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Maya Darpan and Tarang director Kumar Shahani passes away at 83
Veteran filmmaker Kumar Shahani known for ground-breaking films like Maya Darpan and Tarang passed away on Friday at the age of 83.
Trigger Warning: This article contains mention of death.
Veteran filmmaker Kumar Shahani passed away on Friday in Kolkata at the age of 83. A report published in Indian Express confirmed the news of the filmmaker’s unfortunate demise. He was known for his acclaimed works in parallel cinema and for making ground-breaking films like Maya Darpan and Tarang. He was an alumnus of FTII. Apart from direction and unique storytelling style, he was also a celebrated teacher and author.
About Kumar Shahani
Shahani was born in 1940 in Larkana, Pakistan. From 1958 and 1962, he studied political science and history at the University of Bombay. He later went to attend film school, FTII in Pune. He was also granted a scholarship to study at IDHEC in Paris. In the capacity of a renowned teacher and cinema theorist, his collection of essays, titled The Shock of Desire and Other Essays, published by Tulika Books in 2015, contained 51 essays.
He also moved to France and assisted French director Robert Bresson on his film Une Femme Douce. He hailed Ghatak and Bresson as his educators. The filmmaker aimed to narrate everyday life in his two personal movies, Khayal Gatha and Bhavantarana which were based on dance and music.
Illustrious works by Kumar Shahani
To tell you more about Kumar Shahani, in an illustrious long career spanning over six decades, he directed several films like Khayal Gatha (1989), and Kasba (1990). Among other significant films in parallel cinema, his 1972 release, Maya Darpan was based on the short story by Hindi writer Nirmal Verma and won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi.
In addition to this, he also helmed Char Adhyay in 1997 which was inspired by Rabindranath Tagore’s novel. The film unravels around a group of young academics and revolutionaries during the Bengali Renaissance of the 1930s and 1940s.
In an earlier interview in 2022, Shahani opened up on his film Maya Darpan. Spilling beans on the occasion of its golden jubilee, the director had said, “What I wanted to do was to take into account the way our traditions are surviving in popular art. Both folk and popular art always have epic elements. Even pulp literature is a distortion of the epic form. When When Maya Darpan was made, the Euro-American response was enthusiastic.”
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