A homage to SHYAM BENEGAL: WHO SOWED ‘ANKUR’ OF NEW PARALLEL CINEMA

 A homage to

SHYAM BENEGAL: WHO SOWED ‘ANKUR’ OF NEW PARALLEL CINEMA

And Told Raw & Real Stories About the Ordinary People of ‘Bharat’

Shyam Benegal (1934-2024), championed the New-Wave parallel cinema movement and was an art auteur launching the careers of the then over a dozen talent-spotted unknowns like Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri, Smita Patil, Shabana Azmi, Anant Nag, Shama Zaidi, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Pankaj Kapoor, Manoj Bajpayee, Rajat Kapoor, Atul Tiwari, Govind Nihalani, Vijay Tendulkar, Vanraj Bhatia, and others by making socially conscious films and created pathbreaking TV content over five decades since 1970, breathed his last in a Mumbai hospital on Monday night, December 23, 2024.

Benegal, who celebrated his 90th birthday on Dec 14 last with a host of his much-celebrated film personalities, looked quite jovial and strong, while no one had even imagined that his end would come so soon, within a week’s interval. This heartwarming group photo from the celebration has served as a poignant reminder of the iconic director’s legacy and the lives he touched. The late filmmaker celebrated his life’s milestone birthday flunked by Bollywood celebrities and shared by Shabana Azmi on her X-handle, which had gone viral after his sudden demise.

Born in 1934 in Trimulgheri, a cantonment town of Hyderabad State, British India (now in Telangana, India), was the son of a still photographer. He was a member of the Chitrapur Saraswat Brahmin family which spoke Konkani. His father gifted him a camera, which he used to make his first film at 12. His career started as an advertising copywriter in 1959 and later made ad films and documentaries before shifting to cinema and television.

During the initial stages of filmmaking, he had struggled a lot for financers. His stint as an academic at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) drew him closer to the celluloid tinsel world. But his bleak stories had no takers among producers. But as the good fortune smiled, Lalit Bijlani of Blaze Advertising Company eventually stepped in for the rescue.

For both Ankur and Nishant, the storyline was set in the feudal lands of Telangana, a region under the rule of Nizams. It was the world Benegal had seen up close in his formative years. Touted as his most striking works, the narrative, and characters were situated in a rural milieu with a distinct dialect and attendant class-cast equations. Releasing around the time of the Emergency, the two films spurred a huge movement of the sorts and cemented his reputation as the reigning high priest of the ‘New Wave’.

Benegal was a prolific Hindi filmmaker and an unchallenged leader in the New-Age Indian cinema movement that had distinguished him from others through his mesmerizing and authentic works on Ankur; The Seeding (1974), Manthan (1976), Bhumika (1977), Junoon (1979), Kalyug (1981), Trikaal (1995), Suraj Ka Satwan Ghoda (1992), Mammo (1994), Hari Bhari (2000), Bharat Ki Khoj (TV), and Susman, the weary lives of Pochampalli saree weavers.

Apart from making biopics on Mahatma Gandhi and Subhas Chandra Bose, he used a non-traditional narrative form to explore famous lives. His first venture was a documentary on Oscar-winning director late Satyajit Ray in 1985 while his most recent film was the 023 ‘Mujib: the Making of a Nation’.

He was the recipient of several prestigious awards including Padma Shri, Padma Bhushan, and Dadasaheb Phalke Awards, besides 18 national awards and Palme d”Or nominations at Cannes for Nishant, in his coveted kitty.

With his sudden demise, the world of Indian art films received a severe jolt and sought another Benegal-like persona to step in the icon’s shoes to fill up the deep void created in the icon’s absence.

By Prof. (Dr.) Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya

(The writer is a Hyderabad-based distinguished freelance author, journo, speaker, leadership coach, and Emeritus Professor of Management Studies)