Water: Diasporic Cinema and the Transcendence of Genre

Film as Text. In Water, filmmaker Deepa Mehta displays the creative restraint and political wisdom of a filmmaker who has understood that a film can transcend its context as well as the limitations and expectations of the 'genre shelf'. Water uses the drama genre as a foundation, but also improvises with its own lyricism and appropriation of elements from specific national cinemas and world cinema auteurs.