Ismail Merchant (25 December 1936 – 25 May 2005) was an Indian-born film producer and director. He worked for many years in collaboration with Merchant Ivory Productions which included director (and Merchant's longtime professional and domestic partner) James Ivory as well as screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Their films won six Academy Awards.Born Ismail Noor Md. Abdul Rahman in Bombay (Mumbai), he was the son of Hazra (maiden name, Memon) and Noor Mohamed Rehman, a Bombay textile dealer. He grew up bilingual in Gujarati and Urdu, and learned Arabic and English at school. When he was 11, he and his family were caught up in the 1947 partitioning of India. His father was president of the Muslim League, and refused to move to Pakistan. Merchant later said that he carried memories of the 'butchery and riots' into adulthood. As a child at the age of 9, he delivered a speech about partition at a political rally in front of a crowd of 10,000. He met his first mentor in 1949 thanks to family networks. Consequently, at the age of 13 he developed a close friendship with Nimmi, an Indian film actress in her twenties, who introduced him to the studios of Bombay (which was the hub of India's films). It was she who inspired his ambitious rise to stardom. He studied at St. Xavier's College, Bombay & received a BA degree of University of Bombay. It was here that he developed his love for movies. When he was 22, he went to the USA to study at New York University and received an MBA degree, while in New York he gave up his family name of Abdul Rehman, for Merchant. He supported himself by working as a messenger for the UN and used this opportunity to persuade Indian delegates to fund his film projects. He said of this experience "I was not intimidated by anyone or anything". Immersed in a new world of art and culture, it was here that Merchant discovered the films of Bengali director Satyajit Ray, as well as those by European artists such as Ingmar Bergman, Vittorio De Sica, and Federico Fellini. In 1961, he made a short film, The Creation of Woman. It was shown at Cannes Film Festival and received an Academy Award nomination.

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