"I got a call from a cinematographer friend who read about it on the website of The Hollywood Reporter.” That is how visual effects (VFX) specialist Scheherazade (Sherry) Bharda (pictured) learnt about her nomination as member of the USA’s Academy of 
Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in the early hours of July 2, 2019. Film professionals need to be sponsored for membership of the Academy by a member who is a peer in the same field of expertise. "I don’t know who gave in my name... It is good to know that one’s work is well recognized by one’s colleagues,” she told Parsiana in a telephonic interview on July 30. While all of the approximately 8,000 members of the Academy vote on Oscar nominees and awardees for the "Best picture” of the year, only peers in the same field vote for nominees and winners in special categories like visual effects, Bharda explained.
As a founding member of Yash Raj Studios’ in-house VFX department, where she has worked since 2016, Bharda was a part of the team that made a success of box-office hits of such films as Sultan, Hickhi and Tiger Zinda Hai, wrote her father Phiroze in an email from Bangalore where he resides. The international films under her belt include The Darkest Hour, Gulliver’s Travels and Jack the Giant Slayer. The technical specialist started her career in special effects at Western Outdoors 20 years ago where she worked mainly on advertisements and films like Lagaan, Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham and Mohabbatein. As supervisor at Tata Elxsi Visual Computing Labs, she has to her credit films like Taare Zamin Par, Rang De Basanti and Neerja.
While the Aamir Khan-directed 2001 film Lagaan was the first feature length movie she worked on, 15 years later for Neerja, her team was called in after the aircraft built to look like a hijacked plane resembled a "supremely dented tube.” All long distance shots of the hijacked Pan-Am aircraft in that movie were the handiwork of her team. Scheherazade says: "I love working with young people.... I see myself doing this for as long as I have the strength to do so... I do not see myself retiring ever.”
A student of Bangalore’s Bishop Cotton School, Scheherazade graduated from Bombay’s Sydenham College in the late 1980s. She says she loves to cook, like mother Freny, whose culinary skills she calls "fabulous.” Phiroze retired after a career with the Tatas. The artist considers herself "a proud Zoroastrian following the middle path.”
Besides Scheherazade, directors Zoya Akhtar, Anurag Kashyap and veteran actor Anupam Kher are among the new members invited by the Academy, stated the Business Standard of July 2. Photographer and filmmaker Sooni Taraporevala became a member in 2017 (see "Bombay ballet boys’ virtual reality,” Parsiana, July 21, 2017).
A total of 842 members from 59 countries were nominated to the Academy in 2019. For the first time in its history, the Academy reached gender parity among its inductees, noted Time magazine on July 2. Half of the new invitees are women. In 10 of the 17 branches, more women than men were invited.