A Film in Development

Streetcar to Calcutta: Interview with filmmaker Kavery Kaul
SHAIK MOHAMED MUSA
Streetcar to Calcutta follows writer Fatima Shaik, who is Christian and African American, on a cinematic journey from New Orleans, the city of her birth, to Calcutta, the birthplace of the Muslim grandfather she never knew. Hurricane Katrina washed away his hookah and many old family records and took her own father’s life. The Katrina disaster caused Fatima to want to explore the family tree that straddles two religions, two cultures and two cities worlds apart.

Her Christian African American family has lived in Louisiana for four generations. Her Muslim Bengali grandfather, Shaik Mohamed Musa, left India and settled in New Orleans in 1893. There he met and married Tennie Ford, an African American Catholic. Fatima’s grandparents raised their children near Congo Square, once the Sunday meeting place of African slaves. Fatima’s father and aunts were the only children on the block with Muslim names.

Traveling from New Orleans to Calcutta across geographical, spiritual and cultural borders, Fatima Shaik and the director will pool their expertise as a New Orleans writer and Bengali-speaking Calcutta-born filmmaker. In India, Fatima will become acquainted with Islam in daily life and investigate what Muslims there associate with Christianity. It is a story of Christianity and Islam, America and India, New Orleans and Calcutta.

Selected Works

Société
The true story of 15 free men of African descent who began a secret organization in 1836 that lasted more than 100 years -- and whose records were held until the 21st century by Shaik's father in the family closet.
Streetcar to Calcutta
Filmmaker Kavery Kaul follows Shaik as she retraces her Muslim grandfather's 19th century journey from a small village near Calcutta to the intimate community of 7th ward New Orleans.

Quick Links

ESSAYS ON CULTURE FOR THE NEW ORLEANS TRIBUNE------Book Review: The Warmth of Other Suns
Isabel Wilkerson’s first book, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, couldn’t have come out at a better time for black New Orleanians, who as 2010 statistics confirmed but our own hearts knew lost more than a third of our community in the last decade. As we reassess what we had – good and bad – what we miss and what matters, we may find instruction and solace in this book about a previous era of departures, comparing its lessons to our Diaspora. more...
Theater Review: A Free Man of Color
One of the biggest challenges for modern people trying to understand history is to conceive of the past beyond stereotypes. When we use Martin Luther King Jr. as an example of Civil Rights resistance, we must also consider the troops of housecleaners, preachers, construction workers, teachers and others earlier in the 20th century whose unyielding efforts made the movement work. In the 19th century, when we lionize Harriet Tubman and the brave people she brought to freedom, we must also cherish the imperfect people who did not escape. They are our Southern ancestors. And when we think of pre-Civil War America, we can’t simply conceive of black slavery and white masters – especially in New Orleans. We must consider the people of color who were both owners and, at various times and in various ways, enslaved. more...
ESSAYS FROM NEW ORLEANS POST-KATRINA ----------- Masking New Orleans
Chronically Displaced in New Orleans
Priced Out of the Parade
Mardi Gras Flame
Christmas in New Orleans
Fatima Shaik is a tenured faculty member in Saint Peter's College Communications Department.
Online Program Archive 05/​04/​2006 Video with Roscoe Brown "African American Legends"