Desperately Seeking Helen is a 1998 documentary by Eisha Marjara, produced by the National Film Board of Canada.^[1]

It documents the life of the Bollywood star Helen and also discusses Marjara's process of self-discovery.^[2] Marjara liked Helen as a child, and Marjara stated "Helen is a conduit into my childhood — my relationship with my mother, my struggle with anorexia and the Air India disaster which took the lives of my mother and sister."^[3] Jerry Pinto, author of Helen: The Life and Times of an H-bomb, wrote that the film "is as much about Eisha Marjara's perception of Helen as it is about Helen."^[4] Desperately Seeking Helen uses Hindi music.^[2]

The film covers the complications in the relationship between Marjara and her mother,^[5] Devinder.^[6] Marjara had the perception that her mother was unable to balance the culture of Canada against that of India, and Devinder was more feminine and traditional compared to her daughter.^[2] The film also discusses the 1985 Air India Flight 182 bombing,^[7] which ultimately killed Davinder along with Seema, one of Marjara's sisters.^[6]

D.B. Jones, the author of "Brave New Film Board," wrote that the filmmaker "verges on self-pity and often seems self-absorbed, but she can also be brutally honest about herself."^[5] Sabeena Gadihoke, the author of "Secrets and Inner Voices: The Self and Subjectivity in Contemporary Indian Documentary," wrote that the "deeply personal" film "did not easily fit popular conceptions of documentary" since it had a "fictive structure in which the filmmaker staged her own body" as well as "reflexive use of humor" and "whimsy".^[8] Angela Failler argued that the film was what had been described as a "counter-memorial" of the Air India Flight 182 disaster.^[9]

The National Film Board selected Marjara to make a film on the Air India Flight 182 disaster in 1994. She did research by visiting Trois-Rivières and taking one trip to India.^[3] The title is a reference to the 1985 film Desperately Seeking Susan.^[7]

Marjara dedicated her film to Air India Flight 182 victims, including Davinder and Seema.^[10]

The film's first screening in India was during the Mumbai International Film Festival (MIFF).^[11]

It was ranked as the "Theater Critic's Choice" in the Chicago Reader in 1999.^[12] Firdaus Ali of Rediff wrote that the film received "rave reviews".^[2] Gadihoke stated that in India the film received some criticism due to a perception that it was "self-absorbed"; Gadihoke argued that this was because the film used "strategies unfamiliar to documentary discourse in India at the time."^[11]

It earned a Special Mention from Planet Television at the 2000 Internationales Dokumentarfilmfestival München. At the 1999 Locarno Film Festival, it won the prestigious SRG SSR Award and the Silver Pardino - Leopards of Tomorrow award.^[1]

• Failler, Angela. "Remembering the Air India Disaster: Memorial and Counter-Memorial." Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies 31 (2009). p. 166-172.

• (in French, German, and Italian) "Desperately Seeking Helen" (Archive). Semaine de la critique (Locarno Film Festival).
• Article on "Desperately seeking Helen"
• Ali, Firdaus. "In search of a vamp" (Archive). Rediff. April 24, 2000.
• Marjara and "Desperately seeking Helen" at the NFB Canada Archived 2008-05-09 at the Wayback Machine
• [1] https://www.webcitation.org/6UGpwhsxA?url= Archived 2014-11-29 at the Wayback Machine