Mrinal Sen
An elusive actor is a rarity. Talking Head is about the actor Dhritiman Chaterji. In October 1970, Pratidwandi (The Adversary) one of Satyajit Ray’s most political films was released. It was a film about the time; the moment of anger, disenchantment, strikes, injustice and unemployment among the young. It was a film about angry youth and it introduced Dhritiman Chaterji, into film acting. A new actor in Bengali cinema, Dhritiman Chaterji acted in few of the most prominent films of the decade
Indian documentary about Indian film history and P. K. Nair, the founder of the National Film Archive of India and guardian of Indian cinema. He built the archive can by can in a country where the archiving of cinema was considered unimportant.
The film depicts a place of India where people live peacefully and love each other despite the hatred and violence that scars the rest of the nation.
The Indian entry in the BFI’s Century of Cinema series of documentaries
The mistress of a wealthy man, alone in her huge apartment and terribly lonely, phones strangers in the middle of the night. One night she phones a young writer, and as the days pass and the conversations continue a relationship forms between two people who've never seen each other.
When the elderly mother of a Kolkata middle-class family commits suicide, no one has the courage to read the old woman's diary. When the eldest son returns from Germany, his anxious questioning brings to light the disorientation experienced by the family and the way world history penetrates into the fabric of individual lives.
Shasanka (Sreeram Lgoo) is a retired teacher who lives with his wife and two daughters. The family is thrown into an uproar after he goes out for a walk and disappears from their lives. Each member of the family reviews her final hours and days with him to try and discover what, if anything led to his disappearance. The only clue anyone is able to discover is an envelope on which is written the name of one of his former students. When they visit her, however, she is unable (or unwilling) to enlighten them. Why did he go for a walk during a heavy rainstorm? Where did he go? Bengali filmmaker Mrinal Sen isn't saying.
This is a simple, straightforward tale about the rise and fall of human civilization that focuses solely on four characters: a farmer (Naseeruddin Shah), a weaver (Om Puri), a trader (M.K. Raina), and a woman (Shabana Azmi). At the beginning of the story, the workers in a decaying village are offered food and water if they work for the local lords. The farmer and the weaver refuse. The farmer grows food for them both, and the weaver creates textiles that uses to barter with an itinerant trader. One day a frightened, lonely woman arrives on the scene and she is taken in by the two men. She cooks and cleans, and before long becomes a source of contention. Meanwhile, the trader is observing these events from the sidelines.
Subhash is a photographer from the city, who has come to take pictures of some old temples and ruins in a village. Ruins fascinate him. While in the village, he gets acquainted with a young woman, Jamini, who has had her heart broken in the past, by another visitor from the big city. Will history repeat itself, or will she find a way out of the ruins at last?
A pre-teen ager servant boy dies of carbon monoxide poisoning on a cold winter night. He was employed by a young working Calcutta couple (Anjan and Mamata) with a small boy of their own. Taking money from a neighbor's friendly daughter, he slipped away to watch a movie on a cold winter night. Finding his usual sleeping corner below the stairs too cold, he bolts himself inside the kitchen, where a fire was burning. The next morning we witness a powerful discovery scene like on the morning after Macbeth's murder. The door is forced open and we see the commotion in the apartment block which is the stage of the drama. Who is responsible?
7 September, 1980. A film crew comes to a village to make a film about a famine, which killed five million Bengalees in 1943. It was a man made famine, a side- product of the war, and the film crew will create the tragedy of those millions who died of starvation. The film documents the convivial life among the film crew and the hazards, problems and tension of film making on location. The actors live a double life, and the villagers, both simple and not-so-simple folk watch their work with wonder and suspicion. But as the film progresses, the recreated past begins to confront the present. The uneasy coexistence of 1943 and 1980 reveals bizarre connection, involving a village woman whose visions add a further dimension of time—that of future. A disturbing situation, indeed, for the “famine-seekers”! —mrinalsen.org
Burning with a desire to be a journalist, a young man gets his chance when a publisher -- the father of a friend -- suggests that he write a story on the daily life of the people in his house (several families worth of people). The material turns out to be too incohesive and abundant to work into a pointed, thematic article, and just when he is about to give up, his younger brother asks him a simple question: "How many coal burners are there in Calcutta?" This triggers an idea for a story about Calcutta's pollution -- and the aspiring journalist dreams of myriads of burner-toting citizens invading the publisher's home demanding redress. Maybe he is finally on the way to a story that matters.
After being accused wrongly of theft, a slightly addled servant runs away to the city, carrying as his only real possession an axe, which he claims to have killed a tiger with. He takes up life among India's throngs of city-dwelling homeless, and for a little while almost has a decent time of it. He has a girlfriend, and one good friend, and gets by through begging and doing odd jobs.
The bread-winning daughter in a middle-class family fails to return from work one evening. The saga begins with worries at home, followed by midnight searches and finally a deepening crisis arising out of economic and moral constraints prevalent in the society. Yet the film speaks of hope and of strength hidden behind despair.
A father living on the fringes of a village believes that working is a fool's errand, for the lord takes what little the workers make. When a young woman enters their home, tensions begin to rise and their idle life is threatened. The film is based on the story ‘Kafan’ by Munshi Premchand
A British administrator with a flair for game hunting develops a friendship with a commoner who is an expert archer in an Indian village. The movie portrays the relationship between the British colonialists, and native villagers who were exploited by Indian landlords in 1920s India. This happens against the backdrop of the awakening of the Indian people against the British rule.
A small company advertises for 100 vacancies and 30,000 apply. The applicants are all from the ranks of the poor and there is a virtual riot. Everyone around is seeking for opportunities. Among them are the applicants who desperately need the job, the photographer who is busy seeking a scoop, the village moneylender who is busy exploiting the poor, the ineffective police, the employers who are advertising posts even while a six month old strike has nearly caused the workmen to become destitute. It is a story of society captured in a tiny framework of a small business. Ultimately, the workmen, the unemployed and the farmers all get to gether to protest against this exploitation.
A political activist escapes the prison van and is sheltered in a posh apartment owned by a sensitive young woman. Both are rebels: the activist against political treachery and the other on social level. Both are bitter about badly organized state of things. Being in solitary confinement, the fugitive engages himself in self-criticism and, in the process, questions the leadership. Questions are not allowed, obeying that is mandatory. Displeasure leads to bitterness, bitterness to total rift. The struggle has to continue, both for the political activist, now segregated, and the woman in exile.
The spirit of a condemned 20-year-old student wanders through time, linking together four stories of people struggling for survival in this gritty meditation on poverty, natural disaster and political strife in India. A middle-class family's home is no match for the monsoons, while another clan's morality is compromised when famine strikes. Young boys smuggle rice, and politicians pity the poor while living in the lap of luxury.
Ek Adhuri Kahani is 1972 Hindi language movie directed by Mrinal Sen, starring Utpal Dutt, Shekhar Chatterjee, Vivek Chatterjee, Aarti Bhattacharya, Shyam and Shobha Sen. It was based on a Bengali story, Gotrantar by Subodh Ghosh.
The Tagore story is a pure fantasy. Shekar Chaterji, a teacher lives in a village along with his wife (Sova Sen) and his son. He is a strict father. And his son is a mischievous lad. His son's wayward ways is a constant source of irritation to Shekar Chaterji. Complaints from villagers about his misdeeds keep pouring in. Inspite of his strictness, Shekar Chaterji is unable to keep his son at bay. His son even dares to bunk from the class while he is teaching. His disciplinary actions create a gulf in the family relations. Both his wife and son are at loggerheads with him.
Ranjit is a young man who has been assured a lucrative job in an Indo-British firm by a family friend. All he has to do is turn up for the interview dressed in a western style suit. As luck would have it, all city laundries are on strike that morning, and his only suit is dirty. The film is a frantic search for a new suit to be borrowed from any of his friends, to make it in time for the interview.
Bhuvan Shome is a lonely widower, a proud old man and a strict disciplinarian. Looking back on the trodden path, strewn with staunch determination and drab attitudes, Bhuvan Shome, a throughtly unenchanted man, seeks escape in a holiday.
The film unfolds the history of India since the beginning of time to present day through the help of sculptures, paintings, photographs and live action shots. It highlights the Indian Independence Movement starting with the revolution in 1857, culminating with India declaring herself a sovereign Democratic Republic in 1950.
A young man still to find a place in the sun puts up an innocent bluff to a young girl he chances upon. They meet frequently since then. Bluffs continue to pile up. There is no way out. In a desperate bid the young man tries to break the wealth barrier. His friend, well placed in life, cautions him. He turns a deaf ear. The inevitable happens. The young man grows wiser but pays heavily for it.
Pratinidhi is a 1965 Bengali film directed by noted Indian art film director Mrinal Sen. The Black & White film was based on Prachhadpat, a novel by Achintya Kumar Sengupta, a noted writer of Modern Bengali literature.
The tragic story set in the late 1930s, just before famine struck Bengal. It tells of the marriage of a dumpy middle-aged salesman of small goods to a beautiful teenager, and how, after initial days of happiness together, a series of misfortunes strike which slowly embitter the man.
Set during the end of the British Raj in Calcutta, the story revolves around the life of an immigrant Chinese hawker Wang Lu and his platonic relationship a local girl Basanti. The movie also has the dubious distinction of being the first one to be banned (though temporarily) in India.
The family of Shama Pradhan, a rural farmer, and his two sons, Baraju and Chakadi, fight over the family home and land after his death.
