Veteran film director Kumar Shahani passes away- Cinema express

Acclaimed arthouse director and one of the pioneers of the Indian Parallel Cinema movement Kumar Shahani died in Kolkata on Saturday after a fall, as per reports. He was 83. Shahani was known for helming films like Maya Darpan (1972), Tarang (1984), Khayal Gatha (1989) and Kasba (1990).

The director was born on December 7, 1940, in Larakana, Sindh (now Pakistan). His family shifted to Mumbai (then Bombay) after the Partition. He studied Political Science and History at the University of Bombay, after which he enrolled at the Film and Television Institute of India in Pune, where he studied screenplay writing and Advanced Direction. Here he studied under the non-conformist director Ritwik Ghatak. Shahani and Mani Kaul later emerged to be Ghatak’s most well-known students. Later, Shahani went to France and assisted Robert Bresson on his film Une Femme Douce. He always considered Bresson and Roberto Rossellini as major influences on his work.

Shahani made his first film Maya Darpan in 1972. It was adapted from a short story by Nirmal Verma. The film won a National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi and a Filmfare Award- Best Film (Critics). Next, he made Tarang (1984) starring Amol Palekar and Smita Patil. In the film, Palekar plays an amoral businessman who gets involved with a trade union leader’s wife, played by Patil.

His third feature Khayal Gatha (1989) is a fictionalised representation of the evolution of khayal singing in Hindustani classical music. He also made Char Adhyay (1997), inspired by the Rabindranath Tagore novel. The film is set in the Bengali Renaissance of the 1930s and 1940s and is about a group of young intellectuals and revolutionaries involved with the Indian Independence Movement. It deals with the impact of political issues on personal lives questions blind nationalism and blind adherence to a leader and delves into the ugly face of idealism.

Apart from these, Shahani also directed several short films and documentaries, including Bhavantarana (1991) and The Bamboo Flute (2000).