to his father.
Son of Gujarati immigrants, the London-born Patel moved with his family to California at the age of four. His father bought a motel in San Bernardino, California. Patel grew up in the motel helping his father at the front desk but mostly immersed in his passion for drawing cartoon characters and watching animation shows on television.
But each time the cartoon shows would come on television, Patel’s father would want to pray to Hindu gods. And Patel and his older brother would be forced to join the rituals. “My dad would pray three times a day — morning, afternoon and night,” Patel told me last year at the Telluride Film Festival where his short was programed with the documentary He Named Me Malala . “Morning and afternoon was when the cartoons would come on. But there would be no conversation since we would start to sing aarti. And he would turn off the cartoons. But I wanted to watch Voltron . In the morning there would be Japanese cartoons and American ones in the afternoon. And they would both come diametrically in conflict with my dad’s pujas.”
What made the matter worse was that Patel’s father never gave his sons the context of Hinduism and who the gods were in Hindu mythology. “Sure I grew up with the names,” he added. “But would I know that Hanuman was the son of the wind god? Or that Krishna was an avatar of Vishnu? Of course not.”
It was only later as an adult that Patel read books about Hinduism. He has now authored four books on Hinduism — all in style of animation. The books — The Little Book of Hindu Deities: From the Goddess of Wealth to the Sacred Cow (2006), Ramayana: Divine Loophole (2010), The Big Poster Book of Hindu Deities (2011) and Ganesha’s Sweet Tooth (2012) have been huge successes.
For his most ambitious project — the seven-minute film Sanjay’s Super Team , Patel got a lot of support from Pixar’s Chief Creative Officer John Lasseter. His message to Patel was to tell a personal story and the audiences would connect with it. And so in the film a young Patel recalls his father forcing him pray to Hindu gods and goddesses. To save himself from boredom, the young Patel imagines Hanuman, Vishnu and Durga as superheroes who fight evil.
Sanjay’s Super Team is a lovely way for an immigrant to understand his roots and also to walk mainstream audiences through his life story. The film premiered along with Disney-Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur and played in multiplexes across America. And if Pixar’s track record is to be believe, on February 28 Patel may walk up to pick his first Oscar statue.
