Steven Spielberg plans film based on Indo-Pak border (& Dreamworks one on MLK)

Steven Spielberg plans film based on Indo-Pak border

MUMBAI: The childhood prodigy who made movies on 8mm cameras grew up to become the world's most famous filmmaker a long time ago. But life can still throw up surprises for commercially and critically acclaimed producer-director Steven Spielberg. In a moment that could have been straight out of one of his iconic Indiana Jones movies, he recently came across what he describes as a "treasure trove of photographic negatives from a 35mm still camera".

While much has been written about Spielberg, it is not generally known that his father, Arnold, served as a technical sergeant with the 490th Bombardment Squadron, nicknamed the 'Burma Bridge Busters' during World War II. The squadron was stationed in Karachi and bombed Japanese railway lines and bridges in Burma. For rest and recuperation, Spielberg's father would visit Bombay and Calcutta—as they were then known—and other places in India.

"About two years ago, I was going through a lot of my dad's things. We found three boxes full of my dad's love letters to my mom and her letters back to him. So I set up the video camera and my dad and I went through them. Some were too personal but my dad (who is now 96) read others out loud while I filmed him. At the bottom of one of the boxes, I found three sealed envelopes of about 9 by 4 inches each.

"When I opened them, it was the negatives of 400 still photographs which my father hadn't gotten developed. I had a lab print each one as an 8 by 10 inch photo, and I saw my father's entire history in Karachi, Bombay and Calcutta and other cities in India during WWII."

....

"DreamWorks-Reliance is also planning a movie on Martin Luther King Jr. I wouldn't call it a biopic, it's more a story of King and the movement and also about how his admiration for Mahatma Gandhi helped to shape his moral core," replied Spielberg. "About the slavery issue, it's very hard for me to wrap my mind around how a group of people could ever—for profit or power—enslave another group of people.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Steven-Spielberg-plans-film-based-on-Indo-Pak-border/articleshow/18916601.cms