Living in the United States immediately after 9/11, Indian filmmaker Meghna Haldar began to feel distinctly foreign. She felt dirty, she says. So she took up her camera to explore ideas of dirtiness and purity, of "us" and "them", of sacred and profane. The product is a film called Dirt.
In it, Haldar talks with a wide range of people: sex workers in Canada; priests and soil biologists in the US; artisans, cleaners and her family in India.
You can hear Haldar's musings on dirt, and clips from the film, in the audio portrait below.
![Haldar also talks with the priest at an American "dirt" church<br>© www.nfb.ca - http://onf-nfb.gc.ca/eng/collection/film/?id=53616](http://cdn.radionetherlands.nl/data/files/imagecache/rnw_slideshow/images/image/article/2011/09/priest.jpg "Haldar also talks with the priest at an American "dirt" church")
![Animation brings Haldar's "dirty" dreams to life in Dirt<br>© www.nfb.ca - http://onf-nfb.gc.ca/eng/collection/film/?id=53616](http://cdn.radionetherlands.nl/data/files/imagecache/rnw_slideshow/images/image/article/2011/09/animation.jpg "Animation brings Haldar's "dirty" dreams to life in Dirt")
!["Nothing is so sacred that it can not become profane... Gravity pulls us into dirt."<br>© www.nfb.ca - http://onf-nfb.gc.ca/eng/collection/film/?id=53616](http://cdn.radionetherlands.nl/data/files/imagecache/rnw_slideshow/images/image/article/2011/09/ganges_final.jpg ""Nothing is so sacred that it can not become profane... Gravity pulls us into di")
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