Eisha Marjara Bio
Eisha Marjara
Writer, director
With a background in photography, Montreal-based filmmaker Eisha Marjara first drew attention with the witty and satirical The Incredible Shrinking Woman which showed off her skills as writer, cinematographer and director. But it was her feature NFB docudrama Desperately Seeking Helen (2000) that established her as a groundbreaking filmmaker. The film received the Critic’s Choice Award at the Locarno Film Festival and the Jury Prize at the München Dokumentarfilm Festival. It has been described as “one of the most auspicious film debuts on the Canadian scene.” Her German-Canadian The Tourist (2006) was nominated as best short at the Female Eye Film Festival and her transgender drama House For Sale (2012) received multiple awards at various international film festivals.
Marjara recently completed her first feature Venus a dramatic comedy produced by Joe Balass, about a transgender woman who discovers she is the father of a fourteen year old boy. Venus is slated for release in the fall of 2017.
Her affecting photo series and essay on the Air India tragedy of flight 182 entitled Remember me Nought was featured in the fall 2013 issue of Descant magazine. Marjara also authored her debut novel Faerie, about a teenager struggling with anorexia. Faerie received rave receives in Canadian and American press including a star review in US Publisher’s Weekly.
She is now developing the feature film Calorie with Compass Productions. It was selected for the 2014/15 Praxis Screenwriters Lab, mentored by screenwriter Guinevere Turner (American Psycho, The Notorious Bettie Page). Marjara also received development funding from the Harold Greenberg Fund and she has been selected for the 2017 TIFF Studio.
Filmmaker website: www.eishamarjara.com